James Morrow: Labor’s Withdrawal of the misinformation bill is a double embarassment for weak Labor
Not only does the waiving of the white flag on misinformationshow misplaced priorities of a government that should be laser focused on fixing our economy, it also reveals how weak Labor is, writes James Morrow.
Opinion
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The Albanese government’s decision to withdraw its creepy and fatally flawed misinformation bill is a double embarrassment for Labor.
Not only does it show the misplaced priorities of a government that should be laser focused on fixing our shuddering economy, but it also reveals how weak Labor is in a parliament where it is increasingly dependent on the Greens and crossbenchers.
Like the Voice, the misinformation bill was from the start an elite project.
While academics, journalists, and government agencies would have been given a pass under the legislation, the honestly held opinions of every day citizens could have been censored if they were deemed dangerous.
Ironically, in attempting to sell the bill, communications minister Michelle Rowland was herself accused of spreading misinformation.
Earlier this year she cited claims about people ingesting beach to cure COVID to sell the bill - a clear shot at US president elect Donald Trump who for years has been falsely accused of suggesting the remedy.
Had Rowland or her many advisors bothered to check the internet they are so scared of letting the rest of us use unfettered, she would have found that even the left wing factcheck site Snopes.com had debunked the claim.
But there is a warning here as well to those who opposed this effort to censor the internet by a government that takes George Orwell’s 1984 not as a warning but as an instruction manual.
Labor didn’t have a sudden road to Damascus moment and figure out that the best cure for false information and bad ideas is more information and robust debate.
Nor did they stop and look at how so much of what was official truth during the Covid pandemic turned out to be wrong — and just how much so called misinformation turned out to be true.
Instead they realised they couldn’t get it through the senate, which suggests both that Labor is incredibly weak — and that they will try this on again.
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