The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is bringing accountability to Australia’s chief censor after she refused to fully cooperate.
Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Australia, has allegedly declined to testify and provided a very limited amount of information in a December 2025 letter to the committee. On Dec. 30, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) penned a damning letter highlighting how Grant’s eSafety has attempted to implement censorship laws that could have a global impact, particularly on Americans. He also pointed out contradictions in her alleged reasons for being unable to come to the United States to give testimony.
Pressing Grant to testify, Jordan expressed concerns about “eSafety’s attempts to mandate global content takedowns, and your collaboration with a U.S. university and other foreign governments to design and implement a global censorship regime.” He cited Australia’s Online Safety Act and its “moderation requirements” for “extraterritorial content.”
Jordan highlighted, “new documents indicate that eSafety harassed American companies ahead of the implementation of the Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) law.” The chairman noted that the Judiciary Committee obtained correspondence, including emails, that indicate that Grant’s eSafety began pressuring U.S. Big Tech platforms to release “public-facing” compliance commitments using the Australian government “template” even before the new law came into effect.
eSafety also “demanded meetings” with companies that resisted immediate compliance, Jordan added. “Similarly, the Communications Ministry, one of the Australian agencies responsible for the implementation of the SMMA, solicited SMMA ‘talking points’ from each platform to demonstrate that they were ‘working collaboratively with the government,’” Jordan quoted.
“In addition, documents show that eSafety formally asked American companies how they planned to ‘mitigate potential circumvention’ of the SMMA law ‘via VPNs,’” the chairman added. This was simply an excuse to expand the censorship regime to the entire world, Jordan argued. All of these actions affect American companies and quite possibly American users.
ICYMI: House Judiciary Wages Pro-Free Speech Battle Against Global Censorship
The Supreme Court grants the committee “broad authority” to gather information from entities within the United States, and since Grant is an American helping run a global censorship regime, the committee can receive information from her about the Australian government too. Jordan, therefore, requested a transcribed interview with Grant and provided a scheduling deadline of January 13.
While Grant claimed she was “not in a position to attend” an interview in the United States, Jordan pointed out that as recently as September 2025 she came to America for a roundtable at Stanford University. At the event she attended, so-called misinformation experts and government officials from around the world planned how to implement a global censorship regime, Jordan noted.
