Ross Coulthart

It was absolutely extraordinary that a state allowed itself to essentially criminalize the questioning of vaccines.

And this is really important, Mark, because the current government actually came close to passing laws that would have allowed them to regulate social media.

And we have a situation at the moment where Elon Musk, who obviously owns Twitter, has been fined by the EU because essentially he denies

didn't agree with a whole lot of ideas that they had about how they should be allowed to essentially control what is allowed to be said on his social media platform.

Why the hell in an age of declining media mastheads and the diminution of influence in major television networks, why would we want to allow government to have any kind of control over

over what are now the rising media brands of our age.

We should essentially revere freedom of speech and sometimes that may mean that people say things which are offensive.

So be it.

Look, I think there might be something to that.

I mean, one of the things that really strikes me about a certain generation of Americans, they've stopped doing it now, but they used to teach civics in American schools.

And so people were taught about the importance of approving media.

They were taught about their freedoms, their rights under the constitution.

And we don't do that in Australia.

We don't teach people how to complain.

And in fact, we have a culture where

that essentially berates people who complain.

They're called tall poppies.

You know, they're whacked down because they stick their heads up.

And yet some of the most interesting work that is done in Australia is when people have the courage to stand up against authority and question.

And there were people who were questioning the vaccines as they were in the United States.