Australia’s left-wing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed he would ban social media if granted the powers of a dictator.
Albanese was responding to a hypothetical question on a Melbourne radio station when he posited what he would like to do if he could run the country for five years while given absolute powers, declaring banning social media “would be handy.”
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) leader outlined his frustration with open opinions being aired online, saying:
Keyboard warriors who can anonymously say anything at all and without any fear; the sort of things they would never say to you face-to-face, they can just assert as fact and it worries me.
What that’s doing, combined with the pressure that is on modern journalists, is to be really be obsessed with the short-term cycle.
Albanese, a member of his party’s socialist hard left faction, qualified his statement by adding he was not “a supporter of dictatorships.”
“It is true in a democracy you have to account for more than your own views, which is what I guess your question is getting at,” he told the host.
Albanese’s administration is currently considering a contentious “misinformation” bill in parliament, stirring concerns about online censorship and the government of the day being granted Orwellian precepts as the sole arbiter of truth.
The sweeping new laws to prevent the spread of “misinformation” could see individuals hauled before a watchdog empowered to issue millions of dollars in punitive fines.
The Daily Mail reports while the laws are targeted at social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, it remains unclear if the proposed legislation would allow the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to also fine the individual creators of podcasts or websites.
Under the draft legislation ACMA will be able to fine “digital platform service providers” millions of dollars for spreading what they deem is “mis”- or “disinformation” that is also considered “harmful” by bureaucrats.
East Asia Summit, November 11th, 2022 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. U.S. President Joe Biden shares a joke with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after bilateral talks. (James Brickwood/Sydney Morning Herald via Getty Images)
Governments at the federal or state level would be exempt from the same considerations under the legislation.
Critics are already saying the proposed bill is a descent into state censorship and a “slippery slope” favoring government to decide how citizens make up their minds, asking who are they to censor what we read or hear?