One of the characteristics of totalitarians, as Orwell so memorably showed in 1984, is their tendentious manipulation of language. Thus, in Big Brother’s regime, the Ministry of Truth relentlessly churns out regime propaganda and the Ministry of Love is the terrifying edifice of torture and interrogation, including the dreaded Room 101.
In the real world, too, when the globalist regime pontificates about misinformation and disinformation, the most assiduous peddlers of both are its own enforcers. ‘Your sole sources of truth’ have churned out lie after lie after lie about nearly everything. Australia’s e-Karen, oops ‘eSafety Commissioner’, has blatantly abused her own power then tried to avoid accountability with the bizarre argument that, because she exceeded her statutory authority, she couldn’t be punished under the same statutory regime.
In New Zealand, the so-called ‘Public Interest Journalism Fund’ functioned as nothing more than a government narrative-enforcement regime and a bribe to a dying legacy media.
So, why on earth would anyone think a ‘National Media Literacy strategy’ under the auspices of the Albanese socialist government will be any better?
The Albanese government has confirmed further details of its intention to develop a National Media Literacy strategy as part of its $153.5m ‘News Media Assistance’ program. Along with other experts in the areas of media, journalism and digital literacy we welcome this as a potentially generation-defining development.
Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they? As an alumnus of the very academics writing this fatuous guff, I can personally attest to their unrelenting far-left bias. Don’t just take my word for it: surveys have shown that communications and media academics are almost entirely dominated by the far-left. Again, my own experience is that nearly every unit from these academics is heavily loaded with ‘Marxist perspectives’.
This is not education. It is cultural self-harm by design, dressed up in the false piety of ‘protecting democracy’. The Albanese government is not just copying Jacinda Ardern’s failed model – it is doubling down on what failed so disastrously across the ditch. Just as ‘Homes for Australia’ is KiwiBuild on steroids, the $153.5 million ‘News Media Assistance’ program is the PIJF on crack.
“The resurgence in government interest relates back to profound concerns over rising levels of online misinformation and disinformation…”
In other words, the legacy media and its bureaucratic allies are haemorrhaging audience and credibility, so the government will rig the game. The social media ban is the opening act of this protection racket. Platforms like X and Gab, which allow dissenting voices, get the chop. Meanwhile, the notoriously far-left (and paedophile-riddled) Bluesky sails through unmolested. ‘Won’t somebody please think of the children!’: the eternal cry of authoritarians who want to control what the next generation hears.
In practice, ‘media literacy education’ will be pure Orwellian brainwashing: legacy media good; independent outlets bad. Students will be told that ‘fact-checkers’ – those regime-adjacent narrative enforcers who spent years pushing Russiagate, Hunter Biden laptop denial and ‘safe and effective’ fairy tales – are the sole arbiters of truth. Critical thinking? Only if it leads to the approved conclusions. Question the official line on climate, migration or gender and you’re off to the re-education camp.
The dying dinosaurs will be propped up with public money while upstarts who point out the emperor’s nakedness get strangled. This is not about literacy. It is about ensuring the public only consumes the filtered slop approved by the political class and its media pets.
The Albanese government’s entire approach reeks of the same top-down control that failed spectacularly in NZ. Ardern’s fund bought compliant coverage and accelerated the legacy media’s death spiral. Albanese’s version will do the same, only with bigger cheques and more sanctimonious language about ‘social cohesion’ from the same legacy media that relentlessly demonises Jews.
A genuinely free society trusts its citizens to weigh arguments and make up their own minds. Totalitarians demand the state teach them what to think. The proposed strategy is the latter, wrapped in soothing bureaucratic prose. When the MiniTrue starts offering ‘media literacy’, sensible Australians should recognise it for what it is: an attempt to control the narrative by controlling the next generation’s minds.
I’d say we should reach for our pistols, but they’ve all been confiscated already.
The pattern is unmistakable. Labor cannot win the argument on merit, so it rigs the information battlefield. Legacy media gets life support. Independents get the boot. Children get indoctrination. And the taxpayer foots the bill for the privilege.
Orwell warned us. The Albanese government is determined to prove him right.
