Elon Musk mocked as an 'egotistical billionaire' by Tanya Plibersek after he refused to remove videos of alleged church stabbing from social media platform X

Tanya Plibersek has branded  Elon Musk an 'egotistical billionaire' after the X owner vowed to defy Australian government demands to remove harmful content from his social media platform. 

Musk mocked the Australian eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, after she ordered the removal of videos showing the alleged livestreamed stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel.

Ms Grant warned that failure to ban these posts would see X, formerly Twitter, face a 'daily fine of $785,000' but the Tesla CEO slammed the move. 

'The Australian censorship commissar is demanding *global* content bans,' Musk wrote on X on Saturday.

Now, Ms Plibersek has hit back, claiming Musk's position 'beggars belief'.  

Elon Musk (pictured) mocked the Australian eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, after she issued a notice of removal of videos showing the alleged livestreamed stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel. Tanya Plibersek has now labelled him an 'egotistical billionaire' 

EXCLUSIVEREAD MORE: Utter futility of Australia's 'world-first' eSafety commissioner exposed: How taxpayer's money is being wasted on an endless game of online whack-a-mole - as it's revealed banned X posts can simply be re-uploaded 

'What is the world coming to?', X owner Elon Musk commented on Daily Mail Australia's original story (pictured)

'This egotistical billionaire thinks it's more important for him to show whatever he wants on X or Twitter or whatever you want to call it today (...) than to respect the victims of the crimes that are being shown on social media, and to protect our Australian community from the harmful impact of showing this terrible stuff,' Ms Plibersek told Sunrise. 

The Environment Minister said the Albanese Labor government had 'quadrupled the budget for the eSafety Commissioner'.   

The internet safety regulator lauds itself as the 'first government agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online'.

'eSafety has powers relating to cyberbullying, image-based abuse, and illegal and harmful online content,' its website states. 

Ms Plibersek said there was now bipartisan support for legislation aimed at tackling misinformation online.  

'We tried to introduce a misinformation and disinformation bill last year,' she added. 

'Sadly the Liberals and the Nationals didn't support it at the time. Peter Dutton and Susan Ley said they will now – that’s good. 

'We need to keep Australians safe from this terrible stuff on social media. 

'Elon Musk doesn't dictate to the Australian Government what we are doing here domestically with our laws.'

It is not the first time Musk and Ms Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, have locked horns. 

Last month, Daily Mail Australia revealed that the online safety watchdog tried to force a Canadian man to delete an 'offensive' post about an Australian UN trans expert.    

Chris Elston, who goes by the name of 'Billboard Chris' on X and lives in Canada, shared a Daily Mail story  about Teddy Cook, a female-to-male trans Australian activist who landed a job on a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert panel drafting care guidelines for trans and non-binary people.

In his post, Mr Elston misgendered Cook and make other 'disparaging' remarks. 

He was served with a 'removal order' by the eSafety Commissioner but refused to delete the post. 

When X subsequently complied with the 'removal order' by geo-blocking the post in Australia, Mr Elston simply re-shared the offending post. 

In a colossal back-fire for the eSafety Commissioner, that post alone has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told reporters last week that while the majority of mainstream social media platforms had engaged with the commissioner over its order to remove videos of the alleged church stabbing, more still needed to be done

In response to this publication's story, Billionaire X owner Musk said: 'What is the world coming to?' 

X, which Musk bought in 2022 when it was called Twitter, later revealed it was suing the Australian government over the removal order to 'protect its user's right to free speech'. 

Ms Inman Grant used to work for Twitter under the old regime prior to becoming the eSafety commissioner in 2016. She receives an annual salary of almost $445,000.

Ms Inman Grant told reporters last week that while the majority of mainstream social media platforms had engaged with the commissioner over its order to remove videos of the alleged church stabbing, more still needed to be done. 

'I am not satisfied enough is being done to protect Australians from this most extreme and gratuitous violent material circulating online,' she said.

'That is why I am exercising my powers under the Online Safety Act to formally compel them to remove it.'