Daniel Wild:
Well, if you haven’t heard about it yet, don’t worry, you will soon. It’s the government’s latest attack on the freedom of speech of Australians online. They call it the Digital Duty of Care. They say it’s about keeping kids safe online, but this is nothing less than a brazen power play to shut down online discourse and criticism of the government by handing a single minister sweeping powers to control the internet. Anika Wells, the minister for communications. Now, you might remember her from how the Ooshies explained house prices or taxpayer-funded corporate box parties.
She’s the one that would be given the power to decide what constitutes a, quote, unquote, serious harm and to censor online speech accordingly. Ultimately, there would be nothing stopping the minister from saying a serious harm is something that she doesn’t agree with or just doesn’t like. It’s right there in black and white under section 25C under the draught legislation. “The minister may, by legislative instrument, determine material or conduct or a combination of material and conduct that the minister is satisfied may cause serious harm.”
So Anika Wells just has to be satisfied that something on the internet may cause serious harm. Make no mistake, this is a direct assault on the rights that you have to express your opinion online and to hear the opinion of others. Now, what about the timing of this? Well, it is not a coincidence. No one trusts the government. It’s down in the polls. Two-thirds of Australians say the country is going down and not up, and One Nation just poll axed Labour in a critical by-election in Western Australia. The prime minister reckons Labour lost that by-election because of the algorithms, because of misinformation online.
So he’s going to replace the algorithm with the albo-rithm. The Duty of Care is not just about social media, and it’s not just about the kids, you see. It applies across all internet services. Social media platforms and other online services, well, it’s all built on an algorithm of some kind. The choice is who gets to select the settings, you or the government. Now, this is just the latest attempt to shut down free speech by this government.
Attempt number one were the misinformation and disinformation laws from a couple of years ago, where the government tried to turn Australia into a UK-style police state by setting up a digital Ministry of Truth, which would decide what is true and what is not, and censor accordingly. Now, these laws were so toxic that the government did not even bring them to the floor of the Senate because they would have been defeated.
Then there was round two, the hate speech laws, which would have turned Australia again into a UK-style police state. But these were ditched due to pushback from the community, though the damaging hate group laws were passed. And now we have attempt number three, the Digital Duty of Care. These proposed laws, like previous attempts, will be defeated once Australians understand the truth. This isn’t about keeping kids safe online. It’s all about keeping albos safe in the lodge through censoring criticism of his government.
Danica De Giorgio:
And don’t forget, it started when the net nanny, Julie Inman-Grant, censored the internet after an alleged terror attack on a Sydney bishop. Then it was blocking social media for under-16s and now this. This is dangerous.
This transcript with Daniel Wild talking on Opinionated – News24 from 11 September 2026 has been edited for clarity.
