Read the tweets that the Australian government didn't want you to see during the Covid-19 pandemic
The Federal Government pushed for the removal of a tweet that accused Dan Andrews of being 'a d*ck' because it was 'potentially harmful, new information released from shows. The tweet was one of 222 posts that Australia's Department of Home Affairs requested Twitter's main office in San Francisco to take down via email, according to internal documents released by . The Federal Government sent a total of 18 emails to the social media company that called for certain posts to be deleted. The posts the government sought to remove were published during the pandemic and attacked Australian politicians, including state premiers and federal MPs. Among those was a post that featured a picture of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews wearing a mask captioned: 'This Mask is as Useless as Me'. Another asserted that former Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt used 'emotionally manipulative language'. A third called Australians 'not only clowns, but the entire circus' for waiting 'seven hours in a line' for a PCR test. 'By claiming that Covid-19 vaccines are 'experimental and untested' while photoshopping ... the faces of Gladys Berejiklian, Daniel Andrews and Annastacia Palaszczuk onto the heads of Islamic State terrorists... the post undermines confidence in the Covid-19 vaccination program,' the government told Twitter in reference to a fourth tweet. The government pushed to censor or remove 4,213 posts across all social media platforms over a period of three years, with that figure detailed in a freedom of information request launched by Liberal senator Alex Antic. The requests for the takedown of social media content came from the 'Extremism Insights and Communication' branch of the Social Cohesion Unit of the Department of Home Affairs, the Twitter files show. 'It is entirely unclear to me why the Department of Home Affairs, a department which is primarily charged with the duty of overseeing matters like border control, has been using a backdoor arrangement with social media companies to influence the media in relation into matters such as public health,' Mr Antic said. 'On what basis is the department qualified to determine the truth associated with Covid related matters,' he asked.