CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact
The Albanese government’s revamped bill to tackle online misinformation and disinformation has been criticised as a “complete mess” and “as dangerous as 1984” in thousands of Liberal Party press releases that have been published verbatim on all of the major mastheads.
Australia’s struggling commercial news publishers, the vast majority who are now openly backing Peter Dutton, are faced with an existential crisis.
Do they provide balanced coverage for a bill that aims to crack down on the online platforms that have eroded the media landscape with complete bullshit being presented as real news?
Or do they go down the nihilistic path of platforming every conspiracy that the Liberal Party spews out of their arse because they’d rather the rest of Australia goes down with them in this swirling vortex of parasocial schizophrenia?
It’s a tough one. The 2023 referendum that divided the nation into hardworking Aussies and communists Aboriginal elites was so good for clicks. But the right-wing’s ability to ‘flood the zone’ with complete misinformation is also killing their business model.
It is not known yet whether the Australian media turn will this thing into another partisan assault on the Government, like they just failed to do with Qantas Flight Upgrades saga – or if they will actually let politicians debate bills in Parliament without legitimising the cookers who are still fucked in the brain from the pandemic.
What is clear is that the Liberals think opposing this bill, months after wholeheartedly supporting it, is another chance to take some bark off the Prime Minister.
Peter Dutton’s initial support of this bill received backlash from his own base of brain-rot Liberal Party branch members, whose occasional exposure to Sky News is the closest thing they’ll ever get to balanced media consumption.
But with nothing else in the toolbelt except for a trillion dollar nuclear power plan that terrifies both conspiracists and mentally well people alike, it seems they have no option but to hope they can degrade public debate surrounding misinformation to the point where Australians decide they are sick of hearing about it.
“Whether this is actually good for Australia doesn’t really matter” says one Liberal Party insider.
“We might be able to snatch a few seats in the Blue Mountians and Northern Rivers if we play this pro-misinformation campaign right.”
“Those hillbillies really are concerned about fluoride and 5G aren’t they. Haha”
