in Featured World News Musk Wins Latest Censorship Battle In Australia As High Court Rules Against eSafety Commissioner
But the war is far from won
Can Australia’s eSafety Commissioner block content globally on demand? Not today, ruled the Australian Federal Court, in a win for Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
In a decision this morning, Justice Geoffrey Kennett refused to extend a temporary injunction obtained by eSafety last month, which forced X to remove footage of the Wakeley church stabbing, an alleged religiously motivated terror attack.
Under the Online Safety Act (2021), the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has the authority to order removal of such ‘class 1 material’ within Australia under threat of hefty fines.
eSafety argued that X had not gone far enough to block the content from Australians, as a geo-block can be circumvented by a VPN. X argued that eSafety was effectively seeking a global ban on content, straying outside of the Australian online harm regulator’s jurisdiction.
eSafety applied to the Federal Court to extend its temporary injunction against X, with a hearing taking place on Friday 10 May. The temporary injunction was due to expire at 5pm on Friday, but was extended to 5pm today, presumably to allow time for Justice Kennett to deliver a decision on the matter.
This morning, Justice Kennett determined that, “The orders of the court will be that the application to extend … is refused,” meaning that at the time of publishing, the injunction is no longer effective. A written decision with the Judge’s reasoning is yet to be published.
In a statement on the Federal Court decision, eSafety said that the matter will return to Court for a case management hearing on Wednesday, 15 May.
“The application for this injunction should have never been brought,”said Dr Reuben Kirkham, Co-Director of the Free Speech Union of Australia (FSU) in a statement today, questioning the validity of the Commissioner’s bid to enact a global content ban on X. “The eSafety Commissioner is overreaching and behaving more like an activist than a responsible public servant.”
Dr Kirkham, who was present for the hearing on Friday, told Dystopian Down Under that he counted 12 lawyers present (seven for X, five for eSafety), which, if eSafety is ordered to pay costs, will lump tax payers with “a considerable amount of unnecessary legal costs.”