Five signs we’ve reached peak stupid in Australia

Has this country ever been crippled by so many destructive myths? And when you try to correct them you’re labelled a ‘denier/racist/transphobe/granny-killer’.

Australia seems at peak Big Stupid. Has this country ever been crippled by so many destructive myths?

Here are my top five.

• First is the myth still pushed by the Albanese government that nuclear power is so dangerous it must be banned. That’s largely based on two old and fake claims – that there’s no safe level of radiation, and tens of thousands of people died in nuclear disasters at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima.

In fact, the Chernobyl accident in 1986 in a badly designed Soviet Union reactor caused fewer than 50 known deaths from radiation. The other two accidents caused none.

The claim that thousands of people died in the Chernobyl accident is false.

• Second Big Stupid myth: we face a “climate crisis” that’s an “existential threat to human civilisation”. But what “crisis”? We’ve set recent records for grain harvests. We’re getting fewer cyclones. Our big city dams have way more water than usual. Worldwide data shows a lower risk than ever of dying from a climate-related disaster.

• Third Big Stupid myth: the “stolen generations”. Such harm has been caused by this claim, pushed by the Australian Human Rights Commission, that we “stole” up to 100,000 children from their parents just because they were Aboriginal.

In fact, our courts have not found even one such case. No activist has met my challenge two decades ago to “name 10” – even 10 children stolen by racist officials in the past century just because they were Aboriginal, rather than taken because they were abused, neglected or abandoned, or sent by their parents for an education.

No activist has named 10 children stolen by racist officials in the past century just because they were Aboriginal. Picture: AAP

• Fourth Big Stupid: that many children are “born in the wrong body” and curing them means giving them puberty blockers until they are old enough to have surgery to “change” their gender.

In fact, even Britain (but not yet Australia) this month banned its National Health Service from giving children puberty blockers after a damning report found there was little evidence of how they worked or what good they did. Instead, there’s evidence that many children claiming to be in the wrong body have other mental issues, especially autism, and many are from homes broken by divorce or a parent’s death.

I could go on.

• How about the devastating myth that Covid-19 could spread even outdoors and that we needed lockdowns to stop it?

These myths have one thing in common. The response to those trying to correct them was: shut up. You’re a denier/racist/transphobe/granny-killer. Proof that censorship is a sign of Big Stupid.

Originally published as Five signs we’ve reached peak stupid in Australia