Free speech under fire

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Free speech or government overreach?

A viral post, followed by an order to take it down. And now, a courtroom battle, in Australia.

Elon Musk and a Canadian activist are calling out Australia’s attempt to censor a social media post.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis attended the trial in Melbourne and has the story.

AMY LEWIS: Canadian Chris Elston is known across the western world as Billboard Chris.

VIDEO CLIP: Hundreds of thousands of children have been indoctrinated to believe that they were born in the wrong body …

He was in Australia last week for a tribunal hearing about one of his tweets from last February. While he was in town he also took the opportunity to live up to his name—he stood in a public space wearing a large sandwich board that declared, “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.”

ELSTON: I just kept learning more and more about this, starting in 2019 and couldn't believe what I was reading, and I considered this to be the greatest child abuse scandal in the history of modern medicine.

He only engages in conversation with people who approach him, and he believes in freedom of speech.

ELSTON: Well, if we can't talk about this issue, for example, if we can't even discuss child abuse going on, how are we supposed to stop it?

Last year, Elston tweeted his objection to Australian transgender-activist Teddy Cook’s appointment to a World Health Organization panel. The topic? Caring for children struggling with their sexuality. Elston posted a link to a Daily Mail article. It included photos that Cook shared publicly on social media. Cook takes male hormones and advocates for taxpayer-supported trans surgery for any aged child. She also promotes a wide range of sexually deviant behaviors.

Cook asked Australia’s online regulator to remove the photos but made no objection to Elston’s words. But the commissioner went a step further and insisted X geoblock the entire post for Australians or be fined $470,000. X agreed but promised to appeal the decision.

Last week X and Elston joined forces at the Administrative Review Tribunal in Melbourne, Australia, to fight the commissioner’s overreach.

The trial was open to the public—and the public showed up. At least a dozen free speech advocates crowded into the room while more than a hundred viewers watched online. Not all were supportive. A Canadian transgender activist disrupted the proceedings early on and was blocked from attending the first session.

One woman on Elston’s side is Jasmine Sussex:

SUSSEX: So why do I support him? Because we need more men to get involved and stand up for children…

She calls herself another eSafety Commissioner victim. The commissioner geoblocked one of her tweets criticizing men’s attempts to breastfeed using a cocktail of lactose-inducing drugs.

SUSSEX: I can support Chris to do that good work, you know. And men bring a different kind of energy and experience to this as well.

Another supporter flew over from New Zealand. Two years ago Judith Hobson was attacked by a man at a free speech rally for women. Her attacker went free.

HOBSON: And yet they're even stopping us from speaking online. Now that should be a free forum. I hope the court will uphold the right to free speech and say that the E-commissioner has gone too far.

The middle of the tribunal room was filled with attorneys. Some for the commissioner, others for X Corp, and Elston. Alliance Defending Freedom International and Australia’s Human Rights Law Alliance partnered in backing Elston’s case.

Australian John Steenhof was part of the HRLA team.

STEENHOF: This is an issue that's important for all Australians. This is not just a case for Chris. This is a case for everybody who wants to participate in the public square on contentious issues and not get shut down by the government.

Lois McLatchie Miller represented ADF International.

MILLER: I come from the UK, and more and more frequently, we're seeing tweets shut down, posts shut down, people silenced for speaking out in the truth. And as a global organization, we see this really a pattern of censorship emerging across the globe, whether that's blasphemy laws in the Middle East or censorship laws in the west.

The commissioner’s attorneys argued that Elston’s post qualifies as cyber abuse and breaches Australia’s Online Safety Act. That law states that censorship is allowable if an “ordinary person” would think the post could lead to serious harm. The government’s attorneys tried to characterize Teddy Cook as the ordinary reasonable person.

Elston’s lawyers, however, argued that Teddy Cook, like Elston, is an activist and not a private person doing things in private.

Elston says online platforms have become a global town square that should allow for public discourse.

ELSTON: But as we've seen here in Australia, they’re trying to censor me on the digital Town Square and in the public town square, both in Brisbane and Melbourne the other day.

The outcome is uncertain, but the weeklong trial left the Australian public footing the bill for 8 lawyers to shut down one tweet. They contend Elston mocked Cook’s gender identity and intended serious harm because he shared Cook’s workplace and personal photos by sharing the Daily Mail article.

The trial was not only about whether or not a particular tweet about Teddy Cook should be available to Australians.

MILLER: So this is a critical case for pushing back on censorship. It’s the tip of the spear when considering that assumption that the government can control what its citizens think, what its citizens can discuss, and what the citizens can believe.

It’s also about whether Chris Elston—and by extension Australians, Americans, Brits, or anyone else—has the freedom to express contrary views. For that, Elston is willing to make sacrifices.

ELSTON: I'd rather be playing Settlers of Catan right now with my family. But yes, of course, it's a sacrifice, but this is a war for the safety of our kids. In generations past, we flew overseas to fight actual wars with guns and bayonets. This is a new type of war. It's information warfare, it's psychological warfare, but we have to fight it, and sacrifices have to be made, because if someone doesn't fight back, we lose.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Melbourne, Australia.

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