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The Social Media Ban Illusion

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During this session with the Office of the eSafety, I requested an updated, detailed breakdown of the Commissioner’s overseas trips, including destination countries, separate trip counts and specific cities and dates for travel to the United States – which was taken on notice.

I then turned to the March 2026 compliance update that states that 4.7 million (now 5 million) accounts have been deactivated, pointing out that these likely included bots, orphaned profiles and inactive accounts rather than active users.

Despite repeated questioning, the eSafety officials admitted they do not know how many of those closed accounts belonged to actively engaged Australian children, relying instead on self-reported figures from tech platforms under compulsory notices without verifying if the accounts were dormant.

Citing public reports and industry feedback, including data showing 70% of children aged 10 to 16 are still on social media and criticism from platforms like Meta, I highlighted that the ban is largely failing to stop workarounds and bypasses.

While the Commissioner defended the figures as a useful baseline for harm reduction and pointed to a 37% overall drop in young people holding accounts, I maintain that “stating” millions of deactivated accounts misleads the public when the eSafety office cannot prove how many active under-16 users were actually removed.

— May | Senate Estimates

Transcript

CHAIR: We will keep going with the eSafety Commissioner. Senator Roberts.  

Senator ROBERTS: Moving on to travel, in previous estimates, I asked how many overseas trips the eSafety Commissioner had undertaken and I received reply SQ25-002143. This shows 22 destination countries including Canada, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Japan, United States, Germany, Italy and the list goes on. This answer, though, does not say how many trips to these destinations were made. Please update this reply on notice for recent trips and indicate for all destinations how many separate trips were made to each destination. In the case of the United States, please indicate cities visited and dates. 

Ms Inman Grant: Sure. I’m happy to take that on notice, but I try and hit as many places on one flight as possible.  

Senator ROBERTS: I note your March 2026 compliance update is still talking about the 4.7 million accounts that were deactivated at the time the under-16 ban started. I would suggest these were accounts that tech firms, preparing for the introduction, were shutting down for being mostly bot and orphaned accounts. Since you’re still claiming the win, let me ask: can you tell me how many of those 4.7 million accounts were confirmed as an active account of an Australian child under 16?  

Ms Inman Grant: There have been 300,000 subsequent accounts that have been restricted or deactivated, so a total of five million. If it gives you any comfort, it’s not like I pulled out a piece of scrap paper and wrote down a bunch of numbers.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’m not suggesting that.  

Ms Inman Grant: These numbers are provided by the companies themselves through legally enforceable notices. As I mentioned earlier, we’re sending out subsequent data notices. We are interrogating those numbers to make sure that they accord with what we’re seeing through our various tools. We’ll be asking additional questions. Where our real focus is now—that was really the low-hanging fruit when we deactivated and restricted the known under 16s at that time. What we really need them to focus on is preventing any sort of reregistration or circumvention of the systems that they have in place, and, certainly, we want them over time looking at much stronger sign-up restrictions so that they’re not continuing to attract or trying to attract tweens, in particular, between the ages of eight and 12. One of the platforms said in discovery documents that tweens have a herd mentality. They said, ‘We should try and get them locked in as early as possible, so we have customers for life.’  

Senator ROBERTS: You didn’t answer my question. I asked: how many were active accounts of an Australian child under 16? It tells me that you don’t really know because the numbers were what you were told by the tech platforms.  

Ms Inman Grant: Right. We’re asking—  

Senator ROBERTS: You don’t know?  

Ms Inman Grant: We’re asking some deeper questions about the nature of those accounts. Is there anything you’d like to add, Ms Snell?  

Ms Snell: I think what we can add to that is to say that there were accounts that were registered as being held by an Australian end user under 16. That was the basis on which the platforms took action to restrict access to those. We don’t have a breakdown of how recently those accounts have been used and whether, for example, they were dormant or not. But I think what’s important to understand there is just because an account hadn’t recently been active is not to mean that the owner or user of that account couldn’t start using it again. Part of the intention of this law and all of the regulations that eSafety enforces is it’s a proactive protection. That’s about making sure that kids under 16 don’t start using these harmful services.  

Senator ROBERTS: The point is you do not know how many accounts of under 16-year-old children were shut down. Here’s an article from Tech Guide by Stephen Fenech, ‘After 100 days of the Under 16 social media ban the verdict is in—it’s a massive failure’. The article says, ‘Seventy per cent of Australians aged between 10 and 16 are still on social media platforms.’ It goes on to say: Snapchat reported it had closed down more than 415,000 accounts with its own age detection technology but parents, teens and experts are all saying it is easily and routinely bypassed— we’ve heard that a lot too— A poll on X showed 45 per cent of respondents said their child had found a workaround to the ban with a further 34 per cent saying the ban has had no impact at all. In this sample, eight out of 10 parents says there is no effective enforcement of the social media ban. Then it goes on to say: Meta—the platform that owns Instagram and Facebook—also shared its feed back after 100 days of Australia’s social media ban. “Australia had the opportunity to set a single, accurate standard for age assurance across the whole app ecosystem,” Meta said in a statement. “Instead, the Government chose a patchwork approach that’s inconsistent across services and risks pushing young people towards less regulated, less safe corners of the internet— that’s exactly what we said would happen— “If the goal is genuinely safer, age-appropriate experiences, we believe the best option is to raise the bar across the entire ecosystem and give parents a simple, consistent point of control— that’s exactly what we said before it was applied— “App-store level age assurance is the practical path that Australia missed.” Those are some comments. 

Ms Inman Grant: Sure. There was a lot there but let me say this is a pretty typical playbook I’ve seen many times before. The platform that doesn’t want to be regulated says that the third-party technology that they’re using isn’t efficacious, even though it’s already been tested, and it’s not getting better, so they blame the policy or they blame the regulatory guidance. They then say it should be somebody else’s responsibility to age-gate our platform. We don’t tolerate that in the real world. This would be like a bar or a pub saying, ‘Carding a child at the door is not our responsibility. We should make the brewery or the wholesale manufacturer be responsible for them getting into the bar.’ You own the risky environment. You need to own that space. Where I agree is there are things that we can and should be doing up and down the stack to help give these platforms more signals, and that’s particularly what Apple’s age range API does. Interestingly, some of the companies have taken it up and some have not. I think it’s also interesting to note you mentioned Meta, and I think they put in their blog that they had deactivated about 554,000 accounts. They were asked in court in New Mexico because they told the New Mexican government they couldn’t deactivate accounts for New Mexicans. The court pointed to the fact that in their own blog they said they were able to do this. I take a little bit of that with a grain of salt. The 70 per cent number that you mentioned came from our public compliance report and that’s accurate. Seventy per cent of kids who were on Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube were still on, and, in many cases, they were never even asked to age verify. That is precisely why we’re taking on and looking more closely at those five particular companies because what we have seen, in terms of our data, is the number of young people holding under-16 accounts on social media has decreased by 37 per cent. If you think about any other public health movement over a three-month period, that’s a very impressive reduction, and this is what we’re going for. We’re not just looking at numbers; we’re looking at realistic harm reduction. That goes alongside the reduction of young people on these platforms. That’s a really important measure, not the initial—obviously it’s impressive that those initial accounts were deactivated, but the test for the companies right now, and whether they’re continuing to improve and live up to the reasonable steps, is whether they’re preventing them from re-entering and reregistering their platforms to let them back on.  

Senator ROBERTS: With respect, there were parents quoted, surveys quoted and big tech platforms quoted. I remember all of the Apollo moonshots had a quote that was their guiding theme, and one of them was: ‘In God we trust. All others bring data.’ You are giving me no data. You’ve had three chances. You’ve given me no data that tells me anything about the number of active accounts shut down.  

Ms Inman Grant: How much does it matter to the ultimate goal of the policy which is to keep children off social media accounts?  

Senator ROBERTS: It goes to your statement that 4.7 million accounts were deactivated at the time the ban started.  

Ms Inman Grant: Yes, and we stand behind that to the extent—  

Senator ROBERTS: But they’re not active.  

Ms Inman Grant: Pardon me?  

Senator ROBERTS: They’re not active. You don’t know that. You trusted the tech platforms. You said that you didn’t have the data and you don’t know.  

Ms Snell: Can I just say, on that, that the data we have and the number of accounts the platforms have advised us—whilst you say we trust the platforms, they provided that information to us under compulsory notices. There was a penalty for them if they didn’t respond to those notices; they all did respond. There was also a criminal offence if they provided false or misleading information. At the moment we have no evidence to suggest the information they provided was false or misleading. But we also accept there are still kids on platforms, and we are concerned with the platforms’ compliance. That’s why we have ongoing investigations where we are interrogating the platforms and the steps they are taking to determine whether they are complying with the law.  

Senator ROBERTS: The commissioner told me that the tech platforms have provided the number. There’s no way you can check to see which were active. You don’t know how many active accounts were shut down. 

Mr Fleming: The legislation asks platforms to prohibit under-16s from being on that platform. It doesn’t mention active or inactive users. That’s data that is not necessarily needed for the purposes of compliance.  

Senator ROBERTS: If you’re talking about 4.7 million accounts being deactivated at the time, the public would take that as 4.7 million under-16-year-old children have had their internet accounts deactivated. That’s not what it means at all.  

Ms Inman Grant: It’s important to go back—and we can provide you further information on notice. These numbers weren’t totally plucked out of thin air. We worked with the platforms using our section 20 transparency powers a year prior to this coming into place, to ask them to give us a realistic estimate of how many under-16s they had on their accounts there. We did some of our own youth research, and we triangulated those—it was a multimethod type study. The numbers they provided us are not out of the realm of what we expected, based on that earlier set of research and transparency data. If you look at the regulatory guidance and what we’ve asked the companies to do, the first thing we asked them to do—again, the low-hanging fruit—was, ‘Let’s just start by getting rid of the under-16 accounts you know exist.’ Some of them may have been deactivated, some of them may be live, some of them may have been double. But the important part of taking the reasonable steps is exactly what Mr Fleming said: we’re trying to reduce the number of under-16s that have and hold accounts on social media. That is the measure, and then there is the harms reduction that that affords them by not being exposed to the harmful and deceptive design features on these social media platforms. I don’t want to get caught up on those particular numbers because they give us a baseline, but we’ve moved on in terms of what we’re looking at with respect to compliance and lifting that compliance.  

Senator ROBERTS: It doesn’t matter how many times you say it; the 4.7 million accounts that were deactivated at the time were not all active. We know that. You are trusting the tech platforms you say should not be trusted. You also say the person who owns the risky environment should be the one enforcing it—that’s the parents—and they have the tools. But you’ve bypassed the parents.  

Ms Inman Grant: No, I’m talking about the platform, the online space. Of course parents have an important role, but they’re not targets of compliance. We’re trying to empower them to do what they can to be engaged in young people’s digital lives. From everything we have seen in terms of the increase in visits to our website and the conversations we’re having, and even the letters we’re getting into the office, it indicates that parents have been hyperengaged—which is great.  

Senator ROBERTS: This echoes something I said before the ban came in: “If the goal is genuinely safer, age-appropriate experiences, we believe the best option is to raise the bar across the entire ecosystem and give parents a simple, consistent point of control. “App-store level age assurance is the practical path that Australia missed.” So it’s not all roses.  

Ms Inman Grant: Actually, we put some restrictions on the app stores in the context of our age appropriate design code. To me, that’s passing the buck. You’re the social media site that is building these deceptive and harmful design features to keep young people on there and to track them in the first place, and to monetise them. You have no responsibility for being the bouncer at the door to make sure that young, underage people aren’t getting in. I don’t see how any organisation could shirk that responsibility. There should be shared responsibility up and down the stack, but it shouldn’t be, in my view, primarily on the app stores or the devices. We need more protections on both.  

Senator ROBERTS: Parents are the best. We’ve undermined parents.  

Ms Snell: If I can just add one thing: it’s also important to understand that a number of these services are accessible via the web without the need of having the app. If you had the requirement only on the app stores, young people would still be able to access these services by logging into an account through a web browser—so that would not achieve the result. That’s why it’s important to have it at the level of the service itself.  

Senator ROBERTS: I’m saying: give the parents the responsibility back.  

Senator Green: Parents are the ones that asked us to introduce the laws.  

Senator ROBERTS: Many opposed it. 

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The Terrifying Scope of the eSafety’s Power

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One Nation strongly opposed the Online Safety Management (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 and its draconian amendments – which passed the Senate today.

The social media minimum age framework has fundamentally failed because a nanny state cannot outsmart tech-savvy children using VPNs and other “workarounds”. Instead of protecting kids, it isolates them and pushes them into less supervised spaces like game chat rooms, peer-to-peer apps and Tor.

This Bill increases penalties to nearly $100 million and grants the eSafety Commissioner terrifying, unchecked powers over Australians, including the power to compel people to travel (at their own expense and under threat of prison) to answer questions before her.

Which platform do you think she will demand appears first?

And more importantly, the dangerous abolition of the right against self-incrimination without proper age protections or mandatory legal representation.

The eSafety Commissioner’s office has become a heavily politicised weapon rather than a protector of children. When in government, One Nation will abolish this position, moving staff back into the department of media communications so they can focus on their actual, vital work of removing abuse material, revenge porn and deepfakes.

The legislation relies on vague definitions of “reasonable steps” completely dictated by the commissioner. The government is simply doubling down with massive fines because their initial unworkable ban is failing in the courts.

How much government is too much government? This is too much government and too much control over the people.

Transcript

Officially, the Online Safety Management (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026 amends the Online Safety Act 2021 to strengthen the operation of the social media minimum age framework, the SMMA. The bill expands the eSafety commissar’s information-gathering powers and increases civil penalties for noncompliance to around $100 million—$100 million—depending upon state. In reality, the social media minimum age framework legislation has failed, and now the government is doubling down. 

One Nation does not support the social media minimum age ban, for two reasons. Firstly, what children do online is the responsibility of parents, not the nanny state. Secondly, the technology will never be smarter than a resourceful and tech-savvy child. 

In November 2024, I moved an urgency motion arguing that a blanket ban expropriates parental power. Parents in the home can supervise a child’s device better than a tech company or a Canberra bureaucrat. No country has made age limits work, and the ban would make parents who let children watch educational YouTube content law-breakers. I call for better parental locks from platforms and device makers instead of a nanny state rule. Parental locks from platforms and device makers have been proven to work. 

I quoted the Australian Human Rights Commission warning that a ban would isolate young people. I predicted that the ban would fail because of VPNs, impersonation and other tricks while pushing children onto less supervised spaces, such as game chat rooms, peer-to-peer apps and Tor. This is exactly what’s happened. The ban has failed, and the answer from the eSafety commissar is bigger fines, more power over you and more removal of human rights. A government amendment circulated overnight is draconian and terrifying. The amendment will provide powers for the eSafety commissar to demand that a person travel at the person’s cost to appear before her in person and includes penalties of up to a year in prison for refusing to do so. Which platform do you think will be the first that the eSafety commissar demands to appear? No doubt X, to continue her obsession with Elon Musk. If the commissar thinks she will be demanding that witnesses appear from overseas, I would point out that Julie Inman Grant, the commissar, refused to appear before a US congressional inquiry into her actions last year. One can’t demand a higher degree of accountability than the commissioner was prepared to demonstrate herself.  

The amendment abolishes a basic human right against self-incrimination. While it does say the evidence can’t be used in a court of law against a person, there is a known backdoor entry to this. The amendment does not protect young people, which is ironic, given it sits in a bill supposedly designed to protect young people. The subject of an examination order can be a person of any age. There is no age restriction on that power. There are no protections requiring a minor to be legally represented or have a parent present—none. There is a right to have a lawyer and not the requirement for one. We know how that works in practice. In short, turn up and get done over or go to jail. That’s life in the ‘Soviet Republic of Australia’ under this Albanese Labor government. 

One Nation will oppose the amendment. We will oppose the bill and, when in government, we will abolish the position of the eSafety Commissioner. The role was intended all along to be a political appointment, and the incumbent is proving the truth in that statement. One Nation will not, though, throw the baby out with the bathwater. We will maintain the functions of the office of eSafety and move the staff back into the department of media and communications. The staff are doing very good work taking down abuse material, revenge porn and deepfakes and must be allowed to continue that work. 

Other provisions of the bill include a doubling of fines on social media companies for failure to demonstrate reasonable steps to comply with the ban. The problem with the legislation is and continues to be the definition of ‘reasonable steps’, which is—hang on, there is no definition. The commissar sets the rules in a legislative instrument titled ‘Social media minimum age: regulatory guidance’. Then the commissar enforces them as the commissar sees fit. Reasonable steps is anything the commissar decides it should be. Defy the commissar, and you will cop a fine that’s been increased from $48 million to almost $100 million in this bill. What next? How about $200 million fines? No, $500 million fines. Do I hear a billion? That’s not how legislation is supposed to be drafted, and this is not how government power is supposed to be used. This is power over the people. They should be serving the people. 

The real problem around compliance from social media companies, though, is the inconvenient truth that the eSafety commissar has lost all except one court case her office has started. Perhaps strengthening the legal basis for these fines in the first place would have been more important than simply allowing the commissar to threaten a larger fine. I say ‘threatened’ because no social media company has been fined under legislation relating to age verification—not one. So why increase the fines—the ones that haven’t been used yet? The government continues to pursue a strategy it can never win. Harsher penalties are a typical bureaucratic response to being defied when in fact the defiance is because the ban is not technically feasible. 

Moving on, the bill enables the commissar to compel the production of information or documents from any person. All that’s needed is for the commissar—or the commissioner—to believe on reasonable grounds that the person has information or documents relevant to compliance from a provider of an electronic service that is or may be—notice the opening of the envelope!—an age restricted social media platform. If this looks like unchecked power, it is—unchecked power over not just children and social media platforms but over every Australian, adults included. For example, information from third parties, such as age assurance providers or app store operators, may assist in validating or testing claims platforms made about their compliance with the minimum age obligation. Once again, these powers are not limited by age. An individual who discovers a workaround may be compelled to provide information around how they did that, no matter the age. The committee report recommended the bill pass as written. There were concerns from submitters whether the measures imposed, increased discovery and higher penalties, were necessary and proportionate to enforce the social media minimum age framework, the SMMA ban. the office of the information commissar made a great point that the information-gathering powers in the bill should be extended to their office. This would allow them to determine if the information that age-verification companies are collecting was being dealt with according to Australian privacy legislation. 

The Law Council of Australia criticised the new information-gathering powers under section 63G as being too powerful for the stated outcome, as did Free Speech Union, and X sounded like they were lining up to challenge them in court. Multiple submitters complained about the very high fines, up to slightly over $100 million, depending upon the state. The Australian Human Rights Commission recommended a review after 12 months into the effect of the social media minimum age framework, SMMA ban on children, which is faster than the statutory two-year review. I would recommend that submission to the government. How much government is too much government? This is too much government and too much control over the people. 

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Can Doctors Still Discuss Gender?

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I questioned representatives from AHPRA regarding their heavy-handed and unjustified actions against Dr Amos, an academic psychiatrist from North Queensland.

On 26 February 2026, the Medical Board of Australia slapped immediate restrictions on Dr Amos’s medical registration, banning him from patient contact and social media commentary on gender.

This move was triggered by just four complaints (three were anonymous and none were from patients) concerning three X posts — one questioning whether trans identification can be differentiated from psychosis and another using biological pronouns during an exchange.

When I pressed Mr Untersteiner on what specific parts of those posts allegedly posed a “serious risk to public health and safety” to justify an immediate action order, he hid behind confidentiality provisions and refused to discuss individual cases. Even with support from Senator Henderson challenging their secrecy, the agency repeatedly dodged direct questions.

When I asked Dr Orchard whether a health practitioner has the right to refer to biological sex, or if doing so constitutes discrimination, they hid behind vague codes of conduct and social media guidelines instead of giving a straight answer.

AHPRA claims they only intervene when debate crosses into hate or discrimination, yet they couldn’t provide a clear set of guidelines defining what they actually consider “misinformation.”

I questioned their process of issuing severe penalties before facts are even established or investigations conducted, ultimately destroying doctors’ careers over anonymous complaints and standard public commentary.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS: Could I have Ahpra please? Thank you all for being here. Dr Amos is an academic psychiatrist based in North Queensland. His academic work includes numerous published journal articles and
conference presentations on gender medicine. On 26 February 2026, the Medical Board of Australia placed restrictions on Dr Amos’s medical registration, preventing him from having direct or indirect contact with patients and banning him from posting on social media on the topic of gender. This was in response to four complaints about three X posts. Three of the complaints were anonymous. It’s important to note that there was no patient complaint. He had posted that ‘there is no reliable evidence that trans identification can be differentiated from psychosis.’

ACTING CHAIR: Senator Roberts, given that it is almost 10.30 and we’ve had all of these questions from senator Henderson—

Senator ROBERTS: No, we haven’t had these questions.

ACTING CHAIR: I think you’re going to get a similar response.

Senator ROBERTS: We’ve had this topic but not this question. Another complaint was that, in a post exchange, Dr Amos used biological pronouns and thereby was accused of misgendering a UK trans activist. The
immediate action order used by Ahpra against Dr Amos is meant to be reserved, as I understand it, for when there is a reasonable belief that a health practitioner poses a serious risk to public health and safety. What specific elements of those posts did the board determine posed a serious risk to public health and safety under the socalled national law?

Mr Untersteiner: As the chair has highlighted, I’ve answered this question numerous times. My response will remain. I can’t comment on individual cases, because we have very clear confidentiality provisions.

Senator ROBERTS: Let’s move on then. Does a health practitioner have the right to refer—

ACTING CHAIR: Senator Roberts, just one moment. I hope it is a point of order, Senator Henderson, and not commentary.

Senator HENDERSON: No, of course not. This is just a point of order in relation to advice that I’ve just received through the secretariat. If the information is public, there’s no basis not to answer these questions. We’ve
checked the advice with the chair. So I would just challenge—

ACTING CHAIR: You haven’t checked the advice with the chair.

Senator HENDERSON: Sorry, I meant with the secretary. Apologies. I’m just saying through the chair that I don’t think it’s appropriate that you decline to answer these questions. It’s not consistent with the rules of the
Senate insofar as—

Mr Untersteiner: Sorry, to confirm—

ACTING CHAIR: I think this is an interpretation issue. The information that that you have is not necessarily the stuff that is printed in whatever publication it is that has been quoted. There is a big difference in reporting from wherever you got it and the agencies actually providing you with their detailed private information that is protecting other people’s privacy. But I’m happy for Mr Untersteiner to take that on notice and provide the rationale and the breakdown. Perhaps you, Senator Henderson, could provide the information that you were reading from previously in terms of your—

Senator HENDERSON: I’ve tabled that, Chair. That’s been tabled.

ACTING CHAIR: Right. I still haven’t seen it. Nobody’s given it to me, I’m afraid.

Senator HENDERSON: Please speak to the secretary. Please don’t—

Senator Roberts interjecting—

ACTING CHAIR: I’ll just finish. I believe you’ve been asking the Clerk about a public interest immunity claim, and we can go to that point at that time. But let’s just take it on notice and come back with the rationale and the understanding, and then Senator Henderson and Senator Roberts can go through that and determine what steps they might like to take next.

Senator ROBERTS: I appreciate Senator Henderson interjecting, but the ultimate umpire is the TV camera—the people watching this at home, the Australians. Does a health practitioner, Mr Untersteiner, have the right to refer to a trans person’s biological sex?

Mr Untersteiner: I’m struggling a little bit with that question in regard to our role as the regulator. I don’t know—

Senator ROBERTS: Is it discrimination for a health practitioner to refer to a person’s biological sex? Is it discrimination?

Dr Orchard: I understand your question to be: is there an issue with a practitioner making public reference to someone’s gender or sex?

Senator ROBERTS: To refer to a person’s biological sex.

Dr Orchard: Generally, in respect of public comments by practitioners, you’ve heard earlier the discussion around the right of free speech and the fact that Ahpra and the boards are committed to those ideals, but there are limits to free speech and how people express themselves—

Senator ROBERTS: So a doctor talking about biological sex is going against free speech?

Dr Orchard: What I was going to say is that the codes of conduct and the social media guides that are published by boards set out quite clearly the expectations of practitioners when they are making public comments.
They should make comments that are respectful and that rely on the best available information and so on—

Senator ROBERTS: I think you’re a man.

Dr Orchard: I beg your pardon?

Senator ROBERTS: I think you’re a man.

ACTING CHAIR: Senator Roberts, it’s not appropriate to get personal with the witnesses. Please have some respect.

Senator ROBERTS: How can a doctor fulfil their ethical obligation to inform the public of potential harms of gender interventions and gender ideology without being accused of discrimination against LGBTIQA+ people?

Mr Untersteiner: I’ve answered this question several times. As a regulator, we think health practitioners have a right to have public debate about a range of different issues, which include, again, gender-affirming treatment, gender blockers and other like treatments. We would not be taking regulatory action on that basis. Again, I think I’ve got to be very careful here about selective media and about using that as the basis.

Senator ROBERTS: What specifically would Ahpra consider to be misinformation in a post? If you can’t speak to that now, take it on notice.

Mr Untersteiner: Sure.

Senator ROBERTS: How do Ahpra staff acquire the capacity to know what is true or false information in this highly contested area? How do you know?

Mr Untersteiner: We rely on the existing clinical guidelines, but we also will look at the specific facts of the case, the specific facts of what was said and what context that was said in. Again, I want to be clear here that we will intervene where this goes beyond a debate about clinical pathways and treatments and moves into a place of hate or discrimination against individuals or groups. Again, I see firsthand the harm that discrimination and hate cause the community. I see vulnerable people in all walks of life in this country who fear seeking help because individuals go beyond debating appropriate clinical pathways or advice and move into very clear discrimination.

Senator ROBERTS: Could you give me specifically, please, a set of guidelines of what would be deemed by Ahpra to be misinformation in a post.

Mr Untersteiner: That’s a hypothetical. I don’t think I can answer that question.

ACTING CHAIR: Last question, Senator Roberts.

Senator ROBERTS: You’re breaking careers on it. The Medical Board of Australia’s immediate action orders are implemented before the facts are established and before an investigation occurs. Is it reasonable to destroy a doctor’s career for three social media posts without conducting an investigation—three anonymous complaints, no patient complaints?

ACTING CHAIR: Senator Roberts, you’re working on a limited basis there.

Mr Untersteiner: Again, I’d just say I don’t agree with your characterisation there. There’s a lot more information that won’t be public and isn’t appropriate for me to talk about. I’ve got legal obligations that I must
meet—

Senator ROBERTS: They’re facts.

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Who Are the REAL ‘Free Press’?

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Podcasts and social media have MSM running scared

One Nation were extremely proud to launch their Victorian candidates in front of the Rebel News cameras.

Rebel News, many may remember, aligned themselves with the Freedom Movement in Victoria during the darkest days of the Daniel Andrews’ Labor regime.

While mainstream broadcasters took hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars for Covid vaccine advertising and government assistance during the lockdowns – promoting unquestioned government propaganda, actively distorting truth, and discouraging critical safety questions – Rebel News stood with protesters as rubber bullets, pepper spray, and unforgivably heavy-handed policing intimidated people out of their rights. Their independent cameraman, Rukshan Fernando, provided an eternal record of government abuses of power in an era where many leaders would prefer the whole thing be swept aside and buried.

Transparency?

Not in a world where the state press takes over a billion dollars a year and media empires beg and scrape at the Treasury door for tax dollars while the internet rises up to replace them.

One Nation firmly supports the ‘free press’ as a pillar of democracy.

The question is – which press are actually ‘free’?

You decide…

In my opinion, the news channel that shared viral footage of a pregnant woman being handcuffed, beachgoers surrounded by armed officers, and pensioners being wrestled to the ground over mask violations, was doing its job. For this, they received door-knocks from police and thinly-veiled threats.

When One Nation is asked why it has given priority to independent media over The Guardian, ABC, and others – the reason should be obvious.

We reward those who upheld democracy and passed Australia’s first real test against tyranny since the war years.

Covid is important, because it was during this age of hysteria and sanctimonious propaganda that MSM died.

It wasn’t only a lesson about the need to reform our medical institutions and international oversight – it was a Litmus test on the relationship between the press and Parliament.

One that, MSM failed.

Qualified journalists, who have no excuse, presented obvious failures of logic and false claims from politicians as ‘fact’ – and persecuted anyone who dared to challenge them. Daily, they used their platforms and position of privilege, authority, and trust to encourage a culture of bullying and snitching between friends, family, and colleagues.

Had the press acted responsibly, politicians would not have been able to destroy so many Australian lives and livelihoods.

Instead, they shamelessly took the money.

Media empires coerced and threatened their own staff.

And now they want to re-write the record and pretend they were ‘always sceptical’.

What rot.

What lies.

The same journalists who now refer to me as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ went all-in on the most damaging lies of the Fauci-driven pandemic response. Subsequent hearings and releases from the US have shown how misguided this approach was.

How many people were harmed? We may never know – short of a true Royal Commission.

The scars of that time, however, live on as legislation with sunset clauses and exceptional emergency powers Parliament was never meant to have.

A One Nation government will seek to amend these injustices and return a sense of normality to our nation.

In the meantime, Pauline Hanson has put some of the worst behaved media networks and publications on notice.

Those who abused their position by fabricating outrage and misrepresenting One Nation in the past have been disinvited from high-profile events. And, like toddlers throwing a tantrum, they have stomped around and whinged about how ‘unfair’ it is that they were ‘banned’.

It’s a concern these politicians and competing media networks never extended to Rebel News or other independent conservative journalists who have been locked out of election press tours. Nor did they mind when the government sent orders to Silicon Valley to have their posts removed from social media.

My view is that The Guardian, ABC, and others are not genuinely distraught about the so-called ‘free’ press, rather they’re miffed about no longer holding a privileged position in the information economy.

Australians are not being denied access to One Nation, its policies, or its candidates.

Of all the political parties operating in this country, One Nation was the first to fully embrace social media and engage meaningfully with citizens. The ‘major’ parties rarely do this outside the lead-up to the election where they spend a few short weeks pretending to care about voters and then promptly slam the doors shut on public conversation.

I would argue that the cosy relationship enjoyed between the ‘major’ parties and legacy media networks, form the basis of an undemocratic system.

Why don’t they talk about the shadow bans and unspoken blacklists employed by networks where elected politicians are excluded from public discourse?

Media curates whose voices you hear.

They pick and choose who to exclude based on ratings, clicks, and personal bias.

Worse, for the ‘friendly’ politicians who appear daily, the comfy, pre-scripted questions and lack of proper questioning leaves me asking, why bother inviting them onto the screen? Media may as well print their press releases and move on.

Today’s media landscape looks nothing like the ‘rough and tumble’ debates of last century where politicians were perfectly capable of facing questions about their policies.

While One Nation puts an extraordinary amount of effort into each policy – and remains happy to answer detailed questions or even make adjustments following public feedback – you’re hard-pressed to find more than a few campaign lines embossed on professional (yet ideologically sparse) press releases from the other parties.

Given this, it does not surprise me that during the hysterical meltdown a few weeks ago, where I became the favourite chew toy of editors (who should be a lot more careful with their fact-checking and damaging false accusations), they took particular offence at my appearance on podcasts.

We’re always hearing Labor and the Coalition complain about Australians falling into ‘dangerous echo chambers online’. Ignoring that MSM is itself a dangerous echo chamber – the solution from the major parties appears to be to ban, restrict, or demonetise online discussions.

The whole of modern history tells us this approach is the least likely to change people’s minds or encourage a return to rational thought.

Instead, the lesson of Western Enlightenment has always been to err on the side of more conversation.

To have debates.

To talk to people whose views differ.

To challenge both yourself and others.

To wade into unfamiliar rooms and have difficult discussions.

How else can a politician hope to find out why it is that these voters have come to their views?

And so yes, I have made a point of going on many podcasts. Far more than most of my peers. I speak to everyone – from the largest and most controversial podcasters in America to start-up Australian journalists trying to break into the market. I’ve been on podcasts that host a wide range of topics – everything from forums on energy and its future, discussions about freedom of speech, I speak to medical professionals, I’ve spoken to economic professionals, Constitutional experts, Defence and Veterans podcasts, and conversations about migration. Most Fridays I speak directly to citizens about their concerns and catch people up with what’s going on in Parliament.

My peers on the other side of the blue, green, and red fence can scorn all they like – none of them are changing minds on their Insiders love-in.

The childish response to my record of sharing public discourse reveals how threatened media and politicians are by the simple act of talking outside the Canberra Bubble. Or should we say, safe space?

Last week, my critics were thoroughly embarrassed.

The ABC callously and wrongly ridiculed a discussion I had regarding the possibility that Covid vaccines could have an impact on miscarriages calling it a ‘debunked conspiracy theory’.

Referring to these as ‘unreported’ (meaning the ABC weren’t paying attention) livestream conversations with ‘anti-vax mandate activists’.

Well, yes, we still take the position that mandated Covid vaccination, on threat of job loss and lock-outs, was morally wrong and reprehensible. This is a mainstream view in hindsight, we might remind the ABC… The article continued to promote ‘anti-vaccine mandate’ as if it were a bad thing.

This was during the early days where the exact numbers and data were not known. It was a conversation about whether a risk to pregnant women existed at a time when women were being denied proper risk assessment. These women were contacting our office. They felt as if they were being lied to by authorities.

Well, we were right to ask questions. We were right to have discussions. And we were right to raise the alarm on possible harm to pregnant women.

Dr Anthony Fauci’s 2021 texts, revealed by Donald Trump’s executive order, show there was a discussion about ‘weigh[ing] the potential risks and benefits’ regarding pregnant women taking Covid vaccines.

Two vaccines in the US, Pfizer and Moderna, had been granted emergency use while data was still being collected on pregnant women – in other words, they didn’t know the risk profile.

These texts reveal that Fauci was aware of ‘fevers’ and ‘cytokine storms’ occurring in patients after the second dose which ‘theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester’. To which other experts replied, ‘Good point.’

The Health and Human Services Department in the US no longer recommends these vaccines for pregnant women or healthy children.

Our position has always been transparency. This means freedom for doctors and medical professionals to voice their concern without fear of losing their jobs – and freedom for Australians to have access to honest medical information, not ‘risk-assessments’ decided in the dark by foreign bodies and boards that we did not elect.

It is the ABC who failed and it is the ABC who should apologise for that failure to the Australian people.

Politicians such as myself were elected to have these conversations when others cannot, because we have additional protection. It’s shocking that Australia has reached a point where seeking data and questioning ‘authority’ has become an excuse for the ‘trusted’ media to whip themselves into a frenzy.

Perhaps if they asked more questions, they wouldn’t need taxpayer dollars or legislative assistance to survive.

Who are the REAL ‘free press’? by Senator Malcolm Roberts

Podcasts and social media have MSM running scared

Read on Substack

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