This week’s issue is unashamedly devoted to the extraordinary victory of Donald J. Trump over Kamala Harris in a landslide win that was only, as it happened, ever predicted in this country in the pages of this magazine. So please forgive a little modest gloating. We’ve even given you extra Australian content to accommodate the brilliant insights of our Australian writers on this and other topics.

Anthony Morris KC has penned this week’s bumper cover story on the demise of Kamala Harris and the Democrats as other writers join in exploring the ramifications of the win for the world and for Australia. Indeed, Rebecca Weisser makes the salient point that on the very day President-elect Donald Trump announced his intentions to dismantle the left’s industrial censorship regime across America, here in backwards woke Australia Anthony Albanese and his Labor/Teals government are pushing that very same regime through our lower house. Which means that, after less than a week, we are already at odds with the US on a key policy. Worse, our position is at odds with the history of our own Commonwealth and our own values: namely, through establishing government control of ‘the truth’, Labor seeks to destroy our most fundamental democratic right to free speech and free beliefs.

But if woke commentators and politicians think they can dismiss this as simply a ‘culture wars’ issue with no serious political or geopolitical ramifications, they need to think again. Both Mr Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance have announced that America will treat its allies according to their adherence to such important American values. As Mr Vance proclaimed in reference to European nations threatening to arrest Elon Musk on spurious ‘misinformation’ grounds, it would be ‘insane that (the US) would support a military alliance if that military alliance isn’t going to be pro-free speech’. Does the same thinking apply to Aukus? Australia’s Orwellian eSafety Commissioner, herself a former (disgruntled?) employee of Mr Musk’s,  has already challenged  X over the very issue of free speech and internet censorship. The Australian government will eventually have to choose: Julie or Elon?

The Coalition has done the right thing in opposing Labor’s censorship Bill, and there have been some powerful speeches made around the importance of free speech. But, as has so often been the case with this ‘broad church’ political party, it undermines its own powerful messages by opting for the bob-each-way bet. At the same time as vigorously opposing limitations on free speech on the internet, and being seemingly blithely unaware of the glaring contradiction, the Coalition is equally furiously supporting Labor’s fatuous and pointless under-16’s ban on social media. This is stupidity of a breath-taking variety.

Firstly, combatting the evils of pornography and child exploitation on social media by banning any Australian child under the age of 16 from going onto social media – even with parental guidance and permission – is the equivalent of preventing an arsonist by chopping down every tree in the forest. Or, more pertinently, stopping X-rated movies from being seen by vulnerable children by banning them from ever going to the movies or watching television. Donald Trump has already articulated the correct approach: force the platforms to remove such material. Do not punish the kids. Punish the pornographers.

Secondly, the Coalition is literally depriving itself of both short-term and long-term political supporters. Were the Coalition to strongly oppose Labor on this initiative, treating young people as equals and standing up for their rights, it would attract an entire new generation of kids who would view Peter Dutton and the Coalition as being ‘on their side’. That sort of loyalty at a young age is almost impossible to achieve, but Mr Trump has done it in the US by understanding and appealing to ‘the kids’. Indeed, it may well turn out that it was youth social media usage that toppled Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Many of those kids being denied access to their favourite social media sites this year will be voting at the next election. The Coalition is literally torching a golden opportunity to garner an entire generation of supporters that will not present itself again.

Thirdly, as with its idiotic support of net zero, the Coalition by supporting an age restriction on social media has denied itself the opportunity to argue the free speech issue from first principles. Instead, it is playing directly into the left’s belief that government control is the solution, and even more government control is the preferable solution. This so-called conservative opposition is also accepting the most grotesque of all leftist propositions: that the state knows better than the parents. The casual way in which Mr Albanese dismissed this issue (‘We will not allow exemptions if users have parental consent, something we discussed but decided against’) was a dead giveaway. This is classic Marxism at work – state control trumps parental control. Now, the state will have total control over the information a child can access.

Fourthly, what on earth does this say about Australia as an innovative nation of the future? How will Aussie kids ever compete with their overseas counterparts in the digital industries if they have been denied free usage of the primary tools of the internet until the age of sixteen? We will swiftly become a nation of digital illiterates, with our youth versed only in the websites and programs of the state’s choosing, and schooled only by those who kowtow to leftist authoritarians.

Mr Trump vows to rid the US of the censorious concept of ‘misinformation’. At the same time as we are embracing it.