Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Back in 1990, the media landscape was quite different. The only media channels which existed then were mainstream television, radio and newspapers. Control of the narrative was limited to a few select outlets, meaning it was easy to control. The connections between the security state, the intelligence community and the media are well established; look no further than Operation Mockingbird in the US in the early years of the Cold War. Do you think it's just in the US? Rest assured that the mainstream media all over the world is replete with friends of the corporate sector, the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and USA, and the administrative state. In the USA, this has been called 'the blob'. The mid-nineties brought about the mass market adoption of the internet, which spread across the globe, and the blob championed this new tech with the establishment, lauding the information superhighway with its potential to boost education and spread free speech. It's hard to imagine that anyone predicted the enormous shift in the media landscape, though, as smartphones and social media allowed the rise of independent media returning real journalism to our screens.

Before long, people started to switch off the mainstream media, and, today, people like me have begun to understand that what we get from these outlets, basically, is bread and circuses at best and outright propaganda at worst. I have to say that I barely bother with a single word written in mainstream newspapers and never switch on the radio or the TV, because now you can get your news from people who are free from the corporate media landscape. This has dented the control the blob once had over your life. Twitter's internal files, released between March 2022 and December 2023 in the United States, showed the cosy link between the US intelligence services, big tech and government. And US journalist Michael Shellenberger described what he found as the 'censorship industrial complex'. They were creating blacklists and pressuring social media platforms to sensor, deamplify and even outright ban people from free speech.

That only happened in the United States, right? It wouldn't be happening in Australia, would it? Well, think again. The Department of Home Affairs here in Australia got caught red-handed dobbing in Aussies to big tech during COVID. The effect of the new media has been quite devastating for the blob, who swung into full censorship mode to shut down inconvenient political narratives. They've infiltrated everywhere across the country, including this building, and they're pouring their ideas into our legislative chambers by presenting arguments which are all about safety online for children and hate speech. But the truth is it's all about censorship, control and returning the media landscape to the digital form it was in back in 1990. By year's end, it won't just be social media platforms asking to verify your age. Age verification requirements will also extend to search engine accounts, and age verification will be proven to be basically a vector for identity verification.

Last year, I opposed the government's hate speech laws and the under-16 social media ban for these and other reasons. The mainstream media is cheering these laws on. They don't care about your children; what they care about is their market share. By the way, how come the same censorship dragnet is being played out across the Western world at exactly the same time? How come the intelligence communities in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand all use the exact same language of disinformation and hate speech and demand legislation for governments to curb real-world harm online—I suppose that's just a coincidence.

National leaders, representatives of international organisations and philanthropists have expressed their commitment to fostering free speech and open societies, but, sadly, their actions tell a very different story. Five Eyes intel gives Australia high-level intel capabilities, but does the alliance's secrecy and US-centric focus expose us to external pressures? Who checks on this unchecked surveillance and what's the real agenda? The blob's leaders, frankly, are driven by the fear that the internet and social media platforms empower populist alternative views, which they regard as unhelpful.