The Foolish Crisafulli

If you thought the war against free speech was only levelled against citizens by over-zealous governments, you'll need to think again.

Suppressing or censoring inconvenient views is a bi-partisan policy proposal from the UniParty elites.

However, the newly minted Liberal Premier of Queensland has set a new low in censorship by proposing a total ban on a subject matter he doesn't want to discussed in the Queensland Parliament.

That subject is abortion but the actual topic doesn't matter.

What does matter is that a Premier presented a motion yesterday asked the unicameral house to prohibit any debate about the topic for the next four years.

Incredibly, the motion was successful.

How is it that our elected representatives can be prohibited from raising a topic, no matter how sensitive, in our parliamentary democracy?

Crisafulli dressed it up as an election promise of not changing the existing laws but that's a long way from banning debate or discussion.

It's an appalling example of how power can and is being misused by those entrusted with it.

As Crisafulli has proved, both sides are just as bad as each other.

If they aren't supporting a social media license or the surveillance powers of an e-Karen Commissioner, they have been pressuring tech-tyrants and media companies to stop the truth from being revealed.

Now they are gagging MPs from even raising certain topics!

It's a horrific prospect of what's to come as the 'we know best' authoritarians throw our abandon our conventions.

Now the Queensland Premier is just one man, but the fact the Liberal Party went along with this outrage says a lot about the (lack of) moral fibre within the supposedly 'pro-freedom' party.

The motion "will also disallow any motion or amendment seeking to have the house express its views on the termination of pregnancy act and enable the Speaker to shoot down any bills."

Now take this 'principle' and apply it to any other subject of public interest.

Maybe we could ban debate about renewable energy or immigration or lowering taxes. How about if we stopped discussing the butchering of children to satisfy the tranny movement or Albo's appalling lack of judgement.

Where will it end? I'll tell you where.

It ends in totalitarianism where our freedoms are no longer protected within our democratic institutions.

Again, the Liberal Party Premier proposed this and their sheep-like MPs went along with it.

Opposition Leader Stephen Miles summed it up pretty well.

“What we have here today is a leader of this state so weak he cannot control his own party room, so weak he comes in here to move a motion constraining his own party room because he can’t control them and cannot trust them.

Make no mistake, this motion is a gag on that whole side of this house. These are extraordinary scenes.”

While Miles was simply playing politics rather than upholding principle, this is a dangerous precedent for any parliament to introduce.

Now that the new standard has been set, it's only a matter of time before it is weaponised by both sides of our appalling two-party duopoly.

"Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that...may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."
William J. Brennan