Australia Is Psychologically Primed for Policed Speech
The Lucky Country now possesses the legal power, the digital machinery, and the public obedience required to police speech across society.
By Nick Holt
The Modern Enquirer
Britain arrests more than twelve thousand people a year for online speech. One every hour. Thirty a day. A nation that once ruled a quarter of the world now dispatches police officers to investigate online transgressions.
“Grossly offensive,” “likely to cause distress,” “anxiety-inducing”—this is the new language of law enforcement in the United Kingdom.
Britain may be the prototype of policed feelings, but Australia is the ready-made adopter—culturally compliant, legally equipped, and poised to enforce the model far more smoothly. That is the truth at the core of this argument.
Australia now possesses the legal power, the digital machinery, and the public obedience required to police speech across society.
No other Western democracy is as prepared, both in structure and in temperament, to regulate expression itself.
And the clearest window into Australia’s future is its recent past.
No Western nation complied with government authority more completely than Australia during COVID-19. Curfews, military patrols, border closures, arresting citizens over Facebook posts—Australians accepted all of it with a level of calm that still befuddles outside observers.
QR codes were embraced. Citizens tolerated police questioning them for sitting alone outdoors. Entire states sealed themselves off from the rest of the country. Drones monitored public spaces. Forced detention in hotels was treated as a mild inconvenience.
This wasn’t reluctant acceptance. It was enthusiastic obedience.
COVID did not transform Australia; it revealed it.
A society that bows this easily to physical regulation will not resist emotional regulation.
Australia’s behavioural groundwork for policed speech is already established.
While Britain relies on laws drafted long before social media existed, Australia has crafted a modern, comprehensive censorship framework that no other Western country matches.
The Online Safety Act of 2021 is the most powerful online-regulatory instrument in the democratic world. It empowers a single bureaucratic office—the eSafety Commissioner—to order takedowns, compel platform compliance, and sanction individuals under the banner of “harm,” a term defined broadly enough to capture anything the government finds socially inconvenient.
Australia does not need police officers knocking on doors. It has dashboards, algorithms, and real-time digital enforcement. It has state vilification laws rooted in emotional experience—offence, insult, humiliation, harm—effectively codifying feelings into legal triggers.
Where Britain improvises emotional policing with antiquated statutes, Australia built a turnkey system from the ground up. It is centralised, modern, and designed for scale.
Australia is not at risk of developing a system of policed feelings. It already built the infrastructure for it.
Australia is not just legally prepared.
Australia is culturally prepared.
This is a nation that sees authority as benevolent, regulation as safety, and obedience as civic virtue.
Australians trust institutions more deeply than any other Western public. They avoid conflict, prefer social harmony, and assume government intervention is necessary rather than intrusive.
This cultural disposition is the missing ingredient most countries lack. Britain’s speech-policing regime is visible and absurd because the British at least pretend to value liberty. Australians value comfort. And comfort always comes with rules.
The truth is that Australia doesn’t require an authoritarian state.
It requires a willing population.
And it has one.
The government doesn’t need to coerce speech when citizens already believe speech should be moderated for their own emotional wellbeing.
Australia is psychologically primed for policed speech.
Once you combine these three layers, the comparative picture becomes obvious. Britain is the prototype: noisy, embarrassing, and relatively primitive in its policing of emotion. It still needs officers at the doorstep and legal acrobatics to justify arrests over tweets.
Australia is the early adopter: quiet, polite, digital, and frictionless.
No arrests are necessary.
The censorship happens upstream—algorithmically, bureaucratically, and invisibly.
Britain still fears public backlash.
Australia proved in 2020 that public backlash is unlikely. And if it comes, it can be contained.
The uncomfortable truth is that Australia leads the West not in authoritarian ambition, but in authoritarian readiness. The system is built. The tools exist. The population is compliant.
Britain’s policing of speech is easy to mock because it is loud and incompetent. Australia’s future policing of speech will be more dangerous because it will be silent, digital, and culturally accepted.
The most unsettling possibility isn’t that Australia might one day regulate emotion.
It’s that Australians will welcome it—as they welcomed surveillance, restrictions, and controls throughout the pandemic.
The question is not whether Australia can police speech.
The question is: why would anyone expect Australians to resist?
Australians once prided themselves on being larrikins; wild, cheeky and mischievous, but we have proven ourselves to be the exact opposite; tame, obedient and complacent.
There are protest marches taking place across Australia, "March for Australia", that are mainly aimed at immigration laws, but as for privacy and freedom of speech, I think most Australians feel they have nothing to fear from this gross over reach of their privacy, because they aren't "guilty" of offensive speech and they have nothing to "hide".
Oh, what a foolish, naïve lot we have turned out to be and we will experience the full force of a UN controlled totalitarian regime that will crush anyone who dares to comment or question the regimes power and control over every facet of our existence.
Digital currency will be the next invasion and control forced upon us, many Australians (mainly the young) seem to be welcoming it with open arms, not aware of the power this gives to tyrannical governments and greed driven banks over their money, but, of course they feel they have nothing to fear, because it won't negatively impact them, right?
They are obedient, law abiding citizens.
I expect that even what I am commenting here would have consequences if it became known to those who must be obeyed.
Fuhrer Albanese has stolen control of Australia for his UN masters and like all filthy traitors will face divine justice for his betrayal.
He and his cronies are not going to like the price that has to be paid for their crimes.
Poor fellow, my country!