Freedom of speech concerns aside, Labor’s disinformation bill won’t work

The misinformation bill creates the possibility that more people suspicious of government and its overreach will fall into the charlatans’ orbits, writes Jack the Insider.

The Albanese government has released a draft or exposure bill for public discussion in an effort to control the dissemination of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms.

On cue, the Liberal Party reacted with horror, replete with condemnation from the Shadow Communications Minister, David Coleman.

“This is a very bad bill. The government should rip it up,” Mr Coleman said. “Freedom of speech is fundamental to our democracy, and the Coalition will always fight for it.”

“The bill gives the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) extraordinary powers. It would lead to digital companies self-censoring the legitimately held views of Australians to avoid the risk of massive fines.”

Back in 2022 and in government, the then Minister for Communications, Paul Fletcher took a different view, responding to a report from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) which highlighted what the authority regarded as inadequate systems in place on social media platforms to control the spread of misinformation.

“ACMA’s report highlights that disinformation and misinformation are significant and ongoing issues,” Minister Fletcher said in March last year.

“Digital platforms must take responsibility for what is on their sites and take action when harmful or misleading content appears. This is our government’s clear expectation and just as we have backed that expectation with action in recently passing the new Online Safety Act, we are taking action when it comes to disinformation and misinformation.”

Mr Fletcher then promised legislation to beef up the powers of ACMA, much as the Labor’s draft bill purports to do. Alas, the 2022 federal election intervened, ending any hopes the Coalition would etch its response to the problems of disinformation and misinformation into black letter law.

The Liberal Party position is a triple somersault with pike in the space of 15 months. The judges are reaching for their perfect 10 scorecards. Isn’t it amazing what a spell in opposition can do?

But let’s push on from the innate hypocrisy of party politics.

Fringe political movements are in uproar with the bill. Their preferred means of digital communications is the platform Telegram and it is ablaze with everyone from Nazis down in meltdown. I’m always of the view that anything neo-Nazis think is a bad idea is definitely an idea worthy of consideration.

The word most commonly used to describe the bill is “Orwellian” conjuring up images of thought and mind control. It is amusing to see extremists on the right use the phrase absent from reading any of Orwell’s works. Psst … Guys, Orwell was a socialist.

The Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland has released the draft bill for community discussion and public submissions. That is appropriate given the potential it has for placing further limits on freedom of expression in this country.

Earlier this week, the Victorian Bar Council published its submission to what is formally known as the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023.

The Council’s President, Sam Hay KC, said the bill would have a “chilling effect” if enacted.

“The Bar acknowledges the potential harm posed by the rapid and wide dissemination of false or otherwise harmful information online. However, the Bar is concerned that the bill’s response to that danger is insufficiently sensitive to, and protective of, freedom of expression and related privacy interests,” the submission stated.

But it was further down in the Council’s submission that got to the heart of the matter.

“The bill’s response to false information thus does not seem warranted. It may even be counter-productive when one recalls that the purveyors of so-called misinformation and disinformation are often part of relatively small online communities who are brought together by feelings of isolation and distrust of the state.”

Lofty notions of freedom of speech aside, this bill won’t work because the spread of disinformation is so targeted, so insidious and so fast in its spread, any attempt to police it is merely playing catch up. We already have laws which protect people from harm.

The exposure bill offers one example of disinformation, that of promoting bleach drinking. Indeed Michelle Rowland has cited this example in her most recent public comments. I am not sure if Ms Rowland is playing politics with Trump’s unforgettable remarks in 2020 about ingesting bleach, comments which he later described as “sarcasm.”

Bleach drinking predates Trump’s remarks by decades. People have been drawn to it by social media charlatans who claim the ingestion of a form of bleach known as MMS – Miracle Mineral Supplement is an almost universal panacea for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, HIV, and autism in children, often administered by enema. In more recent times, it was promoted as a cure for Covid.

There have been deaths and serious injuries. If there has been any divine intervention, it is that people have miraculously not died in greater numbers.

The major distributor of this particular form of snake oil is the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing. Based in the US, the Church flogs MMS through its network of followers. The Church and assorted mountebanks have been busily promoting MMS into Africa and South America.

In 2012, the Queensland Office of Fair Trading handed down a court order prohibiting a Mackay woman from “making any claims she is able to treat, cure, or benefit any person suffering from cancer” after she was found to have charged patients up to $2000 a consultation and injecting them with MMS.

How would the bill prevent this? Might I suggest if you’re standing in someone’s garage about to receive a needle containing an attenuated form of bleach into your bloodstream, the actions of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk or Michelle Rowland, are not going to help you.

MMS and its promotion provide a clear case of disinformation. People have died, many more hospitalised with serious injuries. Regulators intervene, prosecutions are made but the charlatans move on to different jurisdictions and they continue to prey on vulnerable and susceptible people.

The world would be a better place without MMS or its promoters. We haven’t really come that far from the snake oil salesmen of the 19th Century. It’s just that these con-artists have a global reach through social media. MMS is available for sale at Amazon where it is described as “a household disinfectant.”

Gullible people exist as do those who prey upon them. It’s unpleasant, awful and at times lethal but wishing the problem away by legislation is a fool’s errand. More so, it creates the possibility that more people suspicious of government and its overreach will fall into the charlatans’ orbits.

Hypocrisy aside, David Coleman is right. The best place for this bill is in the bin.