Ok, it’s not actually true that they’re planning to introduce legislation to do it and a lot of people will be saying that the headline is just clickbait, but I can say that it’s not and that it’s irony and anyway, there was no headline and if you think that there was, well, you’re the sort of person who believes the Labor lies about Scott Morrison talking down electric vehicles…
Morrison has never said any such thing. I know this because our leader has said that he didn’t and if there’s one thing we can count on, it’s Scott Morrison’s word because he’s never told a lie in public office. I know this because – when asked – Morrison said he’d never told a lie and if you can’t trust the word of a man who tells you that they’ve never told a lie, then who can you trust?
After all, Labor are the ones who were going to introduce targets to reduce our emissions which the modelling showed would cost us thousands of dollars each and ensure that we all had to sell our first born child into slavery… which was a real problem for childless people and pensioners.
Pensioners, you may remember, were going to miss out on thousands of dollars already because when Labor removed their franking credits, their share income was going to drop from $250,000 pa to a mere $180,000… That is, the pensioner owned a share parcel of about ten million dollars.
Anyway, Scott won and that’s lucky because without his economic leadership, the country would now be in debt and the budget would be in deficit and Labor would be spending the money combatting climate change instead of allowing “can-do capitalism” to do all the work in return for a billion dollars or so. You see, while Labor would have wasted taxpayer money subsidising people to find solutions to climate change, the Liberals instead give money to the private sector and say, “There you go, this should help you reduce emissions!” And thanks to the Liberals’ much better modelling, cutting emissions will now SAVE us money.
Anyway, “cancel culture” is the actual topic for discussion here and when we talk about cancel culture we’re not talking about when we cancel contracts for submarines or when the government move the gag motion in Parliament because the Opposition is saying things they don’t like. No, it’s when people ask for things to be boycotted or silenced just because a person disagrees with what’s being said. We frequently have certain groups trying to stop people from expressing an opinion just because it happens to contain demonstrably incorrect and dangerous information and this shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
Take Peter Van Onselen. He was allegedly defamed on Twitter… I hope I’m allowed to say allegedly and that he won’t sue because he did tweet that he considers the fact that the person concerned took down the tweet and apologised was clear evidence of wrongdoing… Anyway, he was allegedly defamed and the tweet has been removed, the person has apologised, but this wasn’t enough for Mr Poor Victimised Onselen.
No, the person also added to their crime by deleting their Twitter account which meant that the apology also disappeared. So now, not only can’t people see whatever awful thing that was said, they can’t see an apology about something that most people won’t know about… unless they ask around because the outrage has made them curious. This sent the alleged journalist into a fury, telling Twitter that he would never let this rest and that the mob was trying to silence him…
Now, Mr Van Onselen has a right to run his own life, but personally, if someone were to say something defamatory about me…Let’s say someone suggests that I have a flatulence problem. Personally, I would prefer to ignore it, but if I were moved to obtain an apology and a retraction, I’d certainly consider it counterproductive to constantly remind people that something was said about me – which wasn’t true – and have people wonder what was said or, if they know, wonder about how bad the flatulence problem really is. And I certainly wouldn’t say that I’m never going to stop until… Or actually, to quote PVO, “I’ll never let it rest!” so there is no until.
I’d be happy that I’d received a retraction and an apology and I’d figure that this has cleared the air… Perhaps the wrong phrase to use when talking about an alleged flatulence problem.
But that’s just me.
Although once public figures were also pretty reluctant to use defamation proceedings on the grounds that they might amplify what would others only be heard by a handful of people. And politicians rarely did, partly because of the same reason, and partly because parliamentary privilege meant that it seemed unfair that they could defame people without legal consequence, so it might seem a bit unfair to the average voter. Now, we have the Minister for War (is that defamatory, whoops!) telling us that there should be a fund for politicians to use taxpayer money to sue people saying nasty things like they’re unfit for office. I presume this means that any successful prosecution would be paid back to the taxpayer, given that we stumped up the money in the first place. Although, when I think about it, that would mean that any. newspaper editor, businessperson or lawyer setting up a blind trust to pay for a politician’s legal costs would get the money if they’re defamation case was successful.
Free speech should never be stifled, unless you have a really good lawyer.
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