Albanese reduced Australian politics to a childish circus by using row with Elon Musk over the Sydney church stabbing to push his censorship agenda
The Anthony Albanese who likes fighting Tories was on full show this week as the Australian leader promoted his government's war against misinformation by way of a surreal spat with X billionaire Elon Musk, writes Caleb Bond.
We’ve had to deal with a lot of evil in Australia of late.
The nation was shocked by the horrific massacre at Bondi Junction, leaving six dead and many more injured at the hands of a knife-wielding lunatic.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed in an alleged terror attack at Christ the Good Shepherd Church just days later.
But then - we're told - an even more malevolent force emerged: the fear-mongering, brain chip-implanting, electric car-building eccentric that is Elon Musk.
You’d have thought, after two such serious attacks, that the minds of politicians would be on more sombre matters.
But no.
Elon Musk, and his social media platform X, is somehow the real threat in our midst.
It all started because Mr Musk refused to remove vision – which had already been live streamed on Facebook – of the church stabbing from X.
This, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his cabal of censorious comrades, somehow encourages violence.
So incensed was Senator Jacqui Lambie, who once said on radio that she wanted a rich man with a “package between their legs”, that she described Mr Musk as an “absolute friggin’ disgrace” – a “social media knob” who “should be in jail and the key be thrown away”.
I mean, sure.
We have vision of someone lunging at a bishop with a knife in an alleged terror attack.
But it’s the bloke who owns a website where that vision was shown that should be in jail.
Meanwhile, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was calling him an “egotistical billionaire” in an interview she later posted… wait for it… on X.
And that line had clearly been written in the Labor talking points for the day, because Agriculture Minister Murray Watt also called him a “narcissistic billionaire”.
Mr Albanese said it another way the next morning: “I find this bloke on the other side of the world, from his billionaire’s establishments, trying to lecture Australians about free speech, well, I won’t cop it and Australians won’t either.”
The money-grubbing bastard.
You know someone is really bad when they hang around “billionaire’s establishments”.
Mr Albanese and others keep trying to link this to “misinformation and disinformation”, a rather different threat to showing footage of major news events.
In the end though, it exposes their ultimate goal – to control what you can and cannot say, with the government the ultimate arbiter of truth.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get anymore childish, our Prime Minister pointed out that some social media platforms had “removed various sites that were up containing fake images of myself superimposed on other people”.
“That’s the sort of thing that’s going on on social media,” he said.
Good grief.
People are putting the PM’s head on other bodies and making jokes.
It must be stopped.
Pure evil.
The Prime Minister is being briefed on whether or not social media websites have taken down memes about him.
How is this real life?
And to top it all off, Bishop Emmanuel himself believes the vision should remain online.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Caleb Bond is a columnist at SkyNews.com.au and co-host of The Late Debate at 10pm Monday to Thursday on Sky News Australia.