November 5, 2026
Two years ago, the people of Australia rose up to defeat sweeping censorship legislation. It was a momentous victory for free speech everywhere and a terrible defeat for the Albanese government. Today, the Albanese government has proposed an even more extreme regime, arguably the most radical censorship bill ever proposed in the West. It would give the government, including their “eSafety Commissioner,” an American who says she was recruited to work for the CIA, the power to run AI bot networks/sock puppets, apparently to secretly influence & manipulate online debates.
Although a small country, Australia is among the global Censorship Industrial Complex (CIC). The CIC’s strategy is to essentially encircle the United States: get Western countries to demand similar forms of aligned censorship, force social media companies to adopt that high-censorship standard, and then apply it to the United States and beyond.
In mid-October, I returned to Australia with the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) to raise the alarm and to understand why in the world anyone would want the government to be able to silence practically any citizen online.
I delivered my full warning to the West at CPAC Australia and did a media blitz, including an op-ed in The Australian that ran right below the masthead. I also met with senators, the former prime minister, and the potential future prime minister directly.
At Parliament, I met with two staffers from the governing party. They admitted that they did not know that the bill would allow the government to create and operate an unlimited number of fake social media accounts to attack its political enemies and spread disinformation. Having presented them with information they had never heard about a bill they had clearly not read, they emphasized to us, strenuously, that they were moving forward with the bill.
I recorded a straight-to-camera iPhone video about the meeting. It went viral on social media and was broadcast by mainstream media.
The government’s story keeps shifting. Officials say they want a bot army of fake accounts for “research” when the bill clearly intends for them to be used in partisan warfare against fooled citizens.
At the National Press Club, Minister of Communications Anika Wells repeatedly and brazenly lied about the fake accounts, claiming they were only for enforcement, even though the legislation says in black and white that the eSafety Commissioner can use them in unlimited ways for "educational" and "promotional" purposes.
After her speech, I walked up to Wells and asked if she was seriously saying the legislation didn't allow the government to use fake accounts for government propaganda. She refused to answer.
Before the speech, I had put the same question to “eSafety Commissioner” Julie Inman-Grant, one of the CIC’s leading figures. She insisted the accounts were just for enforcement. When I asked why the law allowed them to be used for government propaganda, she said she might write an "enforcement memo," which, of course, would have no impact on the legislation.
The Australian government wants the power to wage offensive disinformation warfare against its own people with an unlimited number of fake accounts.
Why? The government says it needs new powers to deal with traumatic real-world events. But the bill is really the culmination of decades of progressives equating words with physical, real-world violence, and a recent review of 140 years of research found no causal connection between the two. Behind the false claims lie arrogance, ideological intolerance, and a panic over populism.
Here’s the lesson we’ve learned over and over again: whatever the censors accuse their enemies of doing is exactly the thing they want the power to do.
But when someone shows the people what is actually occurring—lies, misdirection, ignorance— the news goes viral and breaks into the mainstream. The censors retreat when the public is watching. CW makes sure the public is watching.
Two years ago, Australians killed a censorship bill because they saw what it would really do. We’re making sure they see this one too. My video reached over 800,000 people. My op-ed led The Australian. Government staffers were confronted with what’s in their own bill and had no answer.
That’s what CW does. We put the truth in front of the public, and the censors lose their footing. If the Censorship Industrial Complex wins in Australia, it comes for America next. CW is one of the few organizations fighting it everywhere it shows up. And we’re winning.
We can’t do it without you. Join us.
Michael
