Porter defends ‘flawed’ tech censorship laws

Attorney-General Christian Porter says there will be protections for journalism under his crackdown on tech giants.

Christian Porter and Mitch Fifield. Picture: Gary Ramage

Attorney-General Christian Porter has declared there will be protections for journalism, advocacy, research and artistic works under the Morrison government’s contentious crackdown on tech giants, which passed federal parliament in just two days amid a growing backlash from the tech and media industries.

The passage of the Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material bill, designed to change the behaviour of social media companies and prevent a repeat of the type of livestreaming seen in the Christchurch terror attack, united small and large publishers which condemned the legislation as “risky”.

Media, tech and legal experts warned of unintended consequences after the legislation was drafted in weeks and sailed through both chambers of parliament.

Atlassian boss Mike Cannon-Brookes joined the revolt and described­ the “flawed” bill’s passage­ as a sad day for Australia’s technology industry. “No one is complaining that this content should be allowed on the internet. But it is very different to say this is the right bill to do it. It’s not,” Mr Cannon-Brookes said.

Under the legislation, social media and other company executives could be jailed for up to three years or a company fined 10 per cent of its annual global turnover if it failed to quickly remove the conten­t within a reasonable time.

Platforms around the world would also have to notify the Australian Federal Police if they knew their service was streaming abhorrent violent conduct that occurred or was occurring in Australia, or face fines of up to $168,000 for an individual or $840,000 for a ­corporation.

“The bill does include defences to the offence in certain circumstances,” Mr Porter said. They include­ “for law-enforcement pur­pos­es where the material relates to a news or current affairs report that is in the public interest, for court and tribunal proceedings where the accessibility of the materia­l is for lawful advocacy purposes and where the access­ibility of the material relates to research­ or artistic works created in good faith”.

Digital Industry Group managing director Sunita Bose said the legislation created “immediate uncertaint­y” for Australia’s technology industry and lashed the “pass it now, change it later” approac­h adopted by the Coalition and Labor.

“It threatens employees within any company that has user-generated content to be potentially ­jailed for the misuse of their services­, even if they are unaware of it. This is not how legislation should be made in a democracy like Australia,” Ms Bose said.

Attempting to fend off any election attack from the Coalition on Labor’s national security policies, opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus said his party supporte­d the bill despite listing eight potential problems with it.

“If a Shorten Labor government is elected in May, we will refer this law to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for consultation and comprehensive review,’’ he said.

“Neither proper consultation nor proper review has occurred as this chaotic and desperate government careens towards the ­election.’’

Mr Porter said he had decided not to exempt mainstream media from the new criminal offences becaus­e the law had to be the “same for everyone”.

The Law Council of Australia said important news could now be censored across social media platforms­, contrary to the democratic principle of a free press.

Additional reporting: David Swan