Australia’s Bureaucrats Want You to Stop Accusing Public Servants of Corruption

Australia’s Secretaries Board wants the government to restrict a parliamentarian’s ability to edit and publicly share video clips of official hearings, in part because the content from the proceedings is sometimes “presented without context” and “exposes officials to ridicule, hostility or abuse.” The board’s proposal is not to implement an outright ban on publicly posting any material from parliamentary hearings. Rather, the board is nudging Parliament to develop guidelines for its members regarding the dissemination of footage involving committee evidence. The board asks for consideration of rules that would prevent sharing clips that are “potentially harmful” — a phrase that the bureaucrats seemingly understand as encompassing sophomoric ridicule and extremely mild pejoratives. The board further suggests that comments should be disabled on posts with parliamentary footage because user responses are sometimes “highly offensive,” which would prevent even the users outside of Australia from responding directly to a post online.

While the framing of the proposal might prompt a reader to assume that there are thousands of people sending serious death threats in the comment sections of parliamentary footage each day, the supposedly alarming replies from which public servants apparently need to be insulated include single-word insults regularly expressed on middle-school playgrounds: “Comments about the officials have attacked their physical appearance, particularly women, likened them to Nazis and paedophiles, and referred to the officials as (among other things): ‘despicable’, ‘filth’, ‘political puppet’, ‘bigot’, ‘pig’, ‘KKK member’, ‘sleazy’, ‘incompetent retard’, ‘parasite’, ‘stupid’, ‘shill’, ‘demonic’, ‘putrid mutt’, ‘criminal’, ‘fraud’, ‘clown’, ‘scumbag’, ‘lying corrupt grub’, etc,” states the proposal.

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Abigail Anthony

Abigail Anthony is a staff writer at National Review.

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Australia’s Secretaries Board wants the government to restrict a parliamentarian’s ability to edit and publicly share video clips of official hearings, in part because the content from the proceedings is sometimes “presented without context” and “exposes officials to ridicule, hostility or abuse.” The board’s proposal is not to implement an outright ban on publicly posting any material from parliamentary hearings. Rather, the board is nudging Parliament to develop guidelines for its members regarding the dissemination of footage involving committee evidence. The board asks for consideration of rules that would prevent sharing clips that are “potentially harmful” — a phrase that the bureaucrats seemingly understand as encompassing sophomoric ridicule and extremely mild pejoratives. The board further suggests that comments should be disabled on posts with parliamentary footage because user responses are sometimes “highly offensive,” which would prevent even the users outside of Australia from responding directly to a post online.

While the framing of the proposal might prompt a reader to assume that there are thousands of people sending serious death threats in the comment sections of parliamentary footage each day, the supposedly alarming replies from which public servants apparently need to be insulated include single-word insults regularly expressed on middle-school playgrounds: “Comments about the officials have attacked their physical appearance, particularly women, likened them to Nazis and paedophiles, and referred to the officials as (among other things): ‘despicable’, ‘filth’, ‘political puppet’, ‘bigot’, ‘pig’, ‘KKK member’, ‘sleazy’, ‘incompetent retard’, ‘parasite’, ‘stupid’, ‘shill’, ‘demonic’, ‘putrid mutt’, ‘criminal’, ‘fraud’, ‘clown’, ‘scumbag’, ‘lying corrupt grub’, etc,” states the proposal.