We all know that the mainstream media continually peddle lies and fake news. But that doesn’t excuse the independent media from doing the same with bells on.
Normally, Australian politics is of little interest to overseas media, especially Americans who seem to know as much about Australian politics as they do about the metric system. But footage of the ongoing protests in Melbourne against Covid restrictions has piqued the interest of Americans in a way that Australian affairs haven’t since Steve Irwin got too cuddly with a stingray.
But if Americans pay little attention to Australian politics, even Australians normally pay as little attention as possible to Clive Palmer.
But the sudden resignation of NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian has sent the right-wing independent media into a tailspin of fake news, courtesy of the bloviating mining billionaire.
A former Australian member of Parliament came out and said Pfizer and AstraZeneca are paying lobbyists to direct Australia’s leaders to push vaccine mandates.
Clive Palmer, leader of the United Australia Party claimed ousted New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian was told she wouldn’t be charged in a corruption probe if she imposed a vaccine mandate.
Clive Palmer says a lot of things, few of them true or plausible. He’s basically that loudmouth friend on Facebook but with a billion-dollar megaphone to shout his nonsense through. Remember when he was going to build a replica of the Titanic? Former Senator and retired Major General Jim Molan once described Palmer as “ridiculous in every sense”.
Palmer bought his way into Parliament in 2013, scraping in by just 53 votes. Once in Parliament, he took more time off than any other MP and avoided even being in his own electorate for up to seven months at a time. Of the Palmer United Party senators elected in 2013, almost all subsequently resigned, and the party was deregistered in 2017. Palmer himself resigned in 2016. Palmer is currently facing fraud charges over the 2013 election campaign.
It’s also worth remembering that Palmer’s first foray into politics was bankrolling the sideshow of “Joh for PM” in 1987.
He also claimed that he would “win government” at the 2019 election (spoiler alert: he didn’t win a single seat).
Suffice to say, he’s not exactly a reliable source.
But Palmer faces some stiff competition for the fake news crown from independent media who make such claims as:
Shortly before Berejiklian resigned, she told Sydney residents that if they don’t take the Covid jab, they face total social isolation indefinitely after the stay-at-home order ends in December.
Berejiklian made history for overseeing one of the most fascistic regimes in modern history like nothing we have witnessed in the Western world.
The Gateway Pundit
Simply put, neither of those claims is remotely true.
In fact, quite the contrary: Berejiklian stated that NSW would relax restrictions for all citizens, vaccinated and unvaccinated, from 1 December. The Daily Mail was outraged, claiming that “the NSW premier betrayed those who did the right thing by announcing that on December 1, when 90 per cent of the state will be immunised, the unvaccinated would have the same freedom as them”.
As for “the most fascistic regimes in modern history”, Berejiklian has been constantly criticised by other states for prioritising freedom and refusing to at first lock down the Sydney region at all. Certainly, she hasn’t come close to the authoritarianism of “Dictator Dan” Andrews in Victoria, or Mark “Sneakers” McGowan in WA.
But then, expecting Americans to know the difference between Victoria and NSW is clearly expecting them to know how many metres long a football field is.
Most importantly, though, this episode shows that you should take no one’s word for anything. The mainstream media do not have a monopoly on fake news.
Always keep your bullshit filters set to stun, people.
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