The Ministry of Truth

Politicians ruling on disinformation is like arsonists running the fire brigade.

We need a word for parliamentarians who demand the power to determine what constitutes myths and lies when politicians are the source of most of them. How about “shampires”?

Whatever you call it, this hypocrisy has been elevated to performance art in the Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy.

The chairman, Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, made it clear at his committee’s birth that he would be trawling for echoes of his own opinions to back a conclusion he already has written.

“Aggressive and co-ordinated disinformation campaigns are increasingly spreading false information designed to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion on climate change,” Whish-Wilson’s press release says. “In the last parliament, evidence was provided to the Senate inquiry into the offshore wind industry that strategies such as establishing fake community groups – otherwise known as astroturfing – were being used in Australia to spread lies about renewable energy.”

People already have a fair grasp of where most lies originate, as the News and Media Research Centre’s submission to his committee shows. A poll it ran during the federal election records 66 per cent of respondents named “politicians and political parties” as the main source of misinformation. The hint that it’s not just a pox on the Coalition’s house comes from the topics list, where misinformation about nuclear energy ranked second on the list.

Politicians were deceivers ever. As Hannah Arendt noted in a 1967 New Yorker article: “No one has ever doubted that truth and politics are on rather bad terms with each other and no one, as far as I know, has ever counted truthfulness among the political virtues.”

Like so many Senate committees this is a virtue-signalling exercise in shampiring.

It will curate “evidence” to find fossil fuel interests are pouring money into Australia with the aim of derailing wind, solar and transmission projects through misinformation and disinformation campaigns fronted by local stooges. Then it will argue for laws to silence dissent.

In the task of building a story, the committee’s majority can count on the yeoman work of an army of government and privately funded activist groups because it is here you will find the real acres of astroturf.

The Page Research Centre’s submission shows the anti-fossil fuel lobby is groaning with cash. In 2023-24, its leading organisations pulled in more than $170m. The Sunrise Project topped the list with $76.8m, followed by Greenpeace ($25.6m), the Environmental Defenders Office ($17.8m), the Australia Institute ($10.6m), Climate Action Network Australia ($6.8m), GetUp ($6.4m), Environment Victoria ($4.1m), the Nature Conservation Council ($3.6m), Market Forces ($3.4m) and Friends of the Earth ($2.9m). A big chunk of this money is raised offshore.

When it comes to voices demanding regulations to police discordant voices there is a publicly funded manufacturing industry in that, too. Human Rights Commissioner Lorraine Finlay made an important contribution in these pages when she wrote: “Misinformation in the climate space is not confined to one side of the debate. It can stem from both climate denial and overly alarmist narratives, each contributing to confusion and polarisation.”

Amen to that. Alas, when you scour the commission’s actual submission you will find its concerns are entirely confined to one side of the debate. “False narratives distort public understanding, erode trust in science and institutions and delay urgent climate action,” it says. The commission claims “regulation is necessary” but then, typically, ties itself in knots as it tries to balance its innate authoritarianism with the awkward truth that rights belong to individuals and that free speech is important in a democracy. This is something it has always found annoying.

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s endlessly expanding remit makes it one of the biggest threats to free expression, and its recent record on eroding trust in science is even more troubling. The Sex Discrimination Commissioner is arguing before the Federal Court that there is no such thing as male and female. This is an assault on biology so extreme that it puts the vanguard of climate sceptics in the shade. An institution that denies facts cannot be trusted to referee the truth.

At least the commission has the wit to soft-pedal its authoritarian impulses. There are no such constraints on UN special rapporteur on climate change and human rights Elisa Morgera. Her submission is a masterpiece of totalitarian cant that demands dissenters go to jail.

“States should criminalise misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by fossil fuel companies and criminalise media and advertising firms accountable for amplifying disinformation and misinformation,” Morgera says.

And what does the special rapporteur classify as disinformation?

“Disinformation campaigns promoting misleading and false solutions – such as on the use of natural gas …”

The truth, recognised from Brussels to Beijing, is that natural gas is indispensable to the energy transition. Europe has even enshrined it as “sustainable” in its bureaucratic bible of what counts as green. The fact Morgera knows little about the topic she claims some authority on is a worry. That she wants to jail those who puncture her ignorance is terrifying.

But the prize for audacity surely goes to the Environmental Defenders Office submission. It endorses the Morgera rant before demanding “that the commonwealth government enact national fossil fuel advertising bans to ensure there is less ability to spread misinformation. Political advertising should be the subject to similar provisions as contained in the Australian Consumer Law for misleading or deceptive conduct.”

Would this be the same organisation excoriated by the Federal Court when it lost its case against Santos’ Barossa gas pipeline? The court found the office’s cultural mapping of Tiwi Islanders’ underwater cultural heritage “so lacking in integrity that no weight can be placed on them”. It bore the hallmarks of “confection or construction.” The group now faces a $9m costs order.

I do not want the folk at the EDO to go to jail but a sense of shame and an appreciation of irony would not go astray. Any rational politician should assess everything it produces in the cold, hard light of its proven form in misleading and deceptive conduct.

The commonwealth doesn’t seem bothered as it has kicked in more than $8.2m taxpayer dollars into the enterprise.

Given all state and federal governments and a galaxy of cashed-up businesses and activist groups are lined up behind building a weather-dependent grid, why is it necessary to silence the dissenters? What little faith they have in their own case. If their preferred form of generation were truly cheap, green and reliable, every argument against it would evaporate like water on a solar panel. What are they so afraid of?

Perhaps it is that the truth is simply unpalatable and they recognise that to deliver their nirvana will demand permanent Covid-level interventions in people’s lives.

Be warned. The energy transition will trample more than just your right to disagree. For it to happen at pace demands the compulsory acquisition of land.

In Victoria, new laws allow authorised officers to enter private property to build transmission lines, and landholders who try to block or delay them can be fined up to $6000, while companies face fines of up to $42,000.

With a court order, those officers can even use “reasonable force” such as cutting locks or gates, and you can be prosecuted simply for getting in the way.

The campaign against climate and energy “misinformation and disinformation” is really a war on dissent. It is a struggle over power in all its forms, and if the alarmists win it will be your freedom that goes out with the lights.