FREE SPEECH ATTACKED: but the NSW Council for Civil Liberties is asleep at the wheel

The most powerful civil rights defender in Australia is ignoring its core function. Why?

This week, the Federal Government has tabled a new version of the infamous censorship bill, the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023.

To be clear, this Bill was the worst attack on free speech in living memory, as detailed here.

It sets up Australia’s media regulator as the arbiter of truth and delegates internet censorship to all social media firms including Rumble, Substack, Twitch, X, FaceBook and TikTok under threat of fines of up to 5 percent of global revenue.

It cluttered the lexicon with bogus new nomenclature. Instead of “wrong” it’s misinformation. Instead of “lies” we have disinformation. “Inconvenient truths” became malinformation. All of this to deceive the public into accepting censorship.

The new version is just as bad as the old one, with a few token concessions.

In a scathing international critique, US journalist Glenn Greenwald said on Friday that the primary realisation of the Enlightenment, on which all of Western Civilisation is based, is that no human being or government can be trusted with the power to decide what is true and what is not.

“We cannot trust centralised institutions like monarchs or churches or aristocrats or dictators to determine for us what is true and what is false, and then to ban everything on the grounds that they consider it false,” he said on his Rumble channel, System Update.

Glenn Greenwald: the state wants to control what you think. Image: Rumble, System Update #332

“The whole point of the Enlightenment is that we’re endowed with faculties of reason, and free speech is vital so that we can examine those dogmas of those institutions and decide for ourselves what we think is true or false.”

“They want to create a world, especially using the internet, where the only kind of information that is permitted to be read or heard is information of which they approve.”

To have your say on the new Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, check out the landing page here and follow the instructions to upload your submission. Deadline is 30 September.

For a thorough analysis of the new Bill, read top Australian journalists Andrew Lowenthal here and Rebekah Barnett’s piece below.

Strengthened protections for free speech in Australian Government's revised misinformation bill, but fundamental flaws remain

The primary and most influential group that you might expect to oppose this in Australia would be the NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL).

As of time of writing, the NSWCCL had not made any announcement about the revised Bill, but said via email that they were considering a media statement possibly next week.

How could this be?

Their website says they fight against the infringement of civil rights such as free speech.

They are our free speech champions. You might have expected the Council to reject this obvious rubbish for the fraud it is months ago - but they have not.

There’s something wrong at the NSW Council for Civil Liberties.

They made a weak submission in response to the previous Bill that did not oppose any of its self-serving and bogus premises - and suggested expanding it.

“The NSW CCL acknowledges the harms caused by misinformation and disinformation…” they wrote in a horrible surrender.

The Council briefly noted it was “concerned” the Bill didn’t “sufficiently consider freedom of expression” - but then said it wanted to expand it to private messaging services.

“Private messaging services are known vectors of disinformation and misinformation and it is important mechanisms are in place to minimise harm (with appropriate regard to privacy concerns),” they wrote.

The Council wanted “connective media” like WhatsApp included because broadcast groups of thousands of members are “similar to a public square”.

We can’t have an uncontrolled public square where people might think for themselves. The NSWCCL suggested fixing that with a restriction on forwarding messages.

They also suggested the government add fact-checkers, alerts and education campaigns because: “Combating misinformation and disinformation will require more than a reporting mechanism.”

OK, deputy hall monitor.

To be clear, this controversial Bill will end free speech on the internet if it is passed.

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties during covid

The Council is a powerful non-governmental organisation, full of lawyers who review governmental regulation, making expert submissions and media statements that are listened to by policy-makers and power brokers.

Their website says bodily integrity is one of the civil rights they fight to uphold.

But they didn’t do this during covid. The exact people who should have defended the right to say no to a coerced government injection instead campaigned against bodily autonomy. They parroted state propaganda against “anti-vaxxers” and worse, they are continuing to do this in 2024.

They appear to have replaced civil rights principles with causes they like. Take a look at what’s been going on.

Letters From Australia put the following concerns to the Council for right of reply, but they responded they did not need one.

“We do not accept the premise of most of what you have said and/or implied,” a spokesperson said via email.

Bodily Integrity

The Council supported vaccine passports under past president Pauline Wright, who said in September 2021 that vaccine discrimination was “perfectly reasonable”.

She backed workplace mandates in August 2021. Coercing workers to inject medication was a “right to life”, she argued.

The covid death rate was only ever 0.07 percent for under-70s unvaccinated, comparable to a bad flu year.

This was known as early as 2020, in research published by the World Health Organisation, so it can’t be claimed “we couldn’t have known”.

It seems so silly now we’ve almost all had covid twice.

But instead of trying to review where it went so wrong and fix it so we don’t do this again, the Council wants the consequences of being covid wrong to just go away.

Here they are in January, repeating their support for coerced injections as they attack Senator Malcolm Roberts’ proposal for a Covid Royal Commission. Note their use of the censorship term “misinformation” as they slander his efforts to hold the government to account.

“The NSW Council for Civil Liberties strongly disagrees with his approach, particularly regarding the dissemination of misinformation concerning COVID-19 vaccine adverse effects and his personal stance against vaccination mandates … The promotion of misinformation, especially on issues of public health, poses a direct threat to the well-being of our communities. Senator Roberts' platforming of unverified information about COVID-19 vaccines and his anti-vaccination stance may contribute to a climate of fear and hesitancy, potentially leading to adverse consequences for public health.”

In response, Senator Malcolm Roberts accused the Council of abandoning civil liberties, which to be fair, they did.

Senator Roberts was one of a handful of senators who listened to the dissenting medical professionals who turned out to be correct.

Medical censorship and political expression

Medicine is not an absolute science like maths or physics. Ideas about treatments change over time, and this was especially true for covid which was a novel pathogen. Nobody knew how to treat it at first, so the idea that there would be one correct approach endorsed by the WHO or the government and that all others should be censored as “misinformation” (which means “being wrong”) is ridiculous. For the same reason there was no justification to demonise criticism of the novel mRNA gene-vaccines as “antivax”. Medical free speech is vital to health - ever heard of a second opinion?

The NSWCCL backed the medical repression. They did not speak out against it.

Scientists who warned the mRNA products were not safe had their educated opinions demonised as “misinformation” and were eliminated from the public discourse during covid. The Government told Facebook and Twitter to remove jab-injured voices so the public could not see, hiding the problems so people would keep injecting.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulatory Agency (AHPRA) and the Medical Board of Australia issued a joint directive in March 2021, threatening health workers who voiced concerns about the vaccine including on social media with regulatory action.

They suspended the licenses of respected doctors who recommended early treatment and they then had to spend years in court.

So when doctors were persecuted for criticising the covid gene-vaccines on social media, the NSWCCL approved. They considered that “misinformation”.

But when Antoinette Lattouf was sacked by the ABC for making a social media post about Gaza (after being warned this would be problematic) during the five days she worked for them as a casual, NSWCCL gave her an award - presented by President Lydia Shelly wearing a dress decked in Palestinian keffiyehs.

NSWCCL President Lydia Shelly makes a political statement by wearing a keffiyeh dress at their awards night, 22 August 2024. Pics: Bevege

This seems like selective support of free speech for favoured causes.

In February 2023 I asked the Council for comment on the medical board silencing of health worker dissent over gene-vaccine mandates. They weren’t interested.

It wasn’t just that AHPRA and the Medical Boards threatened disciplinary action for vaccine dissent on social media. It became election interference.

During the 2022 federal election, the Australian Dentists’ Association (ADA) told Sydney dentist Natalie Dumer her license would not be renewed if she stood as a candidate for Clive Palmer’s UAP because they were “anti-vax” (full story here).

The ADA dropped the threat, but only after politician Craig Kelly (then-UAP) wrote to them, reminding them election interference is punishable by prison.

Free association and the right to protest

Instead of supporting the right to protest equally, for everyone, the Council condemned covid protesters while supporting union protests, climate protests and Hamas supporters.

The Council made a tentative effort to defend the right to protest in 2021, making sure to emphasise it must be exercised “very carefully”.

“NSW CCL in no way condones violent or irresponsible protest that may expose others to a heightened risk of contracting COVID,” the Council said.

But the Council was openly disapproving of ordinary citizens protesting jab mandates and lockdowns.

Compare that with the energy with which the Council supports free speech rights for causes it likes: Hamas supporters and the Greens climate lobby.

Here they are in November last year, staunchly defending protest rights, with a petition and a declaration by the Human Rights Law Centre, signed mostly by left-wing, Islamic and climate groups. It is illustrated by pictures of the school climate strike and invasion day - not the ordinary people who protested against lockdowns and coerced injections.

“The right to protest needs to be protected, even if protests are considered disruptive, controversial or inconvenient,” wrote Council President Lydia Shelly in November, at the height of the pro-Hamas protests.

No warning about “irresponsible protests” here. Where was this free-speech defence in 2021 when we needed it for our own country?

Hate speech is not free speech - unless its Hamas

Hate speech is free speech because views you like are in no need of protection, hate is a subjective emotion, and it is better to know openly what the idiots are saying privately.

One might, therefore, have been heartened to hear Lydia Shelly supporting free speech over hate speech in November.

That was when the NSW Government threatened a crackdown after Hamas supporters chanted “Where’s the Jews”, fired flares at the Opera House and burned Israeli flags two days after the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, murdered about 1200 Israelis in a surprise attack, deliberately starting the Gaza war.

At the weekly protests that followed, attended by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi and MP Jenny Leong, the crowd chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which means Hamas wins and Israel is wiped off the map.

That’s quite hateful for Israelis, but their free speech was protected, as it should be. But where was this backbone during covid?

The nuances of conflicting opinions according to who benefits can be confusing.

Here is Lydia Shelly, days after defending free speech for Hamas supporters, saying provisions to stop the “vilification” of religion should be expanded to other groups.

“Again, people of faith deserve to be protected from vilification, but … these amendments fundamentally do not ensure that everybody is protected from harm and vilification,” she said.

So - more needs to be done? Whatever happened to the solid position that nobody has a right not to be offended? Silly ideas should be mocked. Religion is not an immutable characteristic that you can’t change like skin colour, it’s a set of ideas and people can change their minds.

So is the NSWCCL keeping two sets of books? The “free speech” defence seems to surface robustly only for favoured causes like the Hamas war on Israel.

Otherwise it favours previous NSWCCL president Josh Pallas’ position that “hate speech is not free speech”.

If you are a nationalist, or want to pause mass migration, then I’ve got bad news for you: the NSWCCL is calling you a dangerous “far-right extremist” - especially if you happen to have white skin.

In a submission to the recent Senate Committee inquiry into Right Wing Extremist Movements in Australia, the NSWCCL says its definition of “right wing extremism” now includes populism, political conservatism and “xenophobia”.

Authoritarian and intolerant religious conservatism, for example by violent Islamist jihadis, is not “right wing”. Unless it’s Christians at Wieambilla who happen to be white - and then it is.

“Adoption of extremist right wing ideology, in particular, is more susceptible among young people who identify as being from an ‘Anglo-Saxon or European ‘white’ background,” they write in a faintly racist submission.

It calls criticism of Muslim assimilation in Western societies “violent right wing rhetoric”.

No, violence is violence. Rhetoric is speech. Conflating the two is done to justify suppressing speech by pretending it is violence.

“There have been many incidents of right wing terrorist attacks which have caused large death tolls in Western countries,” the Council said, inflating the far-right bogeyman, before concluding: “The spread of violent right wing extremist ideology poses a major threat to the safety of citizens.”

Just like covid, they are wrong. There have been very few deadly “right wing” attacks compared with Islamist jihadi attacks. That is exactly why only three of 30 proscribed terrorist groups in Australia are “far right”, while 26 are jihadi groups and the odd one out is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

This is not because the government is unfair to Islam: it’s because that is where the threat is. All three “right wing” groups proscribed in Australia are from overseas (US/UK) with no evidence of many (if any?) supporters here. I had never even heard of them.

You can see the threat differential by the sheer number of jihadi attacks logged on the TROP worldwide list compiled from mainstream news reports. You can search by year under the “terror attacks” banner. The victims are mostly impoverished non-Muslims living in nations dominated by Islam.

What has happened here

I am not sure when the rot crept in.

In 2013 I was so impressed by former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nick Cowdery QC, long-term NSWCCL committee member, when he acted as counsel assisting the Biak Massacre Citizens Tribunal.

He helped the people of West Papua be formally heard. I thought the NSWCCL must be made of giants.

But last month I went to the NSWCCL gala dinner to find a room full of Greens staffers, union lawyers and Young Labor who didn’t seem to know what civil rights were.

The headline speaker droned on about domestic violence for 20 minutes. That’s a worthy cause but it’s not really civil liberties.

At a time when Australia is about to shut down free speech, the NSWCCL was unconcerned.

The NSWCCL awards night August 22, 2024. Civil liberties not in sight. Pic: Bevege

The only speaker who mentioned the failure of corporate media to hold the government to account and the fact that independent journos have had to try from the sidelines, often pro-bono, was comedian Wendy Harmer. Thank you, Wendy, for at least noticing the problem.

On my table was a union lawyer for nurses. The nurses and midwives were sacked if they didn’t get a covid gene-jab and the unions didn’t help. I asked if he had done much work to defend them.

“No, not really,” he said, uninterested.

I asked him what civil liberties he felt most strongly about, given we were at a civil liberties event.

“Oh, all of them in general.”

“Is there a specific area?” I pushed - but I made no headway.

Greens MP Jenny Leong was holding court in the centre of the room.

The Member for Newtown is the elected representative who wouldn’t meet Sophie, the nurse and single mum reduced to poverty, who survived on foodbank after she lost her job for refusing the covid jab in 2022 (full story here).

Sophie and I tried to get Ms Leong to listen to her story back then. We thought she might help.

Instead, Sophie got an email saying:

“The Greens have expressed our public support for the mandatory Covid-19 vaccination for healthcare workers. Healthcare affects everyone, and we believe it to be imperative that we do all we can to ensure that our communities and those most vulnerable are kept safe.”

Everyone knew the covid jabs did not reduce transmission and so could not keep other people safe, so Sophie was sacked for nothing.

I brought this up at the NSWCCL dinner. I took a selfie with Ms Leong and asked if she would meet Sophie, after we had earlier tried unsuccessfully.

She smiled like Marie Antoinette tossing a cake crumb.

“Tell her to send an email to my office.”

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UPDATE: 15 September — the Free Speech Union, a new Australian branch of an international organisation dedicated to saving Free Speech is now doing the job that the NSWCCL is failing to do. If you want to save the country from becoming Orwell’s worst nightmare, join this group here

Also: fixed a couple of typos.

23 September - added a paragraph + link to the landing page for you to oppose the censorship bill, and deleted a redundant paragraph. 24 September - updated the link to the new legislation (old link broken).