Labor is about to create two classes of free speech, but the Coalition can stop them
While Australians may not be free speech absolutists, they do have a strong allergy to class systems, tech companies, politicians, and powerful people having a lend, writes James Morrow.
Opinion
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Here’s the good news: The Coalition appears, just possibly, ready to take the fight to Labor over its misinformation bill.
On Sunday, shadow communications minister David Coleman told my Sky News colleague Andrew Clennell, “we in the Coalition will always stand up for free speech.”
That’s great so far as it goes, but now for the bad news.
As vital to a functioning democracy as free speech may be, if the Coalition tries to turn the misinformation bill into a battle over freedom of expression they will almost surely lose.
The reason is depressingly simple.
In Australia, if you set something up as a battle between safety and freedom, safety wins the day nine times out of 10.
Just think about how things played out when then-attorney general George Brandis defended the classically liberal view that people have a “right to be bigots”, or the way premiers saw their popularity rise during the pandemic with every new restriction.
Those who drafted the legislation must have had this in mind: The word “harm” appears no less than 26 times in the proposed law.
So rather than a culture war, allow this column to suggest a better way to knock this thing on the head.
While Australians may not be free speech absolutists, they do have a strong allergy to class systems, tech companies, politicians, and powerful people having a lend.
If the Coalition really wants to defeat this bill – which is sadly is in keeping with efforts to limit what the great unwashed can read, say, or think in Western democracies around the globe – this is the way forward.
Point out that if the misinformation bill gets up, members of certain “elite” professions will have more rights than others, while at the same time the messy business of deciding what is and is not allowable speech will be pushed into the laps of Big Tech.
Because, under the terms of the legislation, Australians will have different rights to say what they think depending on what they do for a living.
Down in paragraph 16 of the bill parody and satire, “professional news content”, as well as academic, artistic, scientific, and religious content, are given a pass.
If this column were to question one of the things the bill seeks to protect, namely “the efficacy of public health measures in Australia”, by criticizing vape bans or punishingly high alcohol taxes there wouldn’t be a problem.
Yet others might find their posts blocked or taken down by their social media providers, who the legislation puts in the frame for stopping the spread of anything that doesn’t accord with the government’s official narrative (aka “misinformation”).
Likewise, Treasurer Jim Chalmers can go out and pick a fight with the RBA and accuse it of smashing up the Australian economy.
But ordinary Australians taking the same view might find themselves censored by social media companies not wanting to risk crippling fines from government communications bureaucrats.
These are just two examples, but the legislation is shockingly broad.
In the explanatory memorandum for the law, not only bald-faced lies but “opinions, claims, commentary, and invective” that causes “serious harm” are captured.
That same explanatory memorandum hints around how charges of “misinformation” might be used to shape the narrative, or stigmatise uncomfortable conversations, around issues like immigration and culture.
It even admits that tech platforms could be incentivized by the bill’s provisions to “take an overly cautious approach to the regulation … or in other words, they could have a ‘chilling effect.’”
But this it waves away these concerns, “because they pursue a legitimate aim.”
See the problem?
The bill creates a two-tier system. The government, being effectively exempt, can spread any sort of misinformation in service of its agenda.
Meanwhile, those who think differently could be censored, not directly by the state but by social media platforms – those always trustworthy outfits to whom censorship will be effectively outsourced.
This is already happening in some policy areas, like nuclear energy.
Recently the ALP set up a website for Australians to report misinformation which led to young nuclear activist Will Shackel reporting Labor for its own inaccurate and misleading scare campaigns around atomic energy.
Yet at the same time the government was pushing its three eyed fish anti-nuclear propaganda, users of Facebook, owned by Meta, found the service shutting down their ability to share content from Shackel’s group Nuclear for Australia.
If you think the Big Tech companies are politicized now, just wait until they have the cover of government legislation.
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