XPost: aus.politics, alt.politics, alt.politics.nationalism.white   
   From: d@ray   
      
   Australia’s controversial online censorship boss has been caught spreading   
   misinformation about White nationalist ‘violent extremism’ and online abuse   
   targeting aboriginals.   
      
   Ahead of last year’s referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which   
   was emphatically rejected by the Australian public, eSafety Commissioner   
   Julie Inman Grant warned of a likely increase in “online hate” directed at   
   indigenous people.   
      
   But data obtained under freedom of information (FOI) requests by the   
   Institute of Public Affairs has found that there were just two complaints   
   made by indigenous people relating to online abuse linked to the Voice   
   referendum, and that the eSafety office did not issue a single takedown   
   notice as a result.   
      
   “Australians simply cannot trust the eSafety Commissioner to stick to   
   online child protection, due to a history of politically charged   
   censorship, as evidenced by the eSafety Commission’s own data,” said John   
   Storey, Director of Law and Policy at the Institute of Public Affairs.   
      
   “The narrative Julie Inman Grant has sort to establish, that there was a   
   wave of racist cyber abuse during the referendum, is not supported by her   
   own office’s data.   
      
   “The fact that there were just two Voice-related complaints during the   
   middle of a highly divisive national debate, when nearly one million   
   Australians identify as indigenous, shows that there was little material   
   substance to the eSafety Commissioner’s claims.”   
      
   According to the FOI data, from July 1 to September 30, 2023, the last full   
   quarter before the referendum, there were 30 complaints in total made by   
   indigenous Australians about cyber abuse, or just 0.4% of all complaints   
   made to the eSafety Commissioner during that period.   
      
   “The eSafety Commissioner has demanded that social media companies censor   
   the internet worldwide based on subjective and vague powers, which has   
   allowed for dramatic overreach beyond focussed interventions on protecting   
   children,” Mr Storey said.   
      
   “There is clearly a need for public policy to protect children from obscene   
   and violent content, and for law enforcement purposes, but now the eSafety   
   Commissioner has powers which enable the censorship of debate and opinion.”   
      
   “All Australians have the right to freedom of speech online. Governments   
   and activist bureaucrats must never be given a platform to launch   
   politically motivated interventions.”   
      
   Mr Storey on Saturday wrote in an article for Sky News Australia that Ms   
   Inman Grant appeared to have a record of “distorting facts to suit her   
   agenda” and a “oppressor and oppressed” narrative popular in the   
   political   
   establishment and academia.   
      
   He pointed out that less than a month before an alleged Muslim terrorist   
   attack on Bishop Mar Mari in Sydney, Ms Inman Grant issued a media release   
   about forcing tech companies to tackle “terror and violent extremism”.   
      
   “You might think that the eSafety Commissioner was highly prescient about   
   the looming risk of terrorism, issuing her warning weeks before one of   
   Australia’s most prominent and allegedly religiously motivated terror   
   attacks. But you would be wrong,” he wrote.   
      
   “The eSafety Commissioner’s media release did not warn about religiously   
   motivated violence. There was no mention of rising community tensions   
   caused by the war in Gaza, rising anti-Semitism on university campuses or   
   rising risks of violence due to regular pro-Palestine demonstrations.   
      
   “Instead, the eSafety Commissioner chose to warn about ‘White   
   nationalism’.”   
      
   Mr Storey added that rather than highlight any of the thousands of attacks   
   carried out by Islamic extremists overseas or actual examples of Muslim   
   terrorism in Australia, Ms Inman Grant instead highlighted three overseas   
   incidents caused by “White supremacist extremism”.   
      
   “If the social media companies took her warning literally, they would have   
   devoted efforts to seeking out and clamping down on right-wing or White   
   nationalist extremists online,” he wrote.   
      
   “One wonders if perhaps resources and attention were diverted from what was   
   always the most likely source of such an attack.”   
      
   Mr Storey said that he had similar concerns about the eSafety   
   Commissioner’s comments about online abuse during the Voice referendum.   
      
   “By falsely suggesting Indigenous Australians were under siege from online   
   abuse, in the middle of a contentious and divisive political debate, she   
   may have exacerbated community tensions,” he said.   
      
   The IPA report found that Ms Inman Grant’s Voice abuse comments still   
   inform the public debate on the issue, using two recent examples.   
      
   “In May 2024, during a panel discussion at the Sydney Writers’ festival,   
   ABC journalist Laura Tingle, referencing the Voice referendum,   
   controversially said that Australia is ‘a racist country, let’s face it. We   
   always have been, and it’s very depressing’,” the report states.   
      
   “Fellow ABC journalist Bridget Brennan agreed, saying that the No campaign   
   for the Voice was a ‘feral, nasty campaign’. Brennan also noted ‘there is   
   so much racism embedded in this country’, and that during the Voice debate   
   ‘it was really horrible as an Aboriginal person’.”   
      
   The report found: “The eSafety Commissioner has ‘cried wolf’ on this   
   issue.   
   The misleading claim of abuse against indigenous Australians during the   
   2023 referendum painted a false picture of the level of community   
   disharmony and thus were liable to unnecessarily increase community   
   tensions.   
      
   “The Australian community should be sceptical of the eSafety Commissioner’s   
   claims of looming online harm or that the exercise of censorship powers are   
   based on an objective, material, and real assessment of actual harm to the   
   community, and is more likely based on political considerations or raising   
   the profile of the eSafety Commissioner.”   
      
   Last month Ms Inman Grant admitted there was a conflict of interest when   
   her office acted on the request of a “transgender” extremist to demand X   
   remove a post about her made by a Canadian activist.   
      
   American-born unelected bureaucrat Ms Inman Grant, who makes $445,000 to   
   censor the internet on behalf of the Australian government, told a Senate   
   committee that she was overseas visiting her sick mother when the takedown   
   notice was filed, and that she did not know Ms Cook personally.   
      
   However, she did confirm that Ms Cook’s NSW government-funded “HIV and   
      
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