Coalition to say ‘no’ to Labor’s misinformation bill

The Coalition has committed to formally opposing Labor’s misinformation bill in parliament, after months of concerns over the risk it may pose to free speech.

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

The Coalition has committed to formally opposing Labor’s misinformation bill in parliament, after months of concerns over the risk it may pose to free speech.

Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman said the bill, which was withdrawn by Labor in November and redrafted following harsh criticism of its overreach, had “no place in Australia”.

“The Bill gives digital platforms an enormous financial incentive to censor statements made by everyday Australians. If the government decides that they have not censored enough ‘misinformation’, they can face large fines,” Mr Coleman said.

“Digital platforms don’t care about the free speech of Australians – but they do care about their profits. So they will censor large amounts of material in order to avoid the risk of fines. Digital platforms cannot be fined for censoring too much material – but they can be fined if they do not censor enough material.”

Mr Coleman added that the Bill, which Labor hopes to pass before the end of the year, was “extremely broad” and would capture many things said by Australians every day.

“The process of identifying … ‘misinformation’ is highly subjective and will lead to the suppression of the free speech of Australians,” he said.

“Everyday Australians are captured by the bill, but some groups are excluded from its operation. For instance, any ‘reasonable dissemination’ of material for an academic, scientific, or artistic purpose is excluded from the bill, but if an everyday Australian disagrees with an academic, that can be ‘misinformation’.

Mr Coleman warned such provisions in the “created two classes of speech in Australia – one for favoured groups, and one for everybody else”.

“This is outrageous,” he said.

The Coalition also holds concerns about the communications minister being given power to personally order “misinformation investigations and misinformation hearings”.

This could include investigations and hearings into digital platforms which the Minister believes contain too much ‘misinformation’.

“This is wide open to abuse and an extraordinary power for a Minister to hold in a democracy,” Mr Coleman said.

“On the other side of the coin, the Minister can choose to exclude a favoured digital platform from the operation of the misinformation laws entirely.”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has maintained the rejigged bill got the balance right between protecting Australians against harmful misinformation and not undermining free speech.

“The Albanese Government has consulted extensively on the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, including with the release of an exposure draft for public comment, the publication of submissions and further targeted consultation with experts,” she said.

“Misinformation and disinformation threatens the safety and wellbeing of Australians, and undermines our society and democracy. Doing nothing is not an option – and 80 per cent of Australians agree on the need to act.”

But Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said he still held concerns about any government body being the judge of truth and the impact this could have on freedom of speech.

Mr Cope, who stressed he was still considering the changes in the updated bill as he worked towards the “ridiculous” deadline of September 30 to complete his submission, said he was not so far convinced his concerns about the bill had been addressed.

“A government body is creating these codes, and these codes require the social media entities to remove misinformation and disinformation, that is information which is not true, and if they don’t, they’re subject to civil penalties.

“So the government – through the ACMA – is deciding what’s true and false and politics is full of all sorts of claims which are just value judgments.

Mr Cope said he was still considering if changes to the latest version of the bill to specify that misinformation was content which caused “serious harm” were sufficient to address his concerns, though his “gut reaction is probably not”.

“There’s a difference between a regulation in relation to say, what the doctors says to their patients, most of the time that is the subject of that can be demonstrated scientifically,” he said.

“But you know, if some politician stands up and says, ‘the RBA’s inflation target is a load of rubbish’. That’s a contested political judgement. Somebody could say, ‘that’s undermining the Australian economy’, because that’s a contested political statement.”