Any already-there or aspiring “empire of lies” needs a “censorship tsar;” after all, in order to persuade citizens that lawful and protected speech should not be allowed, one has to “work around the truth” a lot.
Reports critical of her work refer to Australia’s controversial Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant as precisely the country’s “censorship tsar,” while politicians opposed to her activities have recently questioned Grant’s presence at the World Economic Forum (WEF) event in Davos – even though, that is likely a very natural place for her to be.
Nonetheless, Queensland One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts wanted to know why exactly Grant was there, and how much the trip set back the Australian taxpayer.
Some interesting points came out of this interaction, including Grant asserting that she is not in fact attempting to act as “an arbiter of what should and should not be seen online.”
Posting a video from the meeting on X, Roberts commented to say that when talking about online safety regulations, Grant never used the word censorship – but she at the same time shied away from uttering the words, freedom of expression.
As for the WEF attendance, Grant seems to have fully served her purpose – she advocated for more “online safety” rules at a global scale. In particular, she said she had meetings with Big Tech CEOs, including that of OpenAI, and was especially interested in their plans to “build safety” into their products.
This is entirely in line with the official’s previous policies.
It also tracks that someone of her ideological provenance would in the same breath reject the notion of the “Global Online Safety Regulator” getting Australia dragged into “another globalist power sinkhole” by laughing at these statements – only to then inform that seven countries are already a part of the “Regulator” – and, according to Grant, working to “achieve better safety outcomes for all of our citizens.”
And Grant defended her policies – precisely what has led to the derogatory “censorship tsar” label – as necessary to protect against – you guessed it, online “misinformation” and “harm.”
Roberts, on the other hand, advocates for more transparency regarding Grant’s activities, and, concerning the costs of Grant and members of her staff traveling to Switzerland and spending four days there, noted sarcastically, “You run an online agency, right? Could you have done this online?”
