I thank my fellow Senators for their participation in a successful debate on my Motion in defence of free speech and peaceful freedom of association. I’m not sure if some understood how the Government’s “Misinformation and Disinformation Bill” (MAD for short) will limit the right to protest. As demonstrated during COVID, posts promoting protests were banned and organisers arrested. This Bill would allow the Government to ban posts that promote protests as a threat to public order, which is why my motion mentioned both free speech and the right to protest.
In my speech, I drew attention to the bigger picture – that predatory foreign billionaires have bought Australia, and this Bill prevents us talking about it.
One Nation will continue to fight for human rights and I am pleased to know we will not be alone.
Transcript
I move:
That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:
Freedom of speech and peaceful freedom of assembly are inalienable rights which the Senate must defend.
What do the billionaires who run the world do when we, the people, realise how much has been stolen from us—how much money, how much sovereignty, how much opportunity?
In the next few minutes, it will become obvious what this has to do with the misinformation and disinformation bill—’m-a-d’ or ‘mad’, for short. The world’s predatory billionaires do not wield their power directly; they hide behind wealth funds such as BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and First State. These funds act in concert with political change agents, including large superannuation and sovereign wealth funds such as Norges. The racket these subversive elements are running really is racketeering. They use their wealth to buy shares in companies that are then required to follow the agenda. This is not my opinion; these are the exact words of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. Buying out Western civilisation is an expensive business. The never-ending quest for more money, more power and more control is being noticed and resisted. Much of that resistance has been a result of Elon Musk buying X and allowing the truth to live in one mainstream forum.
The minute the BlackRock racketeers walk into a boardroom, any notion of public interest is abandoned. A case in point is Coles and Woolies, who used to pride themselves on providing the necessities of life—food and clothing—at the lowest possible price through competition. With the presence of an almost complete set of predatory wealth funds on their share registers, in recent years, Coles and Woolies no longer compete against each other. Instead, they collude to pursue a pricing strategy designed to maximise profit from our necessities of life, profit that’s sent overseas into the coffers of these sovereign wealth funds, leaving Australians permanently poorer.
In 2022-23, around an election, Woolies donated $110,000 to the ALP. In 2022-23, other industries under the control of these predatory wealth funds, including the big pharmaceutical industry, donated a million dollars to the ALP. What do they get for their money? Last Tuesday, I spoke in favour of the community affairs committee inquiry report into a prospective terms of reference for a royal commission into COVID response. Despite me simply agreeing with the committee report and despite my using only peer reviewed and published science to support my position, Senator Ayres from the Labor Party chose to describe my words as—listen to this:
… damaging misinformation and disinformation … there is a reason why the ASIO director-general highlights the role of extremist misinformation and disinformation in terms of its corrosive effect. It does lead to some of the acts of violent extremism here and overseas, motivated by the same vile conspiracy theories that we’ve just heard …
Wow, what a rant! No data, no argument; just empty labels.
Our New Zealand friends started their royal commission into COVID in December 2022. New Zealand has now decided that the royal commission unearthed so much behaviour that was cause for concern they’ve expanded the royal commission to include looking into COVID in much greater depth, including vaccine harm. The New Zealand royal commission now closely resembles the royal commission the Senate standing committee on community affairs recommended following their inquiry initiated on a One Nation referral. For Senator Ayres to say this is extremist misinformation and disinformation likely to lead to acts of violent extremism is a complete slap in the face to New Zealand’s royal commission and one that Senator Ayres would be well advised to reconsider.
This is the trouble when the government panics that $1 million in donations is at risk and brings on a bill that will shut up any opposition to the rule of the billionaires through their front companies—in this case, pharmaceutical companies—a rule that is, quite simply, a threat to the future of our beautiful country. With total clarity, Senator Ayres has drawn the battle lines here. What’s the truth in New Zealand parliament is ‘extremist misinformation and disinformation’ in Australia, if the Ayres government says it is. This bill has no protections, no checks and balances—it should rightly be renamed the ‘crush any opposition to the billionaires’ bill.
While the Labor Party’s desire for totalitarian censorship is no surprise, the people need to be aware that the Morrison-Littleproud Liberals and Nationals introduced this bill. Opposition leader Dutton makes no indication of whether he intends to oppose the bill, I guess because when he gets in he’ll be happy to use its onerous provisions. While I don’t have time to go into the Liberal Party’s donations from companies under the control of the world’s predatory billionaires, the same issue affects both parties. The Morrison-Littleproud government kept the COVID vaccine contracts hidden from our requests to make the contracts public for those who paid for the injections—taxpayers. The temptation to have extra money to spend in an election campaign has proven far too much for the major parties, and their independence, their objectivity and their common sense have been compromised. The world’s predatory billionaires’ downfall will be their hubris. The question is: who will go down with them?
Watching the sad events currently underway in the United Kingdom, one might be forgiven for thinking we’ve descended into the dystopian world long foretold by classic literature. One Nation agrees with Milton – free circulation of ideas is essential to moral and intellectual growth. To attempt to preclude falsehoods underestimates the power of truth.
Originally intended to prevent incitement to violence, hate speech laws have now devolved to the point where criticising the government has become a criminal offense, leading to the imprisonment of citizens in the UK. At the same time, the UK Government is failing to ensure the safety of its own streets. The UK clearly has 2-tiered policing.
As we face the next manufactured social or medical crises, there is no doubt that Australia’s law enforcement will commit the same abuses of civil rights that we are currently witnessing in the UK. Only by voting wisely will prevent Australia from following the UK’s path – turning into a communist state.
To conclude, let me be clear: there is no justification for violence from either side of a protest. Equally, the actions of a few should not result in the stripping away of rights from the many.
Transcript
Watching the sad events currently unfolding and underway in the United Kingdom, one can be forgiven for thinking we’d descended into the dystopian world so long predicted in the classic literature. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is just one warning, which ironically appears to have been become an instruction manual for the political left. An interview with George Orwell recently surfaced in which Orwell thought there was a possibility Nineteen Eighty-Four could happen in the UK. He was right, again.
Orwell’s description of what looks like the UK under Labour’s Keir Starmer reads as follows:
In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement—
that’s porn and transgenderism by the way—
There will be no loyalty except loyalty to the Party. But always there will be the intoxication of power. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who’s helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is … don’t let it happen.
One Nation are doing everything we can to prevent this nightmare overtaking Australia. Sadly, the globalist Liberals, Labor, Greens, Nationals and teals intend to push ahead into hell.
Another futuristic story, written in 1961 and titled Harrison Bergeron, from American science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut, predicted a future where human behaviour was controlled—physical movement and appearance and thought. High-IQ citizens were punished with earpieces that played loud sounds every 30 seconds to prevent them from thinking so they did not outshine low-IQ people. The strong were literally weighted down with ball bearings to reduce their strength to that of the worst weakling. The attractive were forced to wear ugly masks so nobody was made to feel uncomfortable gazing upon someone more attractive than themselves. A quote to explain his predication, which is often incorrectly attributed to Dostoevsky, simply reads, ‘Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.’
Vonnegut’s view was mirrored in an interview with a former resident of the Soviet Union that was described to me. It consisted of the fellow drawing three stick figures on a piece of paper, two at the same height and one taller, then saying, ‘In the Soviet Union everyone is equal,’ before taking his pencil and drawing a line across the top of the two smaller figures thereby severing the head of the third. ‘Such is life in the Soviet Union,’ he said. Keir Starmer’s communism is the victory of those who have lost their humanity, morality and faith or, as Orwell describes them, ‘those who thrill in the delight of the kill’. Perhaps UK citizens would agree it’s time to add a footnote to the famous quote from Descartes, ‘I think therefore I am—arrested.’
It’s just like the young man in Belfast who was recently arrested for observing a protest, only to have District Judge Rafferty and the Belfast Magistrates Court decide that someone’s presence, including as a curious observer, involves them in such disorder as to justify the refusal of bail. And off to jail he went. That young man had never been in trouble with the police before and had even left when the event became violent. There’s no provision in common or statute law that reads, ‘Injustice is allowed if it exists to make an example of one to intimidate others into disobedience,’ yet here we are.
Similar behaviour was observed in Australia during COVID. The conversation around events in the UK has so far missed an important element. The United Kingdom has been here before. Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman reminded the internet last week of the Areopagitica, which carries the full title: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc’d Printing, to the Parlament of England. This was a pamphlet published in 1644 to protest a parliamentary order of the previous year requiring government approval and licensing of all published works and pamphlets. This measure was introduced after Milton’s treatise in favour of divorce upset the king, Charles I. History appears to be repeating—the uniparty’s misinformation disinformation censorship bill.
In Areopagitica, Milton defends the free circulation of ideas as essential to moral and intellectual development. Furthermore, he asserts, to attempt to preclude falsehood is to underestimate the power of truth, a lesson for our eSafety Commissioner, who clearly believes the reverse is true. While the immediate objective of the Areopagitica repeal of licensing was not obtained for another 50 years, the tract has earned a permanent place in the literature of human rights.
Repeal took 50 years because, as it turned out, each new government kept that power in order to protect themselves from criticism. Power freely given is never freely surrendered. Here we are 380 years later and Australia is making exactly the same mistake, but One Nation isn’t. The rest of the parties in this place are. Keir Starmer famously took the knee during Black Lives Matter riots and now puts English lives matter demonstrators on their knees. The start of the trouble was the murder of three young girls at the hands of a suspected Islamic terrorist. If you want to look for the cause of the frustration being demonstrated among everyday Brits, look no further than a failure to keep the public safe. It is basic. Fear used as a weapon of control during COVID has bitten the hand that created it. There is an opportunity cost to arresting citizens for thought crimes like: praying in public; watching—but not participating in—a protest; making posts on social media critical of the government— posts which do not incite violence or incite the breaking of a law; posting up first-hand stories of vaccine harm; and of course, criticising the religion that can’t be criticised using nothing but their own words.
That opportunity cost is the policing of real crime. Over the last 10 years, according to the UK’s statistics office: assault with grievous bodily harm is up 100 per cent—doubled; assault with an injury is up 80 per cent—almost doubled; rape of an adult female up 370 per cent—almost five times; rape of a minor is up 100 per cent. In fact, the conviction rate of rapists in the UK is currently five per cent and not all of those even go to jail. Only last week a migrant was given a suspended sentence for raping a 13-year-old British girl. The court accepted his defence that he did not know that an adult raping a child was against the law in the UK. Imagine being that child’s parents. Imagine being that child. Is it any wonder the Brits are demonstrating this two-tiered justice system? The commentariat, who are denying the right of people to protest peacefully, including many of the usual suspects in here in Australia, are commenting on a world their wealth and their elitist lifestyles insulate them from.
A Merseyside chief constable made a comment last week, apparently unaware this is the exact upside-down policing, the exact two-tier policing, the public are protesting about. They said, ‘What I would say to those people who think they have gotten away with being involved in disorder, we are coming for you. We have hours of social media and closed circuit TV footage. I have officers working around the clock to identify you. We know who you are and we know where you live and where you work.’
Why is this relevant to Australia? Because our law enforcement have been equipped with the powers to do exactly the same thing. The Identity Verification Services Act together with the Digital ID Act, which Labor minister Katy Gallagher passed through the parliament this year, allows law enforcement to obtain the image of any person anywhere any time from traffic cameras, security cameras, closed circuit TV and main roads, even in supermarkets.
All this with a spurious ‘suspected of a crime’ justification. It then allows law enforcement to go through the video, one frame at a time, to extract a photo of each attendee and run them through the national identity database, which currently contains data on 17 million Australians. Our police will indeed know your name; address; where you work, live and visit, and, once fully implemented, the system will be able to locate you from traffic cameras, payment scanners in shops and public transport touchpads in real time.
Welcome to your digital prison. One Nation warned you directly, loudly and often. During the next manufactured social and medical crisis, there’s no doubt our law enforcement will commit the same abuse of civil rights as we see happening in the UK right now. One Nation believes human rights should not be made subservient to the greed and hubris of those who would stamp on the face of their fellow citizens in the acquisition of wealth and power or, perversely, in the name of social justice. Measures to facilitate this censorship and destruction of human rights are winding our society back to the time of Milton, 380 years ago. The irony is this is the same Left who accused One Nation of wanting to wind the clock back!
As a closing remark, let me make it clear there’s no excuse for violence on either side of a protest. Equally, the actions of a few do not justify the removal of rights from the many. The actions of the few do not justify the removal of rights from the many. Human rights are universal, part of being human, inherent in each and all of us from birth.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/tmKTc8N_V1g/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-08-19 17:02:422024-08-19 17:03:14Is the UK Sliding into Dystopia? Australia Could Be Next!
I recently joined Melinda Richards on TNT Radio to discuss pressing issues facing Australia today. I emphasised the importance of independent media.
Our conversation turned to the Digital ID bill, which echoes the Australia Card proposal from the 1980’s—a proposal Australians firmly rejected.
We also discussed the erosion of conservative values within the Liberal Party and the urgent need for strong leadership to uphold these conservative principles.
Transcript
Melinda Richards: I’m joined by Senator Malcolm Roberts, one of the few politicians in Australia standing up for Australians and puts Australians first and his country first. Thank you again, Senator Roberts for joining me today.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re welcome and thank you for doing what you do on TNT because we need an independent news media. Part of the problem is that the governments are owned by major corporations who are in the media and that the messaging is false.
Melinda Richards: Yeah, it’s interesting. I just spoke about that this week that the government has now invested nearly $33 million into Channel 10 and had a little bit of a rant about that. And having government owned media is the worst idea that could possibly be put forward to a supposed free society. Senator Roberts, I wanted to talk to you about also the Australia card. You’re of the age, and I’m of the age, where we can remember the Australia card being proposed by Bob Hawke back in 1985 and he was intent on doing what the digital ID is going to do now. Of course, the digital ID would be 1000 times worse because we have the technology now, but back in the 80s, Australians said a resounding no to the Australia card and then they talked about it again a couple more times and Australians said a resounding no each time it came up. So of course, Australians probably would say a very loud, resounding no to the digital ID. Should this have gone to a referendum to the people? Because of course, this is going to be the biggest change that society’s going to have in the next coming decades.
Senator ROBERTS: Well, that’s one way certainly of doing it. We’ve got a One Nation policy – Citizens Initiated Referendum, which means that the people – it operates in some countries, Switzerland for example, and it brings accountability to the federal parliament. That’s where a citizen can say I don’t like a bill, he or she can make a petition, get sufficient signatures. Then the bill is put to, even if it’s been passed by the parliament, is put to the people and the people can say go to hell, remove the bill. They can also hold politicians accountable and say we don’t like what you’re doing, Melinda, you’re out. You know that’s what we need, accountability. So yes, it should be put to the people. But the Australia card is a really important lesson because I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. But as I understand it, Melinda, that was about making sure that people receiving welfare payments from the government, which is really from the taxpayer, were accountable and there’d be no cheating. And we see a lot of cheating on welfare these days. So that’s the intent. But even with that intent, the taxpayers say no, I’d rather lose my money than have the government watching over us.
Melinda Richards: We’d rather have people cheat then have people track US, have people follow, follow the ID number, have our ID number continuing to go through different aspects and parts of our society. The people of Australia at the time understood the implications. Are we a little bit more apathetic now or is it just that we are not really understanding what is being passed through parliament because it’s not being talked about much in the mainstream media?
Senator ROBERTS: You’ve, you’ve nailed it. The mouthpiece media, the legacy media, the Big Brother media, whatever you want to call it, do not talk about it because their masters are wanting this Digital ID to go through because they’ll be part of the corporations that it’ll be widened up to in the future.
Melinda Richards: I mean, we’re still looking at the money train then. We’re still looking at the people that are going to profit from this by controlling us and then pushing through different things and different subsidies and different parts of bills and ideas and things that we won’t even have a say in either.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s correct. Remember the three words, two points – control and wealth transfer. This is what it’s about. We’ve got the identity verification, which is a bill that went through earlier, a couple of months before, or a few months before the digital ID bill – that was about enabling biometric data to be used. Digital ID bill came up. The Misinformation-Disinformation bill was introduced by the Morrison Government, and it has been retracted or withdrawn – paused in its process through this parliament. So that’s coming up as well. That’s where they will control what you say and what you then do. So, this is all heading for control and enabling wealth transfer. Because we also know, thanks to my questioning at Senate estimates, that the Reserve Bank of Australia has been working on a digital currency and has been tying that up to work overseas on a global digital currency. I mean the Reserve Bank admitted it. So, this is putting everything in place for social credit score. And there were several amendments considered in the – it wasn’t a debate – in the passage of the bill through – the hijacking of the bill through the parliament. And not one word of debate was allowed on any of those amendments.
Melinda Richards: That’s incredible.
Senator ROBERTS: Yeah. And then the media doesn’t even report this going on. But this is typical of what the UNI party is doing. It’s not just the Labour Party. All of these bills, including the Digital ID bill, were introduced by the LNP, the Liberal National Party government.
Melinda Richards: I mean, do you think this is a really big problem for the conservative movement in Australia? I just had Andrew Cooper on earlier today talking about CPAC, talking about where the conservative movements going in Australia, particularly in light of what’s just happened in the UK election. I mean, the digital ID has got to be something, hasn’t it, that that the politicians, the conservative politicians in Australia and the conservative citizens of Australia should now be rallying behind almost as strongly as they did with the Voice referendum. I mean we know with the positive outcome that happened there that when we do rally, when we do understand things, when we look a little deeper into what’s going on, we can actually get a great result.
Senator ROBERTS: You’re absolutely correct. And there are a few conservatives, true conservatives in the Liberal Party, but most of them are in One Nation and Libertarians these days.
Melinda Richards: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Alex Antic, for example, he drafted a bill that’s called, I think the Repeal Digital ID Bill. He invited genuine conservatives to cosign it and co-sponsor it. So, he invited me, Pauline Hanson, Ralph Babet, Gerard Rennick and Matt Canavan. And so, the six of us are all co-sponsors of the bill. And the bill’s very simple. It just says repeal the Digital ID bill – that’s it. And then there’s the consequential amendments, which is repealing any changes of the digital ID caused in other legislation. So, it can be done. You look at the Liberal National Party, Gerard Rennick is one of the best senators and he’s been put in an unwinnable position pre-selection. You look at the true conservatives, Kevin Andrews from Victoria – gone, not pre-selected. You look at the senators they’ve appointed recently, they’ve been from the left wing of the Liberal Party. You see Connie Fierravanti-Wells, Eric Abetz – genuine conservatives sidelined and taken out of federal politics. So, what we see now is a Liberal Party that is a clone of the worst parts of the Labor Party. You’ve got factions now within the Liberal Party, you’ve got very, very few Conservatives and so what we’ve got now is a Uni-Party and we know that every major energy bill, for example, climate and energy policy was introduced by the Liberal National Party, not the Labor Party. The Labor Party came in and ramped it up and that’s what they’ve done across the board.
Melinda Richards: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s been a shocking revelation for a lot of conservatives over the last probably 15 years or so that the conservative movement is not being represented by the Liberal Party, the Liberal National Party and this has been a bit of a wake up call for the conservative movement in Australia and certainly in the UK – they’ve woken up. It took them 3 elections. I think we need a strong conservative leader in this country to bring us back to some of our core values. And there are things that the conservative movement is going to have to, as I said earlier, grab a hold of and fight back pretty strongly. And the group of politicians you mentioned, Senator Roberts, you are the true heroes of our political movement at the moment in Australia because you are putting Australians first.
Thank you so much for joining me today, Senator Roberts. I certainly hope we can talk again very soon. You’re listening to Melinda Richards on TNT.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/KJ1AXsGFYDI/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-08-13 17:29:312024-08-13 17:29:36Digital ID, Independent Media and the Future of Conservatism in Australia
[17/07/24] I joined Alexandra Marshall on ADH TV to chat about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and how PM Albanese has exploited this situation to promote his Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023, which is completely inappropriate.
A true leader would use this opportunity to bring people together, denounce the violence, and call for calm and unity. I’m relieved though that Donald Trump emerged with only a minor injury.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/IyKxdc-qnyg/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-08-01 17:37:402024-08-01 17:46:12Trump Assassination Attempt Used to Exploit Misinformation and Disinformation Bill
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/ADHTV.png?fit=1384%2C771&ssl=17711384Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-06-24 17:51:052024-07-04 12:22:27The Triad of Tyranny is About Control
I asked the Australian Electoral Commission about their claims of misinformation and disinformation being a threat to elections. I was surprised to find that a taskforce that specifically reports on threats to the integrity of the election reported there was no interference that would undermine confidence in any results.
Why the discrepancy between a taskforce that says there are no issues and a Commissioner that says this is a big problem? Either the task force isn’t being upfront or the Commissioner is overblowing the threat of disinformation.
I also pointed at some complex shady transactions showing over $40 million in one year flowing from coal company Glencore through a subsidiary company, to the union, to the Labor Party.
Transcript
CHAIR: Senator ROBERTS.
Senator ROBERTS: As you may be aware, Mr Rogers, I’ve got the minutes of the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce, the EIAT—sounds like something to eat—and the freedom of information request LEX 5612. I want to ask you if this response meets your expectations of transparency and accountability. Here are the first six pages. It’s almost entirely black—redacted. There are 100 more pages and most of them are a repeat of this. We’ve probably ran out of black ink trying to print the whole thing. Is this a transparent and open response for what is meant to be an ‘assurance task force’?
Mr Rogers: For a start, I don’t own the task force. I’ll put that on the table. The task force provides me advice about a range of issues. But I just want to point out—
Senator ROBERTS: It’s multi-agency, right?
Mr Rogers: That’s correct, yes. We’ve had discussions about this previously; there are security agencies involved in that process.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes.
Mr Rogers: We are actually talking about security issues. So I’m presuming that the agencies that make up the task force have gone through that document and are worried about releasing sensitive information and that is why it has been released in a redacted format. I’m happy to talk outside the public setting about the sorts of work they do. But, as we’ve said previously, they look at a whole range of different issues that impact on the AEC. They look at physical security, cybersecurity, and misinformation and disinformation with a particular vector about foreign interference. They are issues that they provide advice to me on. They examine a whole range of things, and I’m presuming that the agencies that make up that task force have examined that information and there are security implications or privacy implications, which is why they’ve redacted that information.
Senator ROBERTS: When every page is redacted, surely the EIAT is not dealing with 100 per cent secure information.
Mr Rogers: This is dealing with a sensitive area, which is the reason we’ve set that task force up to start with. But, again, I’m happy to talk to you outside a public setting about some of that information. But there will be privacy information there, there will be privileged information there, and there will also be security classified information there as well.
Senator ROBERTS: You have plenty of experience at Senate estimates, Mr Rogers, and you answer questions well, so I’m sure you’d be aware that freedom of information law used to redact freedom of information requests doesn’t apply to this committee. I want you to take on notice, please, to produce to this committee an unredacted version of the LEX 5612 documents, please.
Mr Rogers: The AEC doesn’t own the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce. Let me take that on notice. I’ll work with the agencies that comprise the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce. But it’s not an AEC entity as such. It is designed to be a cooperative body of the agencies represented on the task force to provide advice to me, particularly about foreign interference. So I can’t direct them to do that. Those agencies will have their own security issues that they have applied in the general clearance of that. But I’ll certainly raise it with the task force on your behalf.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Failing an adequate response from them, let’s take up your offer to discuss it, please. I understand the integrity task force—which includes AFP, ASD and so on—delivered a statement to you to the effect that there was no interference that would undermine the confidence of the Australian people in the election result. That statement has effectively been a copy-paste from the 2019 election, to 2022, to the referendum in 2023. Mr Pope, for 2022 at least—it was actually him as Deputy Commissioner of the AEC that proposed that wording to the EIAT, wasn’t it?
Mr Rogers: I don’t have the minutes in front of me. I’d have to take that on notice.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. If you could tell us.
Mr Rogers: To be abundantly helpful—it probably is the same words. I don’t have them in front of me, because that’s the same situation. If the situation hasn’t changed, they’re actually the words. If there had been interference, it would be an entirely different set of words that would come.
Senator ROBERTS: That’s where I want to go to next. If the integrity task force says in its statement that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why is it necessary to hide the minutes of the meetings—completely hide them. I can understand some sensitive matters, some potential threats. Why is it necessary to hide the minutes?
Mr Rogers: Every member of that task force carries a current Commonwealth security classification. They’re dealing with information that in itself is classified. Again, I don’t own the task force. I’m not speaking on behalf of the task force. But each of the agencies has its own statutory responsibility to protect information as well. As a collective, that redaction would be the result of a security assessment done by the agencies on the task force. Whatever was discussed had some sort of security either classification or implication.
Senator ROBERTS: I accept that’s your answer. But I wonder if 100 per cent of it—okay. You’ve been very keen to become the truth cop and decide what is and isn’t misinformation at elections. You’ve told us that misinformation—
Mr Rogers: No. In fact, let me be very clear. I am the reverse of the truth cop. I do not want to be the truth cop at all. We had a discussion earlier this evening. ‘Truth’ at election time is quite often in the eye of the beholder. And the determination of what truth is is not something that I wish to be involved with. However, where disinformation about the electoral process is being spread—and you and I have discussed this previously—
Senator ROBERTS: Yes. I remember you discussing it with us.
Mr Rogers: Things that are legislatively and factually wrong, designed to confuse electors about the act of voting—for example, ‘You don’t have to vote’ or ‘Voting is not compulsory’ or ‘The AEC is using Dominion voting machines’ or ‘is erasing your ballot’—all of those sorts of issues. If someone says things like that that are designed to confuse voters, we correct the record. We don’t stop anybody from saying anything. But we certainly correct the record and we use the various tools at our disposal to do that, including social media and media, including at appearances like this. But I just want to be abundantly clear that the characterisation that you made at the start is the reverse of what we do.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes. I’ll take that back, because I didn’t mean it the way you understood it. But I can see quite clearly that that is a way of taking it. What I meant to say is that you have told us about the misinformation and disinformation repeatedly. From the amount of media and commentary you’ve done on this, it appears to be a very significant focus of yours, and that’s probably entirely correct. So where did this come from if your integrity task force is telling you in the statement that there isn’t a single issue to worry about? You’re telling us it’s a risk, a big risk.
Mr Rogers: One of the reasons we can have confidence about the Australian election is the existence of the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce. Their work, the work of the AEC—the work within the AEC of our Defending Democracy Unit, our social media team and a range of other entities, the way we engage with social media organisations, the way we focus on getting correct information into the hands of voters—has actually assisted that process. We’re certainly not going to wait for a disaster to have those measures in place [inaudible] get to where we are. We are internationally renowned—not just the AEC, but Australia and Australia’s electoral system is internationally renowned—as being fair, transparent and of high integrity. That is because of the work the AEC has done and the work that our partner agencies have done in groups like the EIAT—and indeed parliament, including committees that have established legislation and inquiries into each election. So I’m abundantly proud of the work that the AEC has done to ensure that citizens have confidence in electoral outcomes. You might have seen at the end of last year there was an APS survey that was published where the AEC was ranked No. 1 for trust and satisfaction out of, I think, 20 agencies that were listed amongst citizens. That is as a result of the work of a whole range of organisations, including our partner agencies. If you don’t mind, because the EIAT is an important moment of what we do, the members of the EIAT, just because they are on the EIAT, that does not abrogate their legislative responsibilities that they have as individual agencies in any case. The EIAT exists as a taskforce but each of the agencies represented also has legislative responsibilities, not just at election time but outside of election time, and we also have a bilateral relationship with each of these agencies as well. As you know and as I said previously, we talk to the AFP on a regular basis. We talk to those other agencies. They provide us advice and we use that input to guide how we’re going. I think Australians should be very proud of their electoral system and also the work of all those bodies that I mentioned before that have assisted in creating such a high-integrity and transparent system.
Senator ROBERTS: I must say that we had a number of concerns about the electoral process and the electoral system. Many of those, with the exception of two, have been erased because of our discussions and because we now have audits as a result of me introducing legislation that the previous government then took up. I will endorse your comments with the proviso that we still have a couple of things we are not happy with, but you do have audits now. Some of the issues you are responsible for are not easy; I get that. One in particular I would like to raise with you now is maybe you could elaborate on some of the issues faced with getting a clear picture when it comes to donation law, a really complex situation. The returns for the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union for 2022 and 2023 show they donated huge sums to the Labor Party. The CFMMEU has received more than $39 million from a company called Abelshore, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of coal company Glencore. In 2021-22 they donated $9 million, so over two years they donated $48 million donated by Glencoreowned companies to the CFMMEU, to the Labor Party. So you have tens of millions, $48 million as I said, flying from a coal company through a subsidiary, through a union to the Labor Party but the coal company does not show up in the returns to the Labor Party. Can you explain the difficulties in finding out where the money was originally coming from on the returns that are lodged?
Mr Rogers: First of all, I have not seen that particular return, so I would have to take it on notice and have a look but I am not aware that any of that breaches the existing legislation. Our role is to adhere to the legislation, promote the legislation, ensure that agencies are adhering to that. As you know, the whole funding and disclosure issue is the most complex part of the Electoral Act. It is highly technical. As long as those entities are meeting their obligations for transparency under the act, and I have no information that they are not—I would have to look at that specific issue in detail—as long as they are within the legislation, changing that legislation is a matter for parliament rather than the AEC, which I know you are aware of, and it is something we were discussing earlier this evening. I would have to have a look at in detail.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, we will send you a copy. It is on a register from the CFMMEU, I think I said. That is an awful lot of money to be hidden and it is not deliberately hidden. Perhaps it is inadvertently hidden. I think the intent is deliberate because it seems a bit strange that money is going from a coal company to a mining union to the Labor Party. Let’s move on. Can I confirm that you did not refer a single case of double voting at the referendum or the last election to the Federal Police for investigation?
Mr Rogers: I don’t have the statistics in front of me. Someone does. The chief legal officer does. I will drag him forward for a moment. Mr A Johnson: I will have to look up the statistics, but we have referred several multivoting cases from the federal election, around 37, and that 76 from the referendum were referred to the AFP, but that then is a matter for the AFP because it is a criminal offence and whether they proceed with prosecutions.
Senator ROBERTS: Yes, it is a criminal offence.
Mr Rogers: We work with the AFP on those matters and, as the chief legal officer said, we refer those matters to them. But we go through each of those cases with them in any case, and what they do with those from there is a matter for the AFP.
Senator ROBERTS: One of the concerns we have amongst the two or three concerns overall, which has dropped dramatically in number after working with you, is the physical audit of the voter rolls, doorknocking houses and confirming that voters listed at that address live there. How are you progressing on that?
Mr Rogers: I think you are referring to something that used to be referred to as a habitation review, which we used to do many years ago. We don’t do habitation reviews for a range of reasons. Frankly, we found them to be inaccurate when we did those reviews. The processes that we have in place now are far more accurate and bring a greater level of assurance to the integrity of the roll than the habitation review ever did. As you would imagine, with people walking around districts, knocking on doors, people give all sorts of answers, if they open the door at all. We had people not home. In fact, I will not go through some of the detail of some of the ways in which our staff used to be received. There were personal safety issues involved as well. But the process we have in place now, we have a roll integrity assurance system, which I think we might have discussed with you when we visited to talk about the various issues that are in place. It is a better system with higher integrity than ever was the case during the habitation review process. Also, what we are currently doing is a better use of Commonwealth funds. The habitation reviews were hugely expensive for a very poor outcome, so what we have managed to produce is a much better system, using the coordination of several datasets to ensure that people are where they say they are.
Senator ROBERTS: You have said that before.
Mr Rogers: We also manage a thing called the address register, which is complex, but that is the way that we give everyone a spot on the earth, effectively. We know where people are, not when they are moving around for the sake of it, but where their houses are to make sure that when people say they are enrolled in a spot that that spot is actually an agreed address and that they are enrolled in.
Senator ROBERTS: We get frequent reports about people voting more than once and voting instead of dead people and so on. If you will indulge me, Mr Rogers, and the CHAIR, before I get onto my last question, I am not sure if you have heard an old joke about a politician who has lost his seat in parliament. Talking to a party powerbroker, he says, ‘Comrade, to lose such a safe seat is a tragedy but losing an electorate with three cemeteries, that is unforgivable.’ You have probably heard that one.
Mr Rogers: There has been a number of variations to that. Just to give some idea of the scope of the movement on the electoral roll, from memory, every day there are about 7,000 people who move or sadly die or turn 18 that we need to somehow interact with the electoral roll on a daily basis.
Senator ROBERTS: Or get married.
Mr Rogers: There is huge movement in that roll. We are constantly managing it—people are on, people are off. We do a range of things to make sure that it is accurate. We hear stories from time to time with people on social media or they might phone up talkback radio and say, ‘I multiple voted.’ We do not have any evidence of that. It is a minuscule problem. I have said before that the problem is vanishingly small. There is a gulf between what people do and say in this regard. We are alert to it. There have been a number of studies done. There was a large study done by an academic from the new University of New South Wales almost a decade ago looking at a range of issues to do with this. It is a vanishingly small issue. I mentioned previously, to the extent that it does occur, there are some factors normally are associated with it. One is age. People who multiple vote are more likely to be over the age of 80. I am thinking back to some research here. English as a second language can be an issue, because new voters might be confused. They may have heard that if you do not vote in Australia you get a fine and they are desperate not to get a fine, so they double vote. Sometimes there is also mental confusion as one of the other factors. It is a small number. Just to also give you some comfort, we are very clear that if ever the level of multiple voting came close to the margin for those seats, we would refer that ourselves to the Court of Disputed Returns and it has never even been close to that. We watch for that, we look at it and we are very conscious of it.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. Thank you. Last question—have you ever been involved in any correspondence or collaboration with the eSafety Commissioner?
Mr Rogers: Yes, we have. Well, actually, let me just craft my answer here. When I say ‘we’, we, as part of the Electoral Council of Australia and New Zealand, which is the electoral commissioners of Australia and New Zealand, have been collectively looking at an issue to do with the safety of our staff. As you know, the eSafety Commissioner has some powers about adult harm online—I’ll get that bit wrong, forgive me, but whatever those powers are—and we’ve been working with the eSafety Commissioner as a group of commissioners to make sure we have adequate protocols in place for how we engage the eSafety Commissioner in using those protocols for the safety of our permanent and temporary staff.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you very much. Thank you, CHAIR.
https://img.youtube.com/vi/jgAbAWqutdQ/maxresdefault.jpg7201280Senator Malcolm Robertshttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSenator Malcolm Roberts2024-06-03 17:55:412024-06-05 22:14:11Is the AEC Lying About the Threat of Misinformation and Disinformation?
Three Bills are being rammed through the Senate to create legislation that will transform the UN-WEF plans for surveillance and control into a dystopian reality in Australia.
The first is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which is designed to permit the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens and normalise it. The second, the Digital Identity Bill 2023, will ensure Australians have no choice but to succumb to setting up a digital ID. The third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023. This is the censorship tool to make sure both the media and social media carries government sanctioned opinions only. The government in power is exempted and free to be the Ministry of Truth, spreading misinformation or disinformation. Remember how well that went during the COVID response?
The Driver’s Licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already being used to establish your identity with a paper check and now with a facial scan.
I implored the Senate to vote against and to reject this Bill. This is the first of three Bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
Transcript
One Nation strongly opposes the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023. Here’s why. The Albanese government’s great mate, Blackrock boss Larry Fink, and predatory billionaires at the World Economic Forum are fond of the phrase ‘you will own nothing and be happy’. What they really mean is that they will own everything and you will comply. Why would people voluntarily enslave themselves, give up their homes, cars and household goods and lose the right to travel freely, I hear you ask. The answer is that people will not be given a choice. They will be coerced—forced into it. That’s the purpose of this government’s triad of tyranny.
First is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which will normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Second is the Digital ID Bill 2023, which will force every Australian into having a digital ID. Third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions; the government will be exempted and can be free to spread misinformation and disinformation.
Biometric data is your face turned into a data file based on your physical characteristics. It allows for faster and more accurate identification. They will capture your face. The national drivers licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already used to establish your identity with a paper check. Now it will have a facial scan.
Australians do not need to consent in a meaningful manner. The bill currently uses the word ‘consent’ without definition. Consent can be implied. Here’s an example. If a person sees a video of themselves on a self-service check-out at the supermarket and uses the check-out anyway, it’s considered implied consent. The government has accepted that implied consent is no consent at all and has upgraded the reference to ‘consent’ in their amendment on sheet UD100 to ‘explicit consent’. That isn’t good enough either. Explicit consent can be provided as blanket consent. An example would be MasterCard changing their terms and conditions to allow for facial recognition whenever their card is used. Once the card owner gets the email saying, ‘We have updated our terms and conditions. Click here to approve,’ and people click without reading it, one of those new terms could be permission for facial recognition. Did you give consent? No.
Banks currently record the image of anyone using their ATMs and then use that in the case of a fraudulent transaction. Banks will update their terms and conditions to give themselves the right to run your biometric verification on each occasion before allowing access to your account. Refusing the new permission gives your bank or card company the right to refuse service. It’s that simple. It’s blackmail. This is why the government suggesting a digital ID or biometric data check will be voluntary is a complete lie. It’s compulsory, because not agreeing means you lose your bank account or payment card or service—just as those voluntary COVID injections were compulsory if you wanted to keep your job and your house and feed your family.
I foreshadow an amendment in the committee stage on sheet 2327 to change the definition of ‘explicit’ to ‘active’, meaning on each occasion your face is to be scanned they must ask permission before they scan it and make sure they get your permission each time. That’s active consent. This should be supported, because the government already says Australians will have to consent to their biometric data being used—unless, of course, that was misinformation.
This bill does not offer a direct link between the authentication action at a check-out, office, airport et cetera and the master file. A government hub receives a request and pulls the master file, meaning only the government has access to the master file. This seems to look acceptable, yet it means there’s a master file with 17 million records containing name, address, telephone, date of birth, drivers licence number, passport number and a biometric identification file all sitting in the same database. That’s all the information necessary to steal someone’s ID and impersonate them online—a hacker’s paradise.
Robodebt proved that our bureaucrats are incapable of even a simple one-to-one database match, and now they’re being trusted to pull this off. It’s impossible without a high level of compulsion and without completely ignoring victims of software or data-matching errors. If the look-up fails, then your purchase, travel, document, signing or whatever other use fails. If the purchase was for petrol, your family could be stranded late at night. We might as well start the royal commission now.
Downstream from the big government database are what I call intermediaries or entities with participating agreements. There are 20 of these so far. Their role is to take a request for authentication from a bank or card processor, solicitor, real estate agent, airline—anyone needing you to prove you are who you say you are—and submit that to the national drivers licence database hub to run past the master database. In the original bill there were no effective checks and balances on those businesses. The government’s amendment of its own bill has added a few checks and balances to ensure that intermediaries must delete data received as part of the verification process.
Thank you, Minister Gallagher. That, taken together with my amendment to make the level of consent clear, takes some of the potential abuse out of the bill. A clear privacy statement would have helped. The government have promised they will do that later. There are trust issues around that promise.
Questions remain around the New South Wales government’s comment that this bill will allow them to verify that every person detected driving a car past a surveillance camera has a drivers licence.
The only way this can be achieved is if every driver is scanned every time they pass a detection camera and their image is compared to the national database. Does this mean those cameras going up around Australia are just the right height to scan the driver’s face and that the cameras will be used to scan and verify your identity each time you pass one? Yes, it does. Before they work out who you are and whether you have a licence, they have to scan and verify your biometrics. It’s the only explanation for the New South Wales government’s comment.
For those listening to this with incredulity, I remind you that this is exactly the system now in place in London, with Lord Mayor Khan’s ULEZ, Ultra Low Emission Zone, and in Birmingham, Manchester and other cities in Britain. It’s really the World Economic Forum’s 15-minute cities happening right now. Residents are locked into their zone and can only leave a certain number of times a year. This is happening in Britain. That depends on the make and model of the car you drive. If you drive a car they don’t like, you can’t move. Rich people who can afford electric cars can, of course, come and go as they please. Everyday citizens are locked in or, when they leave, the cameras detect them leaving and fine them on the spot. It’s a fine of 180 pounds a week for leaving over seven days.
That’s in Britain now. Already it has raised hundreds of millions of pounds because people will pay for freedom.
Look it up. Don’t just trust me: look it up. There are fines for not registering with the system and fines for breaching the 15-minute limits. It’s a virtual fence. It’s like an electric dog collar. It’s the foundation for a social credit system to completely control people’s lives. So don’t tell me this is a conspiracy theory. It’s real and it’s happening now in our mother country.
Cash is necessary to ensure these measures are ameliorated as much as possible, which is why the globalist wing of the Liberal Party tried to ban cash in the last parliament, which One Nation defeated. It should be obvious that predatory, parasitic billionaires and some of their lackeys in the Labor and Liberal Party are getting their ducks in a row because they want to be ready for the full implementation of their globalist masters’ control agenda, exactly as they promised. It’s not like they’re hiding any of this. When they tell us what they’re going to do, listen.
Remember this government’s triad of tyranny. Already entered into parliament is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023 to normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Here it is. There’s the Digital ID Bill 2023 to force every Australian into having a digital ID. There’s the misinformation and disinformation bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions, and the government is exempted. I implore the Senate to vote against this bill and to reject this bill. This is the first of three bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
https://i0.wp.com/www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/NoDigital_Malcolm_D1_V4.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=110801080Sheenagh Langdonhttps://www.malcolmrobertsqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/One-Nation-Logo1-300x150.pngSheenagh Langdon2024-05-02 15:01:452024-05-02 15:01:50National Day of Protest: No Digital ID Rally
At this year’s Davos, less government officials were present than usual, yet Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, was not only present, but she was also an agenda contributor, pushing for greater online safety.
I asked in what capacity Ms Julie Inman Grant was present at Davos for the World Economic Forum 2024 annual meeting, what was the cost to Australian taxpayers and whether staff travelled with her on this trip at public expense. As an independent statutory authority, Commissioner Inman Grant is planning to embrace global opportunities to help achieve the outcomes she perceives necessary for online safety. The Commissioner is seeking broader powers to achieve her agenda, for our own good of course, and once again this begs the question exactly who is deciding what is ‘good’?
Listening to her speak about online safety regulations, the one word conspicuous by its absence is censorship. The other missing words were freedom of expression.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you for being here today. Did you attend the World Economic Forum planning session in Davos last month? If so, was that in your personal capacity or as the eSafety Commissioner?
Ms Inman Grant: I attended the world economic global summit as the eSafety Commissioner. I achieved more in four days than I could in four years because I was meeting with senior technology executives. I was talking directly to the people who are building AI and immersive technologies and asked directly the decision makers what they are doing to make their platforms safer. I was sharing really our leadership and our model in terms of how we’re tackling online safety.
Senator ROBERTS: Well, I think we’re the ones who should be assessing whether or not you’re justified. How many staff accompanied you? What was the cost to taxpayers?
Ms Inman Grant: I will take that on notice. I had one staff member accompany me. I supplemented that with trips to Brussels, where I met with European Commission officials, and to Dublin to meet with my fellow regulators in Ireland and the UK. So it was a very productive trip.
Senator ROBERTS: Now can I have the justification, please? What did taxpayers get for their money? How did attending help in the discharge of your duties?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, I had access to the presidents of most of the major technology companies, including the CEO of OpenAI. I was able to ask him what they were planning to do to build safety into this. Any time that we can influence the decision-makers at this level to make technology safer is better.
Senator ROBERTS: You run an online agency, right?
Ms Inman Grant: I run—
Senator ROBERTS: Couldn’t you have done this online?
Ms Inman Grant: I run a real agency that has real people and capital equipment. I couldn’t engage in this forum online and not have those kinds of meetings to make a real difference for Australians in terms of getting real change happening.
Senator ROBERTS: You are referencing your panel session at Davos. Your office has just sent Twitter a notice regarding them allowing hate on the Twitter platform, including allowing previously suspended users back on the platform.
Ms Inman Grant: Yes.
Senator ROBERTS: Can you give me examples of Australian accounts that X has allowed back on that your office objects to?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, the online hate notice looked at the range of trust and safety governance steps that they had taken, including firing 80 per cent of their safety engineers, more than half of their content moderators and 80 per cent of their public policy personnel—so the people who actually look after the safety. We did ask them. It was reported that there were 62,000 previously banned users. To be permanently banned on Twitter, you have to have violated the policies pretty egregiously a number of times. We asked them the question. They responded. We asked about the 62,000. They responded with 6,100. We assumed that meant they reinstated 6,100 previously banned Australian accounts, which wasn’t in the manner and form of the notice and the question that we asked them. They didn’t name what those specific ones were, but they did tell us that there are no additional safety provisions even though they have been permanently banned for online hate in some cases.
Senator ROBERTS: It seems to me, Ms Grant, that you’re assuming the previous bans were in order. Had you explored those previous bans before coming to that judgement?
Ms Inman Grant: Twitter, as the company, had a whole range of policies, including a hateful conduct policy. They remove or—
Senator ROBERTS: So you haven’t? What you’ve done is you’ve gone off their interpretation of their policy, even though we know they were biased.
Ms Inman Grant: That’s the only thing we can do, Senator.
Senator ROBERTS: Could you come back to my question—
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, please allow Ms Inman Grant to answer.
Senator ROBERTS: and give me examples of Australian accounts?
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, I appreciate that you are somewhat agitated. Could you please respect the witnesses and allow them to answer the questions.
Senator ROBERTS: I would like the witness to give me examples of Australian accounts that X has allowed back that her office objects to. That’s my question and you haven’t answered it.
Ms Inman Grant: I didn’t ask them specific questions about which accounts they were. I asked for the quant the numbers.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Are you setting yourself up as an arbiter of what should and should not be seen online?
Ms Inman Grant: No. I am not. I have been designated by the government to serve as the eSafety Commissioner and to remediate harms of online individuals who have experienced online abuse and, in most cases, have reported that abuse to the platform. The platform hasn’t enforced their terms of policy, so we are there as a safety net or a backstop to help remediate that harm.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Your remarks included this comment, and I quote: There are lots of different tools in the toolbox we’ll be using. What are those tools? Under what explicit power do you possess them? Who supervises how you use them?
Ms Inman Grant: All our powers are designated under the Online Safety Act. We have a range of complaints schemes that deal with youth based cyber bullying, image-based abuse, adult cyber abuse and the online content scheme. We have systems and process powers under the basic online safety expectations. We have now six codes registered and two standards that we’re working on. They are the primary tools.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. Who supervises how you use them? Who assesses whether or not you’re being effective or overextending?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, we are held to account. We have lots of reporting and transparency and accountability measures ourselves. If there’s ever a question about any decision that is made, it can be challenged through internal review, the ombudsman, the AAT or the Federal Court. So we are accountable to the people and the government.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. At the World Economic Forum planning session in Davos, you said, and I quote: We have started something called the Global Online Safety Regulator. Who is ‘we’? Did you receive ministerial permission to involve Australia in another globalist power sink hole? You may laugh, but we are facing a big threat.
Ms Inman Grant: I am an independent statutory authority. The Internet is global. Most of our regulatory targets are based overseas. For more than seven years, we were the only online safety regulator in the world. Now, we use the tools we have and we can be effective, but we know we’re going to go much further when we work together with other like-minded independent statutory authorities around the globe. So with the UK, with Ireland and with Fiji in November 2022, we launched the global online safety regulators network. That has now grown to seven independent regulators, including France, South Korea and South Africa. A number of countries are serving as observers. That is so we can achieve a degree of regulatory coherence for the technology industry and make sure that we’re working together to achieve better safety outcomes for all of our citizens.
Senator ROBERTS: Did you get ministerial approval for that?
Ms Inman Grant: I don’t think it was required. Certainly the minister was aware.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you. This is a further remark you made—this is how it was reported:
We have reached a tipping point where technology is neither good nor bad. We need to be pushing towards the forces of good. That comment seems steeped in hubris. Who decides what the forces of good are? You?
Ms Inman Grant: Well, the Online Safety Act does define thresholds for harm. Certainly our research looks at the benefits and the drawbacks in terms of how people experience technology and whether it helps them to create, to connect, to work and to communicate versus the harms that they experience, whether it’s—
Senator ROBERTS: How do you listen to people?
Ms Inman Grant: How do I listen to people?
Senator ROBERTS: You just said it’s the people who decide.
Ms Inman Grant: I listen to people in many different ways. We have citizen facing complaints schemes. We’re out in forums all the time. We correspond. We also have about two million people who visit our website every year so they can access resources or report forms of online abuse.
Senator ROBERTS: This is my last question, Chair. Thank you for that. You state: Deepfakes are covered under our world leading image-based abuse scheme, which has close to a 90 per cent success rate. How do you measure 90 per cent objectively? This is your statement.
Ms Inman Grant: We look at the number of complaints that we receive. The 90 per cent success rate is because in the vast majority of cases people just want the intimate imagery and videos taken down, mostly through informal means. We measure the 90 per cent based on how many complaints we receive and how many we get down.
Senator ROBERTS: So the images reported and the images removed? Ninety per cent of them would be removed?
Mr Dagg: When we investigate a complaint about image-based abuse, for example, or any of the other harms set out in our complaint schemes, we measure the response to our requests for removal or our formal interventions. We find, as the commissioner said, requests to be far more efficient and produce a faster turnaround, so they constitute the bulk of our interventions. Ninety per cent of those in the case of image-based abuse succeed. That measure of success is whether or not the images are taken down.
Three Bills are being rammed through the Senate to create legislation that will transform the UN-WEF plans for surveillance and control into a dystopian reality in Australia.
The first is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which is designed to permit the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens and normalise it. The second, the Digital Identity Bill 2023, will ensure Australians have no choice but to succumb to setting up a digital ID. The third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023. This is the censorship tool to make sure both the media and social media carries government sanctioned opinions only. The government in power is exempted and free to be the Ministry of Truth, spreading misinformation or disinformation. Remember how well that went during the COVID response?
The Driver’s Licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already being used to establish your identity with a paper check and now with a facial scan.
I implored the Senate to vote against and to reject this Bill. This is the first of three Bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
Transcript
One Nation strongly opposes the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023. Here’s why. The Albanese government’s great mate, Blackrock boss Larry Fink, and predatory billionaires at the World Economic Forum are fond of the phrase ‘you will own nothing and be happy’. What they really mean is that they will own everything and you will comply. Why would people voluntarily enslave themselves, give up their homes, cars and household goods and lose the right to travel freely, I hear you ask. The answer is that people will not be given a choice. They will be coerced—forced into it. That’s the purpose of this government’s triad of tyranny.
First is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023, which will normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Second is the Digital ID Bill 2023, which will force every Australian into having a digital ID. Third is the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions; the government will be exempted and can be free to spread misinformation and disinformation.
Biometric data is your face turned into a data file based on your physical characteristics. It allows for faster and more accurate identification. They will capture your face. The national drivers licence database is being upgraded to become the repository of your master identification record, which is already used to establish your identity with a paper check. Now it will have a facial scan.
Australians do not need to consent in a meaningful manner. The bill currently uses the word ‘consent’ without definition. Consent can be implied. Here’s an example. If a person sees a video of themselves on a self-service check-out at the supermarket and uses the check-out anyway, it’s considered implied consent. The government has accepted that implied consent is no consent at all and has upgraded the reference to ‘consent’ in their amendment on sheet UD100 to ‘explicit consent’. That isn’t good enough either. Explicit consent can be provided as blanket consent. An example would be MasterCard changing their terms and conditions to allow for facial recognition whenever their card is used. Once the card owner gets the email saying, ‘We have updated our terms and conditions. Click here to approve,’ and people click without reading it, one of those new terms could be permission for facial recognition. Did you give consent? No.
Banks currently record the image of anyone using their ATMs and then use that in the case of a fraudulent transaction. Banks will update their terms and conditions to give themselves the right to run your biometric verification on each occasion before allowing access to your account. Refusing the new permission gives your bank or card company the right to refuse service. It’s that simple. It’s blackmail. This is why the government suggesting a digital ID or biometric data check will be voluntary is a complete lie. It’s compulsory, because not agreeing means you lose your bank account or payment card or service—just as those voluntary COVID injections were compulsory if you wanted to keep your job and your house and feed your family.
I foreshadow an amendment in the committee stage on sheet 2327 to change the definition of ‘explicit’ to ‘active’, meaning on each occasion your face is to be scanned they must ask permission before they scan it and make sure they get your permission each time. That’s active consent. This should be supported, because the government already says Australians will have to consent to their biometric data being used—unless, of course, that was misinformation.
This bill does not offer a direct link between the authentication action at a check-out, office, airport et cetera and the master file. A government hub receives a request and pulls the master file, meaning only the government has access to the master file. This seems to look acceptable, yet it means there’s a master file with 17 million records containing name, address, telephone, date of birth, drivers licence number, passport number and a biometric identification file all sitting in the same database. That’s all the information necessary to steal someone’s ID and impersonate them online—a hacker’s paradise.
Robodebt proved that our bureaucrats are incapable of even a simple one-to-one database match, and now they’re being trusted to pull this off. It’s impossible without a high level of compulsion and without completely ignoring victims of software or data-matching errors. If the look-up fails, then your purchase, travel, document, signing or whatever other use fails. If the purchase was for petrol, your family could be stranded late at night. We might as well start the royal commission now.
Downstream from the big government database are what I call intermediaries or entities with participating agreements. There are 20 of these so far. Their role is to take a request for authentication from a bank or card processor, solicitor, real estate agent, airline—anyone needing you to prove you are who you say you are—and submit that to the national drivers licence database hub to run past the master database. In the original bill there were no effective checks and balances on those businesses. The government’s amendment of its own bill has added a few checks and balances to ensure that intermediaries must delete data received as part of the verification process.
Thank you, Minister Gallagher. That, taken together with my amendment to make the level of consent clear, takes some of the potential abuse out of the bill. A clear privacy statement would have helped. The government have promised they will do that later. There are trust issues around that promise.
Questions remain around the New South Wales government’s comment that this bill will allow them to verify that every person detected driving a car past a surveillance camera has a drivers licence.
The only way this can be achieved is if every driver is scanned every time they pass a detection camera and their image is compared to the national database. Does this mean those cameras going up around Australia are just the right height to scan the driver’s face and that the cameras will be used to scan and verify your identity each time you pass one? Yes, it does. Before they work out who you are and whether you have a licence, they have to scan and verify your biometrics. It’s the only explanation for the New South Wales government’s comment.
For those listening to this with incredulity, I remind you that this is exactly the system now in place in London, with Lord Mayor Khan’s ULEZ, Ultra Low Emission Zone, and in Birmingham, Manchester and other cities in Britain. It’s really the World Economic Forum’s 15-minute cities happening right now. Residents are locked into their zone and can only leave a certain number of times a year. This is happening in Britain. That depends on the make and model of the car you drive. If you drive a car they don’t like, you can’t move. Rich people who can afford electric cars can, of course, come and go as they please. Everyday citizens are locked in or, when they leave, the cameras detect them leaving and fine them on the spot. It’s a fine of 180 pounds a week for leaving over seven days.
That’s in Britain now. Already it has raised hundreds of millions of pounds because people will pay for freedom.
Look it up. Don’t just trust me: look it up. There are fines for not registering with the system and fines for breaching the 15-minute limits. It’s a virtual fence. It’s like an electric dog collar. It’s the foundation for a social credit system to completely control people’s lives. So don’t tell me this is a conspiracy theory. It’s real and it’s happening now in our mother country.
Cash is necessary to ensure these measures are ameliorated as much as possible, which is why the globalist wing of the Liberal Party tried to ban cash in the last parliament, which One Nation defeated. It should be obvious that predatory, parasitic billionaires and some of their lackeys in the Labor and Liberal Party are getting their ducks in a row because they want to be ready for the full implementation of their globalist masters’ control agenda, exactly as they promised. It’s not like they’re hiding any of this. When they tell us what they’re going to do, listen.
Remember this government’s triad of tyranny. Already entered into parliament is the Identity Verification Services Bill 2023 to normalise and allow the use of biometric data to locate and track citizens. Here it is. There’s the Digital ID Bill 2023 to force every Australian into having a digital ID. There’s the misinformation and disinformation bill 2023, which will ensure media and social media only carry government sanctioned opinions, and the government is exempted. I implore the Senate to vote against this bill and to reject this bill. This is the first of three bills necessary to turn Australia into the world’s first World Economic Forum digital prison.
