Is an Australian Impact Assessment claiming cost-benefit for the new censorship regime by claiming consensus on risk and efficacy?
When mainstream media won’t criticise government policy - and government won’t be criticised - the next step is misinformation and disinformation legislation.
The management of information and hence knowledge, concerns as much what is known, as what is not known. Censorship involves ensuring that we don’t know certain types of information exists. Censorship can be obvious, or it can be a little more subliminal. I.e. unless you are the monkey trying to get published, you won’t so easily recognise when a certain kind of censorship is occurring.
Then there is the technique of conflating two circumstances to expand a rationale, in this case, expand powers. An Australian government department, as discussed below, is inferring that people who criticise cancer screening must be stopped because it will harm health outcomes. Likewise, they are inferring that people who criticise 5G and electromagnetic field (EMF) technology should be stopped because their actions could lead to cell tower damage.
Physical injury is a serious harm. The Australian government now wants to expand the concept of serious harm is identified as risk to cancer screening rates and telecoms utilities. Think about that.
MEDIA SILENCE - & COMPLICITY
Cancer screening and 5G are inferred to be safe and effective. But -
- pick your technology which the government claims is safe and effective, but where unwanted exposures by that technology is recognised by non-government actors is recognised as being risky -
There will be an absence of critical scrutiny in the mainstream (legacy) media of these technologies. Over time it becomes evident. People are not permitted to challenge the State’s position on the safety and efficacy of a given policy programme or regulated technology.
Mainstream media silence is a form of bias. The silence over time amounts to a particular form of censorship by omission. Over time the silence becomes a voice - sociologically it can be seen as an expression of economic and political power.
What I have found over the years, is that official soundbites about safety and efficacy can be easily covered in under 600 words. It’s black and white – good or bad. Rebutting simple soundbites takes longer. One must turn to reasoning and judgement. This always uses a higher word count than OpEds permit. Reasoning is grey, it’s more nuanced. It involves navigating complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity.
But without reasoning, civic language then shapes inward. (Reasoning guides rationality, not the other way round.) People can become polarised in their beliefs and as a population, we can lose capacity to debate controversies, (which almost always traverses uncertainty and risk.)
Precaution becomes a difficult concept to navigate, and ultimately, we become separated into ‘for’s and ‘anti’s’. Polarised.
With media abstaining from critiquing political policies that claim scientific authority by locking in a position affirming cost-benefit of a regulated activity, government institutions can craft policies that reflect the interests of subsets of stakeholders.
INSTITUTIONAL CLAIMS ARE THEN NOT CONTESTED
The institution (such as a government department or regulatory authority) can claim scientific legitimacy but refuse to engage with criticism, refuse to acknowledge risks that are scientifically plausible, and/or ignore multifactorial issues that might render the policy absurd or dangerous, particularly to children.
So often in modern society, people struggle to avoid technologies and keep babies and children away from particular exposures. Years of research into the developmental origins of health and disease confirms that early life exposures can promote illness over the life-course.
When risk is downplayed, small groups who try to get an issue addressed can be easily marginalised and ignored by the relevant government institution. The only recourse then, is independent media or the courts.
It is deeply ironic that government agencies now spend a lot of time developing legislation to ostensibly protect minority groups from language, but demonstrate scarce interest in taking account of risk to actual minors from the technologies where harm pathways are demonstrated in the scientific literature.
Then there is the narrative shaping through the selection of strategic ‘key stakeholders’ who are invited to participate in consultation in early policy development for new legislation. For example, PSGRNZ might be 25 years old, we might have submitted to an enormous range of policies over the decades, so we should be known. But PSGRNZ are never contacted… we can only dream!
But we see in manifold ways, - which can be observed in the Australian government Impact Analysis discussed below, that certain forms of understanding when toggled to a particular scientific authority, become ideologically entrenched. This is, of course, is abjectly antiscientific.
Scientific authority is the scaffolding that underpins an extraordinary range of policy.
But now the Australian government want to turn their beliefs into dogma.
Democracies simply cannot work if institutional powers cannot be criticised, or if they are permitted to be criticised, public sector institutions and agencies then do not have to respond, and publicly account for their actions or inaction.
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT - HAPPY TO CENSOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION?
Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024. This is a new iteration following public criticism of the 2023 version. The Sept 12, 2024 Media Release states:
The Bill empowers the ACMA to oversee digital platforms with new information gathering, record keeping, code registration and standard making powers.
It will also introduce new obligations on digital platforms to increase their transparency with Australian users about how they handle misinformation and disinformation on their services.
The Bill will complement voluntary industry codes but allow the ACMA to approve an enforceable industry code or make standards should industry self-regulation fail to address the threat posed by misinformation and disinformation.
The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts decided that they need to do an Impact Analysis. As they clarified on page 8, the Impact Analysis was really an Economic Analysis. Six serious harms were identified:
Electoral process: Harm to the operation or integrity of this process.
Health: Harm to health outcomes in Australia, including reductions in the effectiveness of preventative health programs
Hatred towards groups: vilification of groups or individuals.
Physical injury to individuals: Intentionally inflicted physical injury.
Critical infrastructure or emergency services: Damage to critical infrastructure or emergency services, including utilities, transport, police, fire, ambulance and border protection services.
Economic harm: Harm to sectors of the Australian economy, including harm to public confidence in the banking system or financial markets.
This Department believe that censorship reform is required because online chat might lead to the subset of social costs that they have identified. They do not consider social costs, or risks that might be borne if their beliefs are incorrect.
The September 2024 Online misinformation and disinformation reform - Impact Analysis by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts provides two examples of how a form of scientific belief which infers a consensus position, becomes inserted into policy as a scientific fact, to justify why that policy or law should be made.
The examples suggest that new laws would prevent people - including expert communities – from contradicting the stated position of the efficacy or safety of two particular examples cited in this Impact Analysis.
If your online chat and shared information contradicts the governments’ position on regarding the safety 5G and electromagnetic energy, and safety and efficacy of cancer screening processes, the Impact Analysis frames this as market failure. To contradict the States position would be to promote misinformation and disinformation.
The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts Impact Analysis claims that the benefits or risks of 5G and cancer screenings are concrete, have presumed a locked in scientific fact. This is … ideological!
THE TAKEN-FOR-GRANTED SAFETY OF 5G
What this would mean in real time – people would most likely be censored if they attempted to post content that contradicted the states position on the safety of 5G and the efficacy and safety of cancer screenings.
Therefore, I can infer that if I was sharing a published scientific paper by Dr Priyanka Bandara and colleagues drawing attention to the increase in 5G small cell antennas, the beam formation characteristics that produce risky hotspots, and the problem with a regulatory process that exclusively looks at thermal risk and ignores non-thermal effects (known as non-ionizing electromagnetic fields) such as oxidative stress and risk to small children, I would be censored. It is taken for granted that 5G and EMF fields from cell towers are safe. I would be seen as encouraging vandalism.
Then - if people were protesting the erection of 5G towers and small cell antennas near homes and vulnerable areas such as schools, kindergartens and hospitals - from local to central government level to – these people would be incorrect in their approximation of risk. The government wouldn’t engage with their concerns, even if symptoms arose after installation.
People getting angry and sharing evidence would have to be censored. Because all too often, when people are being harmed, and they remain unheard, they become desperate.
I would be complicit.
I’d be similarly troublesome if I shared information criticising government guidelines; information showing how radiation density levels are increasing; an international appeal letter to Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, U.S. National Toxicology Programme data, case reports on what is being called microwave syndrome after 5G base stations are erected nearby, risk evaluations of impacted organisms; or public releases by organisations seeking to share scientifically referenced information about risks that contradicts government regulatory guidelines and standards.
Effectively – I would be part of the problem – I could be inciting violence through sharing this information - and require censoring.
Because there is a risk that property would get vandalised.
CANCER SCREENING
I would have to be censored if I was sharing information that shed doubt on the efficacy of cancer screening, and raised questions about the costs.
Most likely I would not be able to share a post by Dr John Mandrola that notes that while screening does safe lives, he then goes on to state: ‘I would wager that if we showed people the actual data behind screening, a lot more would forgo it’.
· Colonoscopy? Data from a NordICC trial where the risk of death from colorectal cancer after three years was not statistically different (0.28% vs 0.31%).
· Cardiovascular screening? Data from the Danish cardiovascular screening (DANCAVAS) trial suggested limited benefit, and found that screening did not lead to a decrease in all-cause mortality.
Mandrola then links to an article by Dr Vinay Prasad, co-author of the paper Low-Dose Computed Tomographic Screening for Lung Cancer: Time to Implement or Unresolved Questions? The paper raises the question of all-cause mortality, which is all too often, statistically indistinguishably, and the much-ignored problem of the harms of screening, which not only include radiation risk but the burden following false positive outcomes, which then require multiple diagnostic follow-up procedures which can be invasive and costly.
I’d also probably be a bad actor if I was sharing information on the benefits of breast thermography screening, and criticised government policies that extended mammography to women in their 40’s.
I’d probably be accused of misinformation if I criticised the efficacy of general health checks.
MISINFORMATION LAWS - A CHILLING EFFECT ON RISK-BASED DISCOURSE
Positing a given scientific position and then locking in legislation to prevent debate is a terrible idea.
Misinformation and disinformation laws that suppress public dissent, inevitably contradicts long held administrative and constitutional law norms which require that officials are open-minded, even when issues are controversial.
Misinformation laws will protect dogmatic positions and promote an abuse of powers. We can see that the serious harms identified - contain enormous potential for political and legislative overreach.
Impartiality, accountability, trustworthiness arise when officials take into account the open-ended nature of risk and the role of principles and values in navigating the changing dynamics of risk knowledge. Trust is sustained by not holding predetermined positions on the safety and efficacy of the technologies that surround us. Regulation and stewardship overlap. In PSGRNZ’s propaganda white paper we stated:
Principles are important. These societally accepted value-based systems of belief act as rails to guide reasoning. Principles are inimical to reasoning and therefore judgement. Such as in judging who, how and why a child is at greater risk of harm from a particular exposure, or mix of exposures, than their parent.
But when authorities lock in a predetermined position and create barriers to hearing and evaluating contradictory information and it becomes dogma, we’re not only the poorer for it, there’s a real risk that the public - and particularly babies and children - will be harmed.
This is the place where pregnant mothers, infants and children sit when they are exposed to modern technologies that their ancestors were never exposed to, that might or might not harm. This is a grey area, because of developmental, genetic, epigenetic and biochemical (including nutritional uncertainties.
But when legacy media persistently excludes, and fails to encourage debate on these uncertainties, over time, this is tantamount to censorship.
Misinformation laws lead to overtly lead to censorship, and they also result in self-censorship, a chilling effect where people will not raise an issue for fear of being accused of misinformation.
· Government institutions can make scientific claims without being accountable.
· People will have technologies imposed upon them.
· Some people may be harmed.
· People have no recourse and get angry.
· Governments then accuse them of misinformation and disinformation.
· They can be fined or go to jail.
· There is a lag on recognising risk and over time more people are harmed.
· Public trust in governing bodies declines, and government agencies then must choose to be more accountable and trustworthy, or to use legislation to enforce rules without accountability to individual health concerns.
Excellent analysis and summary as usual Jodie. Thanks. The government/media/judicial collusion is the biggest threat to our health and freedom. The tragic irony being that these bullies and liars are the biggest spreaders of ‘misinformation’ and pose the biggest threat to our health and freedom. ‘Safe & effective’ .. yeah right.