Australian Politics
Man charged over alleged online threats of Yumi Stynes following Welcome to Sex controversy
There may be more to the abuse of Stynes than is mentioned below. She is a very unpleasant person. She once called the popular Kerri-Anne Kennerley a cockroach and implied that physically fit men are brainless. And Australia is full of "racists" to her. She is half Japanese but Japanese politeness seems to have passed her by. She comes across as a basically hostile person, not someone we would want writing books for children
A 23-year-old man has been charged by police over the alleged online harassment of TV and radio personality Yumi Stynes, co-author of Welcome to Sex, in the latest development in a week-long saga surrounding the teenage-focused book on sex and sexuality.
Welcome to Sex: Your no-silly-questions guide to sexuality, pleasure and figuring it all out, was published by Stynes and Sydney doctor Melissa Kang in May, but was this week slammed by Rachael Wong, chief executive of conservative organisation Women’s Forum Australia, who labelled it a “graphic sex guide for children”.
“For those saying the book is sex education, there is a huge difference between giving children age-appropriate information, and prematurely exposing them to graphic, highly sexualised material,” Wong told this masthead this week.
Big W this week pulled the book from its physical stores after its staff reportedly received abuse from members of the public. However, it is still selling the book online.
On Instagram on Friday, Stynes posted multiple screenshots purporting to show death and rape threats directed toward her since the book’s release. They are too graphic to be reported.
On the same day, a 23-year-old man was arrested and charged over alleged threats made to Stynes online.
“Officers from Leichhardt Police Area Command commenced an investigation over the alleged online threats to a 48-year-old woman,” a NSW Police spokesperson said.
“Following inquiries, a 23-year-old man was arrested at Balmain Police Station [on Friday].
“He was then taken to Newtown Police Station, where he was charged with one count of use carriage service to menace/harass/offend.”
Stynes has rigorously defended the book – which has been immensely popular, reaching the top of the Amazon charts this week, and temporarily selling out on the platform – saying the book needed to be written.
“We really have a lot of credentials [to write the book],” said Stynes, who hosts the ABC podcast Ladies, We Need to Talk. “We’ve got an army of professors, who fact-checked and contributed to the book. So for people to try and shame us or make us feel like we haven’t done the work, it’s just really misguided. It does make me think that they’re taking a leaf out of the book of Trumpism and fearmongering there.”
The book is the fourth in a series of guides for teens, with earlier publications titled Welcome to Your Period, Welcome to Consent, and Welcome to Your Boobs.
Speaking to 2GB this week, Women’s Forum Australia’s Wong said the book’s contents was “so, so disturbing”.
“Material likes this tends to destroy [children’s innocence about sex],” she said. “[Stores] need to take this book off their shelves.
“I say [to] Big W: take this book down; otherwise we’re not going to shop at your store.”
The man was granted bail and will appear at Downing Centre Local Court on Friday August 11.
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Why Labor’s threat to free speech must be rejected
The right to be wrong is both the most vital of freedoms and the most constantly threatened. Vital, because the freedom of expression is the guardian of every other liberty, alerting the public to the abuse of power; and constantly threatened because few temptations come more readily to governments than that of suppressing views they regard as irksome, dangerous or simply incorrect.
That is why John Stuart Mill called the freedom of thought and discussion “the most fundamental doctrine” of a free society. And it is why the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 poses so serious a threat to our democracy.
Extraordinarily open-ended, the proposed legislation’s stated purpose is to protect Australians from misinformation and disinformation that is likely to cause “serious harm” – that is, “harm that affects a significant portion of the Australian population, economy or environment, or undermines the integrity of an Australian democratic process” – where misinformation is “online content that is false, misleading or deceptive, that is shared or created without an intent to deceive”, while disinformation is misinformation that is “intentionally disseminated with the intent to deceive or cause serious harm”.
To that end, the legislation empowers the Australian Communications and Media Authority to require digital platforms to implement systems that identify and suppress any offending information.
The government’s Guidance Note suggests the legislation is comparable to the European Union’s Digital Services Act (2022); what it does not say is that the relevant provisions of the DSA apply only to “very large” online service providers. In contrast, the legislation would apply to “social media, search engines, instant messaging services, news aggregators and podcasting services”, regardless of their size and reach.
Indeed, few websites would fall outside the legislation’s ambit, giving ACMA powers whose scope has no equivalent in a liberal democracy.
Virtually none of the legislation’s crucial terms is tightly defined, nor does the legislation even attempt to distinguish questions of fact from those of opinion, creating uncertainty that can only chill the expression of controversial views. And the examples the Guidance Note gives of information it might seek to suppress – such as content that “falsely claims that specific community groups in Australia are responsible for a range of social issues” – so obviously involve matters of opinion as to simply heighten the resulting concerns.
The government has attempted to calm those concerns by claiming that “ACMA would have no role in determining truthfulness”; but that contention is plainly incorrect.
That is because the legislation effectively requires ACMA to audit whether the systems regulated entities have implemented adequately curb misinformation or disinformation. But it is impossible to see how such an audit could be undertaken without assessing the truth or falsity of the content those entities have posted.
And it is inconceivable that ACMA could evaluate complaints about false or misleading content without determining whether the content they refer to is or is not false or misleading.
The legislation does provide a number of exemptions, including for “professional news content” (but not for comments on that content) and for content produced by “accredited educational providers”. However, those exemptions merely highlight the legislation’s underlying lack of logic.
After all, if content is so manifestly odious that it should be suppressed, why would the fact that it appears on (say) a university’s website reduce the danger it poses to the community? One would, on the contrary, expect vesting the content with academic authority to increase its credibility and so aggravate the resulting harm, making the case for its suppression all the stronger.
But reliance on arbitrary distinctions is hardly the legislation’s worst flaw. In effect, the legislation gives ACMA the power to impose vast penalties on regulated entities if their systems are ineffective at eliminating what it considers mis- or disinformation. There are, however, no penalties whatsoever if regulated entities suppress information that is neither false nor harmful.
Given that asymmetry in rewards and penalties, content providers will inevitably prefer to make the error of removing information that does not merit removal to that of not removing information that does merit removal: they will, in other words, convict more “innocent” content so long as that reduces, even marginally, the likelihood of any potentially “guilty” content slipping through their net.
Yet it is hard to conceive of an outcome more starkly at odds with the public interest. In an open society, falsehoods can be – and usually are – corrected by truths; but no number of falsehoods can replace a censored truth. It is therefore far better to allow ten falsehoods to run loose than to rob the public of a single truth: which is the exact opposite of this legislation’s design and likely effect.
None of that means the issues the legislation is seeking to address should be ignored.
Even as unflinching an advocate of freedom of expression as John Stuart Mill recognised the harm certain forms of speech could inflict – and there are, of course, already laws in place that deal, for example, with incitement to violence, online harassment and vilification.
But as Mill rightly pointed out, the harm “caused by an opinion is itself a matter of opinion”. And he warned that deterring the expression of the “opinions and sentiments which happen to be in a minority” necessarily encouraged the oppressive conformism, enforced by vindictive and intolerant majorities, and the resulting intellectual “stagnation and immobility”, which Mill considered “the real danger in democracy, the real evil to be struggled against”.
That danger would, for sure, disappear were the regulator “an infallible judge of opinions”, as well placed “to decide an opinion to be noxious, as to decide it to be false” – but infallibility is not of this world.
Mill therefore argued that any restraints on speech should meet three conditions: parliament should precisely set out the nature of the offending speech and take political responsibility for doing so; there should be no prior censorship of that speech, but only its ex post prosecution; and every alleged breach should be dealt with individually by the courts, giving the impugned content a chance to be defended and allowing any possible harm to be assessed within the context in which it occurred.
Applying those principles to an online environment is undoubtedly challenging. But this legislation simply ignores them altogether. Vague to the point of inviting administrative arbitrariness, it involves parliament delegating legislative authority to a regulatory agency; in turn, that agency can compel regulated entities to exercise prior censorship of speech; and what review mechanisms the legislation provides are hardly capable of identifying, correcting and penalising the suppression of inconvenient truths.
Should it pass, our credibility, when we criticise dictatorships for attacking the freedom of expression, will be severely compromised. However, the greatest harm will be to the fabric and vigour of our democratic life.
“Whatever you do, keep, at all risks, your mind open,” an ageing but still passionate Mill urged his country’s youth, “do not barter away your freedom of thought” and “the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions which is practically inseparable from it”. At a time when the right to take unpopular stances is more threatened than ever, his call should ring in our ears.
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More prosecutorial abuse
And there is no effective recourse against it. A rogue Federal prosecutor made a public announcement that ruined the lives of an innocent couple but because he interlarded everything he said with the word "allegedly" he could not be legally faulted
In the space of a few days, the couple's home was raided and they were arrested by police, close friends turned on them, and they were subjected to a barrage of vile and racist abuse from strangers.
While the online trolling came as a shock, the most frightening incident was when Mr Shehada checked his letterbox and found a Christmas card with human faeces inside.
"I was still outside the front door of my property … I found myself on my knees and I vomited," he said.
The public pile-on came after newspaper stories and a press conference organised by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), where journalists were told about childcare educators who had been charged over an alleged fraud in excess of $15 million.
Police said those involved registered fake kids — or so-called phantom children — to trick the Commonwealth into paying out large subsidies.
"This is money that belongs in the hands of our community to help care for some of our most vulnerable persons," Commander Todd Hunter told journalists on November 28, 2020.
"We allege that out of greed it has instead been used to foot the bill for extensive real estate portfolios, overseas travel and other luxury items."
The couple's faces were plastered all over the television news that night, including on the ABC. Stories showed photos of Ms Ouda sitting on a motorbike and posing in front of a Maserati.
During the press conference, Mr Hunter never explicitly said the couple were guilty of criminal offences. The veteran officer used the words "allege", "alleged" and "allegation" 15 times in his opening seven-minute address to the cameras.
Mr Hunter did not specifically name Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada either, instead saying that the "alleged syndicate leader" was a 42-year-old woman who owned a "large Victorian family day care provider". Mr Hunter also claimed a restaurant owned by the couple was allegedly being used to rort COVID-19 JobKeeper payments.
Behind the scenes, the AFP sent Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada's surnames to the media so that the details could be used to track their future court hearings.
'We did absolutely nothing wrong'
Ten months later, the AFP quietly dropped the charges against Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada.
This month, Mr Shehada told the Victorian Supreme Court the couple "knew from day one we did absolutely nothing wrong". He said he was never told why the case was discontinued by the AFP.
"Our lives were destroyed by this press conference," added Ms Ouda. "We were defamed, the entire community was turned on us and there was absolutely no foundation."
This week, the ABC also sent questions to the AFP, inquiring why the case against the pair had been abandoned. "The AFP has no comment," a spokesperson said.
Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada's frustrations were amplified because the AFP did not contact the media companies to provide the important update that the charges had been dropped. Through their lawyers, the couple sent letters to the publications asking them to take down the original stories.
By early 2023, they had commenced a new legal battle. This time it wasn't the AFP coming after Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada — the pair were seeking to turn the tables and were now suing former commander Todd Hunter and the Commonwealth for defamation, seeking a payout for damages.
Commander grilled on the stand
This month, a Supreme Court civil jury was asked to determine whether Mr Hunter's words at the press conference conveyed seven specific meanings to an "ordinary reasonable person".
The defamation lawsuit came down to a relatively simple question. From Mr Hunter's public comments alone, could a reasonable person conclude that Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada were dishonest and stole from taxpayers?
Mr Hunter, who has since retired from the AFP, rejected that suggestion. He told the jury the press conference was held to highlight the work of police, to "allay any fears" people may have had from seeing homes being raided, and to call for additional information to assist the fraud investigation.
David Gilbertson KC, acting for the couple, put a different theory to Mr Hunter. "You were by nods and winks inviting members of the media who attended the press conference to find out the names of Ola Ouda and Amjad Shehada, isn't that right?" he asked.
"I don't believe I nodded or winked at anybody," Mr Hunter replied.
Mr Hunter — whose policing career included overseas postings and coordinating major operations over four decades — was asked whether he used the press conference "to go out from the AFP on a high note".
"No," he replied flatly.
If the jury believed Mr Hunter had defamed the couple, his lawyers said they would rely on a legal defence known as qualified privilege. If required, they would argue that the press conference was an occasion where Mr Hunter was entitled to a degree of protection to speak openly, provided he was not acting with malice.
Negative publicity leaves couple 'scarred for life'
In court, Mr Shehada and Ms Ouda described the public humiliation that followed the AFP's press conference.
Mr Shehada's best friend scolded him on social media, and others made sexually-explicit comments about Ms Ouda. Their kids were bullied at school. Negative reviews were posted on Google about their Lebanese restaurant, which they later sold for a loss. Even their bank accounts were closed by ANZ and Westpac.
Mr Shehada said Ms Ouda's approval to run a childcare business was cancelled and had not been reinstated. The negative publicity meant both were still struggling to find work, he said.
During a tense cross-examination by Mr Hunter's lawyer Lisa De Ferrari SC, Ms Ouda said the ordeal had left her "scarred for life".
"We were defamed, the defamation was intentional, the defamation destroyed my life, our lives, our businesses, and that's it," she said.
When the jury retired to consider their decision, Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada stood in the sun-drenched courtyard of the historic Supreme Court precinct to ponder their futures.
A win might have resulted in a multi-million dollar payout for the couple, and potentially had a major impact on how police conducted public relations and their dealings with the media in future. A loss for Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada would pile on more misery from the previous two-and-a-half years.
At one point, Ms Ouda burst into tears and was hugged by her partner, who also broke down.
A question of meaning
On Tuesday afternoon, they were soon back in the courtroom. A verdict was in, perhaps quicker than had been anticipated.
Seven key questions were put to the jury foreperson.
Could a reasonable person conclude that Mr Hunter had identified Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada at the press conference, and made out that they were guilty of a childcare fraud? Had he outed them as criminal syndicate leaders? Did he convey that they registered phantom children and falsely claimed benefits? That they stole from taxpayers? That they committed fraud and lived a life of luxury? That their restaurant was used for further frauds? And finally, that Ola Ouda and Amjad Shehada were dishonest and unable to be trusted?
To each query, the jury's answer was "no".
It meant Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada's bid to take down Mr Hunter and the Commonwealth had fallen at the first hurdle.
The couple appeared crestfallen as they learned the defamation case would be dismissed and there would be no payment for damages. Worse still, having lost the case, Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada were ordered to pay the legal costs for the defendants.
Despite the outcome, Ms Ouda and Mr Shehada strode out of the Supreme Court defiantly, hand-in-hand.
This time, they weren't in the headlines. The story failed to make the nightly news.
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Power bills are up but Labor is going to do more damage the energy sector
Say what you like about a Labor government but, good or bad, they don’t normally waste their time in office. Unlike the Coalition, they’ve got a bevy of friendlies in the public service to help get things done, plus an increasing number of virtue signalling corporates to sell their message, campaigning millions from their union mates and a largely compliant media that gives them the sort of positive coverage rarely afforded their Liberal counterparts.
And nowhere is this more evident than in dealing with the so-called climate emergency. The front line in the war against emissions thus far has been energy. For almost two decades, we’ve been fed an official line that renewables would make our power bills cheaper. At the election last year, the now Prime Minister even put a figure on the savings – $275 per household per year. How’s that going? Because if you’re paying the same bills that I am, they’re only going up.
But if you think the climate attacks on energy are bad, just wait for what’s coming next as the Albanese government prepares to inflict the same transformations on other parts of our economy that have already been wreaked on the energy sector.
And you will pay the price, either as taxpayers, consumers or both – that’s been estimated to cost Australia $1.5 trillion by 2030, says expert group Net Zero Australia comprised of energy specialists at the Universities of Melbourne, Queensland and the USA’s Princeton.
Last week, with all the fervour of a TV evangelist, Energy Minister Chris Bowen announced that the Climate Change Authority was now working on “sectoral net zero plans”, for the manufacturing industry, the built environment, agriculture and land, transport, and resources. These will be part of what he declared would be Labor’s “strong” 2035 emissions reductions targets, on top of the already legislated 2030 targets most energy engineers think can’t be met.
Naturally enough, this was rapturously received by the Clean Energy Council whose climate zeal happily coincides with the multibillion-dollar subsidies they’ve received for the past 15 years. Just as in energy, in these further sectors, there will soon be small armies of regulators to impose this climate socialism, plus plenty of businesses already trying to work out how they can pass the costs onto consumers.
So far, the brunt of the climate pain has been felt via power bills. It’s only now, with the coal-fired power stations that still provide more than 60 per cent of our electricity coming to the end of their lives, and with their zero-emissions replacements still largely a pipe dream, that the extent of the climate con is becoming apparent. The question is, will Australians wake up before it’s too late or will we allow government to do to agriculture, transport, mining and everything else what they have done to our energy sector and power bills?
And for what? Even if we did dramatically wind back our standard of living to save the planet, has Canberra forgotten that Australia emits less than 1.3 per cent of global CO2 emissions and let’s not also forget, that China, our main strategic competitor, has emitted more CO2 in the past decade than Britain has since the Industrial Revolution.
So what’s ahead of us as the Albanese government pushes ahead with its plans to reduce our animal herds because of their methane gasses, move us all into electric cars or onto public transport, scrap manufacturing jobs, even tell us what sort of stoves we can have?
In Britain, trying to accelerate decarbonisation has led a nominally Conservative government to ban all petrol and diesel car sales from 2030 and to decree that future domestic heating must be provided through less effective heat pumps rather than gas boilers. Here in Australia, the Victorian government is considering a ban on all gas cooktops and heaters.
Some years ago, Barnaby Joyce was ridiculed for talking about the $100 Sunday roast; and my former boss Tony Abbott for predicting the demise of Whyalla as a steel town. Yet this is precisely where we’re headed if agriculture and manufacturing must be “net zero” by 2035, given that most agricultural emissions come from herd animals and, thus far, it’s simply impossible to make “green steel” at a price anyone would pay. And no one should underestimate the quasi-religious zeal that Minister Bowen and the green acolytes who now populate so many of our institutions bring to their climate goals. Just have a look at the Voice where the Yes push is driven by so many corporates and governments despite more and more voters saying they reject it.
So far, the Albanese government’s climate convictions have been quite impervious to the reality that we still rely on fossil fuels to keep the lights on. But that same climate evangelism will lead to herd limits, car bans, manufacturing shutdowns, and mandatory changes in your home unless someone in authority is prepared to shout “stop this madness” while we still can.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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