Misinformation madness is America’s worst export ... but Albanese is still buying it

Campaigning against free speech is just the latest. US President Joe Biden and the conscious members of his administration have been crying about terrible freedom for years.

Instead of using new laws to counter dangerous misinformation and disinformation, the Albanese government should try a simpler and much less expensive approach.

It should sack itself. After all, being among the nation’s largest sources of mis and disinfo, Albo and co surely must just up and go.

And it’s not as though the Albanese government doesn’t qualify for self-punishment, given that it swamps our online environment with absolute megalitres of the ol’ mis-n-dis.

Labor does what it condemns. Online platforms, according to the government, “serve as a vehicle for the spread of misleading or false information that is seriously harmful to Australian’s health, safety, security and wellbeing”. (Incidentally, that misplaced possessive apostrophe is as originally published. Albo’s mob wants to control your language, but they don’t even know how to use it.)

Would Anthony Albanese’s promise about power bills be considered “misinformation”? Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Here’s a perfect example of what Labor might describe as misleading or false information. Late in 2021, prior to the following year’s federal election, Anthony Albanese told a press conference that electricity prices under Labor would “fall from the current level by $275 for households by 2025”.

Asked how he thought this was possible, Albanese replied: “I don’t think, I know. I know because we have done the modelling.”

With Play Doh, apparently. The Prime Misinformer has kept to that low standard ever since.

Remember his parliamentary slur against proponents of nuclear energy? “No one loves a reactor like a reactionary,” Albanese told parliament, evidently forgetting that non-reactionary Labor PM Bob Hawke had been a longstanding member of Team Atomic.

Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Monday, September 18, 2023. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch) NO ARCHIVING

“Nuclear power would be a win for the environment,” Hawke declared in 2016. “It would be a win for the global environment and a win for Australia.”

He’s now in the afterlife, but Hawke would still avoid Labor’s misinformation gulag. Not so sure about Albo, though.

Not sure, either, about Albo’s cabinet colleagues, especially those who think they can shoot down pro-nuclear arguments with decades-old Simpsons cartoons of three-eyed fish.

Those cartoons came from the US, which is where Labor and the rest of the Australian left these days obtain all of their bad ideas.

Campaigning against free speech is just the latest. US President Joe Biden and the conscious members of his administration have been crying about terrible freedom for years.

“Another day, another White House ‘disinformation’ task force,” the New York Post reported in 2022.

“The Biden administration on Thursday created a new internet policy task force – this one led by Vice President Kamala Harris – with goals including ‘developing programs and policies’ to protect ‘political figures’ and journalists from ‘disinformation,’ ‘abuse’ and ‘harassment’.”

A quick learner, presidential candidate Harris now protects herself from scary “harassment” by expertly dodging any potentially challenging interviews – all the while doling out as much unchallenged disinformation as possible about her opponent, Donald Trump.

Blinky, three-eyed fish from lake next to nuclear power plant in The Simpsons, has been used in scare campaigns against nuclear energy that would probably be considered misinformation.

The US isn’t bringing its finest to this issue, yet Labor is lapping it up. “We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment,” US baby commie Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ordered in 2021, using the Capitol riots as a springboard.

“You can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.”

Her tone is indistinguishable from that of Michelle Rowland, our Minister for (Restricted) Communications.

“Misinformation and disinformation pose a serious threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy,” Rowland said earlier this month.

“Doing nothing and allowing this problem to fester is not an option.”

Very well.

Let’s look back again at the year 2021 to see how President Joe Biden was going, on the subject of Covid. “If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalised,” Biden misinformed CNN viewers.

“You’re not going to be in the IC unit, and you’re not going to die … you’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”

Vaccinated Biden subsequently caught Covid three times. Happily, he only died from the neck up.

Oddly, pushers of information laws can’t imagine ever being subject to such laws themselves.

They can’t conceive of a world where what is initially perceived as misinformation can quickly become fact, and vice-versa. They can’t picture themselves being vilified as frauds, as they do to others.

And they can’t understand how fantastically laughable it is to have the likes of Albanese and his team deciding to arbitrate our opinions.

Especially when their playbook on this has been handed down from some of America’s most fact-challenged, reality-averse and handcuff-happy benders of truth.