Australia’s online safety chief, Julie Inman Grant, has again been told by a federal tribunal that she cannot avoid legal review by using informal methods to contact tech companies instead of issuing a formal takedown notice under the Online Safety Act.The Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) said this is the third time eSafety has failed in such an attempt, but the first time a complaint has centred on an online comment by the Commissioner herself.
The case involved the Free Speech Union (FSU) of Australia and a December 2024 interview with Inman Grant published on the Council of Foreign Relations website.
In it, she was quoted as saying, “There are front groups; one is called Free Speech Union of Australia, and they’ve run a campaign to increase the number of FOIs (Freedom of Information Requests) by 3,000 percent.”
FSU Director Reuben Kirkham complained to the Office of eSafety, alleging that her statements were false, damaging, and targeted him.
“The eSafety Commissioner herself has been raising conspiracy theories about myself,” he wrote.
“The material raises a conspiracy theory that the Free Speech Union is a ‘front group’ for X and Elon Musk and that we conducted a ‘campaign to increase the number of FOIs by 3,000 per cent.’
However, the Office of eSafety rejected his complaint, saying the material did not target a particular Australian adult and therefore did not meet the criteria for formal removal action.
When Kirkham requested a formal statement of reasons, Inman Grant refused, arguing no “reviewable decision” had been made, describing her actions instead as a “non-giving of a notice.”
Inman Grant has previously argued that actions short of a formal takedown notice are outside Tribunal oversight—an argument she has now lost three times.
In a previous case, she used an informal “back channel” to ask X to geo-block a post in Australia.
During that matter, the eSafety Commission admitted it sends “a few hundred” informal alerts to service providers annually, compared with just three or four formal removal notices in the past year.
In this latest decision, Tribunal Deputy President Peter Britten-Jones said it did not matter if the Commissioner subjectively believed she was not refusing a removal notice.
What mattered, he said, was that she made an assessment, reached a conclusion, and notified the outcome—actions that constitute a reviewable decision.
Following the ruling, Kirkham said many people who deal with the eSafety Commissioner are “vulnerable individuals” facing serious online abuse, including those subject to indecent image exposure, doxxing, stalking, and other severe forms of cyberabuse.
“Today’s decision shows [her] office has once again seriously misunderstood their duties towards the general public.
“Worst of all, it’s the taxpayer who has yet again footed the bill for the Commissioner’s lack of understanding, with a Senior Counsel engaged at great expense.”