During the May/June Senate Estimates hearings, I asked the Department of Health and Aged Care to clarify their role with the Department of Home Affairs in censoring social media posts.
Home Affairs had indicated that it relied upon the Department of Health to identify social media posts that ‘contravened Facebook/Meta’s guidelines’. This of course is just more dodging of responsibility as the agency trampling the fundamental rights of speech. Although it’s government doing the censoring, they give the social media corporations the button to push.
It turns out that when Home Affairs wanted to censor or provide information to social media platforms where posts breached the platform’s own guidelines during the COVID response, they relied upon the Department of Health to identify whether or not there was a breach. The Department of Health rarely identified posts and merely provided the information that the government decreed to be ‘correct’.
Transcript
Senator Roberts: Yes. Professor Murphy, could you please clarify your department’s relationship with the Department of Home Affairs, because Home Affairs seem to think that they relied upon the Department of Health for identifying social media posts that contravened Meta’s guidelines.
Prof. Murphy: Ms Balmanno can go over that again.
Ms Balmanno: As evidence became available in terms of the nature of the virus and the nature of treatments, vaccines and all of those sorts of things and how it was being transmitted, obviously there was a growing evidence base there, and it was our job to collate that and to point to the source information, whether that be the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, whether that be the World Health Organization or whatever it might be. We would collate that information for the Department of Home Affairs. That would be what they were able to the then assess posts against. But ultimately the assessment is against the social media platform’s own policies about what is appropriate and not appropriate to be put onto their platforms. They each have a published policy, so they would use our evidence base to inform that decision and assess against those policies. Where they felt there was a breach and a post or an account was putting forward information that was not consistent with those policies, they would refer that to the social media company to look at.
Senator Roberts: Let me clarify, then, to make sure I’ve got the understanding. Home Affairs wanted to censor or provide information to social media platforms where a post breached a social media platform’s own guidelines, and they relied upon you to identify whether there was a breach.
Ms Balmanno: We were part of informing that, in that—
Senator Roberts: Who else was part?
Ms Balmanno: My point is the elements that we were able to contribute to were whether if, for example, they were making a referral specifically because they thought the information was false and was disinformation being deliberately promulgated to cause harm, they would use the evidence sources that we had collated for them to make that assessment and say, ‘According to all of this published research or according to the views of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee and the position in Australia, here is the evidence we are pointing to to suggest that this post is incorrect.’ So we would help provide that evidence. That was our role.
Senator Roberts: So you didn’t identify posts; you just provided evidence when Home Affairs asked for the evidence?
Mr Blackwood: Yes, we were proactive in providing it if there were something not covered—
Senator Roberts: So you sometimes did identify posts?
Ms Balmanno: We were proactive in providing evidence as new evidence came to light and adding to the evidence base. If there were an issue they come across that they thought was incorrect—for example, the idea that 5G was causing COVID was one of the early ones that we did a lot of referrals in relation to—and if we didn’t already have that in the evidence base, they would obviously check that with us in terms of an evidence assessment, and that would be added to it.
Senator Roberts: So it was a hybrid role, then. Sometimes you identifies posts—
Ms Balmanno: We very rarely identified posts.
Senator Roberts: But sometimes you did.
Ms Balmanno: We probably have a handful of examples where we identified posts, and I have agreed to take that on notice.
Senator Roberts: Thank you.
It makes me feel safe to know that you, Senator Roberts, and other great Senators are there actually working for the people
Ms. Balmanno should provide a detailed report to Government of the “new Evidence” proactively provided during the “pandemic” by the Health Department to “aid ” in Social Media censorship decision making. Scientific papers and evidence sources included. An “off the cuff” remark about 5G does not sound like a scientific argument to me. Let the public have a full accounting of what advice was given, when, and to whom, and the scientific basis of that advice (papers, research etc.) Surely, avoiding accountability, is not the only field they are expert in.
Since when did it become the prerogative of a government agency to police social media posts? It’s not like this is a matter of national security and D notices have been issued to prevent publication. A free society permits (if not encourages) debate on issues. I don’t need or want some public servant to tell me what is valid information and what is misinformation. I have been old enough to make up my own mind on such matters for very many years. Government departments need to keep their grubby little noses out of our lives.
I think the average person with busy personal lives & family don’t have time to dig down & see what’s really going on. They have been trained to get the “facts” from the TV in the corner of most homes.and trust those in charge of our country. Then when someone starts to reveal the truth, they can’t possibly handle it, because it up disrupts their little world. However the politicians whose job it is know the facts are very aware of what’s hapenning, have no excuse & obvious that they are not working for Australia, but the global agenda & see personal promotion on a grand scale for selling out their fellow countrymen/women. I now understand the French Revolution completely, when the leadership are mesmorised by shiny objects & forgot how they got there! Most will be for the chop…..
More than once the Health Department used the words “no scientific evidence”, even though it knew (or could easily have found out) that it wasn’t as black and white as that.
It, as far as know, did nothing to stimulate medical research aimed at repurposing existing drugs for covid. Ivermectin was only given a human trial by one group here, plitidepsin, Nigella sativa and cepharanthine were never tried here.
In the supposedly definitive trial of ivermectin by Mills, Reis et al, the relative risk was 90%. So that means 10% of patients might have benefited – even that at the time before any other covid antivirals would have relived pressure on the health system. Used with other drugs, as in Tlaxcala, the results for ivermectin were even better. In the case of one of the two oral antivirals which ended up in use later, the RR was 100% in one trial and 50% in the other, so the powers that be settled on 70%, ie. 30% of patients might benefit.
Their actions show that they weren’t really wanting the best solution for the population, so what were they after? They wanted to promote something that has been cooked up for a very long time. a new way to control the population & blame it on a fake health problem