Well, free speech is a fundamental human right.

It is something that I’m not willing to compromise on at all. But I’m not the only person defending free speech, thankfully, because there’s no way I could do that on my own. There are many other wonderful people. And in fact, Australia has a thing called the free speech union. It’s something that exists in many parts of the world. Australia has its own branch of that. And I’m about to speak with Dr. Ruben Kirkham because he’s just had an interesting crossing of swords with our eSafety Commissioner. And once again, this seems to be becoming a trend. The eSafety Commissioner has come off second best.

We’ll get to Dr. Kirkham in just a moment. But first, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy people like you to keep up with the world as it changes around you and to stay across news and events that are relevant to our freedom, to our human rights here in Australia. So, without further ado, I’m going to bring on Dr. Kirkham. Now, I’m going to warn our viewers up front, doctor, that this topic is slightly arcane. It’s going to require a little bit of background and a little bit of explanation. So firstly, welcome to the Topher Project and could you give us a bit of background? What is this lawsuit? Why did you bring it against the eSafety Commissioner?

[From video]

So my case is really simple. Last year we made a website that helped people find out if the eSafety Commissioner was collecting information about them, collecting information about them illegally. And they made freedom of information requests using our website. And the eSafety Commissioner got very upset about people making freedom of information requests. [End video]

Well, I hope you’re enjoying this interview with Dr. Ruben Kirkham from the Free Speech Union Australia. I will admit we’re having some technical difficulties with our equipment during this interview. That’ll become apparent a little bit later on. So, I apologize for anything slightly odd that you see. Uh we did do this interview with an unfortunately very poor internet connection at Ruben’s end. He was gracious enough to jump online and do this interview while he was traveling. Didn’t have a decent internet connection.

Anyway, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I am 100% viewer supported. I bring you stories like this that you simply won’t see anywhere in the mainstream media. Now, the way that I pay my bills is through my books, through my merch, and through the buy me a coffee button. And I’d be very grateful if you could go to topherfield.net and buy me a coffee if you’d like me to keep doing this sort of work. And also check out my books, Good People Break Bad Laws about civil disobedience, Good Christians Break Bad Laws about the theology of civil disobedience, and also my multi-award-winning documentary, Battleground Melbourne. They’re all available along with a range of different hoodies, long sleeve t-shirts, and short sleeve t-shirts. All available at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. Anything you buy will be helping me to keep bringing you stories like this one.

And without further ado, let’s get back to this incredible story by Dr. Ruben Kirkham of the Free Speech Union Australia.

[From video]

Which would not cause her any problems if she wasn’t actually storing this information. But it turned out she was storing in some cases thousands and thousands of pages. In some cases, she had so much information, she said it would be too much work to even supply it. There was one lawyer who had over 10,000 pages. Now, precisely why the eSafety Commissioner was keeping all this information, I don’t know. But then she said that everything that the Free Speech Union was doing was vexatious. Um, we were part of a conspiracy with Elon Musk. Um, were a front group to quote all the way on taxpayers’ money to Washington DC um to basically engage in a malicious route.

So she has what she calls an adult cyber abuse scheme and really this is supposed to be for adults who have been genuinely abused but her office doesn’t really do anything to help them. So we thought we’d test out her scheme. Um, so I filed an adult cyber abuse claim under her own scheme because test is whether she intended to inflict harm. Sure. And she said, “I’m not doing anything about this.” And my request wasn’t that the document, this transcript of her ranting and raving was taken down. It was that I was put on a government-style website in the USA and I wanted a community note facility added to it or a comment facility added to it so members of the public could see the full picture rather than what appears to be a government document which is highly misleading.

So, I wasn’t seeking for anything to be taken down, just more speech as any free speech advocate would ask for. And then she said, “Well, you can’t appeal this to the tribunal because I haven’t made a decision.” Well, I’m not going to do anything about your complaint, but I’ve decided it’s not a decision and therefore you can’t appeal it. And as you can imagine, um, the tribunal wasn’t very impressed by that argument. And it’s actually a really serious issue. So you have, you know, as genuine people who’ve got genuine complaints. There are people who are subject to some of the worst type of abuse. You know, we’re talking um intimate image schemes. We’re talking about people being doxed, people talking about people being stalked. We’re talking about genuine cyber abuse, which the commissioner never does anything formal about. She’s not issued, as far as I know, this year a single formal notice in relation to actual cyber abuse.

Um she’s decided not to for some reason. She’s too busy chasing unicorns and pronouns and other activities that we’re spending um apparently $50 million a year on. So she does nothing to protect the general public. Um that seems to be effective. But what the effect of what she was doing is everyone who had a legitimate complaint, she was trying to stop people appealing. So all these victims, she was never telling them about their appeal rights was saying this is not really a decision. So there must be about 10,000 cases a year where she’s done this. And the tribunal law said, “Well, your legal argument is very odd. It’s wrong. We’re not accepting that.” So, this was a test case um of testing out her cyber abuse scheme. And the fun part of this case was that um we would win either way. Would win either because she is ultimately found to have inflicted adult cyber abuse. Well, that’s a great PR victory for us. Or she’s had to argue against her own powers. So, we win either way. It’s one of those beautiful cases where you can’t lose. And the first round was, well, it’s not a decision. I say it’s not a decision.

Well, this is the same game she played also in Selen Baumgarten’s case, which is also appealing, where she said her informal notices were not decisions either. Um, even though they were being made secretly to try and take down people’s social media accounts, including sitting senators. She was trying to actually do that with senators and who knows. She doesn’t know who. Apparently, it would take too much work for her to find out. But this case is another loss. It’s the third loss in a row in the tribunal. The third loss where she’s been heavily criticized. The third loss that shows she has no idea what the law is. And the funniest thing is she spent so much money, so much money on what was just an application for a statement of reasons.

So all she had to do was say, I think this is not cyber abuse because such and such and such. I refer to this evidence. There’s your statement of reasons. She’s probably spent $50,000 of taxpayers’ money. That would be my estimate. She had a senior counsel, a junior counsel, at least four other lawyers, probably more coming along to help her out. And then there were two earlier lawyers that were involved in this argument when she raised it in another case. So she spent an enormous amount of public money, I can imagine, even at the heavily discounted rates of the Australian government solicitor. And you know this was so I just represented myself against a guy who would probably be better off arguing a case in the High Court rather than the lowly administrative review strike. Yeah.

I mean it isn’t that lowly I guess because it is the um tribunal had the deputy president show up. So they were taking this seriously because it was another scheme to avoid being appealed to the tribunal. Sure. And um there was a lot of permutations on words as to why something that is a decision wasn’t a decision. Apparently not a decision that would make no sense to anyone. Um but that’s just what they paid for. So um $50,000 probably of your money was wasted on this and then she’ll probably appeal and waste even more money on this. But I just self-represented. [End video]

Reuben, I need to pause you here. This is this is amazing. But I want to go back a little bit because you’ve said a handful of things that have each individually blown my mind and put together. Um, yeah, my head is spinning. You just said to us that you now know you, it’s been confirmed that the eSafety Commissioner has been collecting information because of the freedom of information requests that were sent to the eSafety Commissioner via that campaign and via that website that the Free Speech Union set up. We now know, correct me if I’m wrong, we now know that the eSafety Commissioner has been gathering information and keeping pages in some cases thousands of pages of information about Australian citizens. Do we have any idea what the justification or possible benign explanation for that could be?

[From video]

Well, she was probably just hoovering up random piles of tweets on the internet. There is no benign explanation for it. It’s just a complete misuse of our office’s powers. Um, it was a system set up to monitor any criticism of her. And we found out about that last year when it turned up in the Bishop stabbing case where we saw this document on the file and I was like, why aren’t all our tweets in this file, right?

So, we made a tool. You could make a little request. It took 30 seconds. And um it seems every time someone made one of these requests, it took many many hours of time in the eSafety Commissioner’s office because they don’t know how to even search their own system. So they’re running around trying to find these documents and then say it’s too much work to find these documents because we’ve got so many of them. Um we haven’t got all the ones. I think they had 4,000 pages, but if you go for a freedom of information disclosure log, you’ll find a case where there was like 3,000 pages, mostly redacted, but someone was sitting there all day long um redacting all these documents. It’s like, well, why is she collecting this in the first place? And why she got anything on most people? Why does she care? Um, but that’s money she’s wasting and she burns public money like there’s no tomorrow.

But that was last year’s story. It’s more this case is a reason out of her reaction to it and they’re getting very very upset that we actually made a web form that helped people make freedom of information requests in line of their rights as Australians. [End video]

What you’ve done in this case is truly tremendously significant, but I’m a little concerned that for those that don’t live and breathe this stuff the way that you and I do and by the way, for anyone that doesn’t live and breathe this stuff, please don’t start. It’s a lot healthier not doing it. Uh but unfortunately for Dr. Kirkham and myself, it’s what we do. Uh but for those that don’t live and breathe this stuff every single day, it might be a little bit lost on them. What was the stunt I guess that’s my language, not yours the stunt that the eSafety Commissioner was trying to pull by refusing to do something and then claiming that she hadn’t made a decision? What’s the significance in the tactics of the court cases and the tribunals? What’s the significance of this claim of hers that, “Oh, I didn’t make a decision”?

[From video]

Well, it takes away your appeal rights. So, it takes away accountability from her office. So, there’s a statute. It’s got a scheme and it says you there are appeal rights if she makes a decision in certain cases. And there’s two types of decisions. There’s the complainant who’s gone, “I want this taken down,” and there’s the person who’s the target of the complaint. So the previous two cases, it was the end user who brought the repeal. It was the end user who published something and what the commissioner did was say her notices were not real, therefore she did not have to tell you about. In this case, she’s saying, “Well, I’ve not really decided your complaint. I’ve just decided not to investigate it further, and therefore, I’ve not decided to reject it,” which makes no sense whatsoever, by the way, “and therefore, you have no appeal rights.” And the tribunal again were like, “Really?” Like, “This is very odd,” to quote the tribunal “very odd argument.” [End video]

Yes.

I think they’re being very, very gentle, but obviously these sorts of things are carried out in that kind of bureaucratic language, and even calling it “very odd” would be considered pretty strong language coming from that context coming from a tribunal. So where does this go now? Does this open up an actual appeal for you? What’s the next step in this process for you and for the Free Speech Union?

[From video]

Well, it opens up an appeal for everyone who complained to the eSafety Commissioner’s office and was fobbed off. So you’re talking tens of thousands of people. You’re talking about real victims of abuse in many cases. So the eSafety Commissioner’s office’s justification is that they are protecting the public. They’re protecting the vulnerable. They’re the guardians of the vulnerable. This is the good work they do. Well, it’s a charade. It’s completely untrue. And so we’re going at it the other way. We’re exposing what they are doing and showing that their scheme is anything but benign. They are pretending to protect the public. They do far worse than what the social media companies do that they’re complaining about. [End video]

Yeah.

[From video]

They evade all the complaints that they’re supposed to be processing apart from when it’s about pronouns or something that takes the eSafety Commissioner’s political interest, by the sounds of it. And those are the only ones she actually issues notices for like Billboard Chris and Selen Baumgarten’s cases. Those are the two ones that have gone through the tribunal. Yeah. And um yeah, they had a whole five-day hearing on Billboard Chris’s case merely because he apparently used the wrong pronouns. He got one character wrong in a tweet apparently. Well, actually got it right, but they disagreed with her, or he got that character wrong. He used he had an extra “s” to a word. Um that’s all he did, and that apparently involved a five-day hearing in the Administrative Review Tribunal. I don’t think she’s appealed that decision, but she has appealed in Baumgarten, which is quite telling because this shuts down a whole scheme.

She now has every time you make a cyber abuse complaint she has to give you an appealable decision. So, it basically means she has to do her job. And that means that she has to take away all the resources that have been diverted into political activism. Now, she’s going to have to do things properly. And she’s gonna have she’s got 28 days to explain now why that rant of hers is not a lot of cyber abuse. She’s just got to explain it. That’s all she’s got to do. Um, but she spent $50,000 of your money, probably about $50,000, to argue against having to explain anything. [End video]

Heaven forbid

[From video] And if that doesn’t blow your mind [End video]

Sorry, you go.

[From video] I don’t know what else. [End video]

Sorry, you go.

[From video] There you go. [End video]

All right. I think what you were saying is, if that doesn’t blow your mind, then what will? Um, I do apologize to our viewers. We’re having some technical difficulties between us. But, Ruben, you’ve done an amazing job and your story is incredible and what you’re doing is incredible. Heaven forbid that a senior, highly paid bureaucrat with enormous amounts of power and prestige that comes with her role should have to actually be held accountable and maybe give an account of herself to us, the little people. Heaven forbid.

Well, look, all I’m going to say is more strength to your arm. I look forward to following this story as it progresses. Dr. Ruben Kirkham from the Free Speech Union Australia, thank you so much for joining me here on the Topher Project.

[From video] Thank you so much for having me. [End video]

Cheers! Thank you for watching my interview with Dr. Ruben Kirkham from the Free Speech Union Australia. My name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I am 100% viewer supported. So please, if you’d like to help me keep doing these sorts of interviews and bringing you these sorts of stories, then head over to topherfield.net and buy me a coffee via the button that you’ll find there, or head over to goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com and check out my books on civil disobedience. Unfortunately, that’s a topic that we all need to be reading up on

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