George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Firstly, can I thank the member for Kennedy for his enthusiasm in seconding it. Can I thank also the member for Wide Bay who seconds the notice of motion and is also here in the hope that he would be the one rising to second it. Thanks to Senator Matt Canavan for his work on this issue and the Nationals backbench policy committee, who have been deliberating on this issue for some time.

This bill really seeks to reinforce one of our commitments to civil and political rights, through the international convention on civil and political rights, and I particularly refer to article 19, which states:

Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference—

'without interference'. It also states:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice—

or her choice. What we find today is that we have a grave problem with foreign social media services. We're talking about big tech. We're talking about outfits like Facebook, outfits like Twitter, outfits like Google and YouTube, outfits like Instagram, outfits like WeChat, outfits like TikTok which have become notoriously censorious of political discourse. In fact, in its biggest example, the then leader of the free world, the former President of the United States Donald Trump was taken down off a fair few of these platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter. That was much to the delight of the Left across the world. But US venture capitalist Fred Wilson, one of the early investors in Twitter, who is Left leaning and who doesn't like Donald Trump said—and it behoves all of those who delighted about the former president being removed from social media to listen to these words:

I think it is problematic that Twitter has this much power. Not only are they silencing Trump, they are taking away his tens of millions of followers, and they are prohibiting all of his followers from seeing his tweets.

We should be careful what we wish for. This is a slippery slope we are heading down.

…   …   …

This should be a warning sign to everyone in DC; the Senators, the Representatives, the folks leaving the White House and the folks entering it. He who kills the king becomes the king.

I'll repeat those words from Fred Wilson:

He who kills the king becomes the king.

We have now so much power invested in this big tech oligarchy. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union are not known for their like for President Trump or their like for right wing political views, but their senior legislative counsel, Kate Ruane, said:

… it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions …

That's where we're at: these platforms now form the public square; they form the place where ideas are debated, where ideas are put forward, where discussion ensues. We now have these big tech oligarchies controlling that space where political, philosophical, ideological, cultural and social discourse goes on all around the world, including in this nation.

At least two members of parliament in this place have been removed, cancelled, by these big tech outfits—one of which is my friend the member for Hughes. Whatever you think of his views, he's an elected member of parliament. He wasn't saying anything that was illegal either on Facebook or on YouTube. He had a video of a speech given to this place removed from YouTube. Further than that, he had his entire profile taken off Facebook and Instagram. I can also refer to the member for Cook, the Prime Minister, who had his posts removed from WeChat. They were not particularly unlawful. They weren't particularly egregious. He was simply putting forward the views of the Australian government to people of Chinese ethnicity in this country, but he was taken off WeChat. We had a foreign social media service, ostensibly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, silencing the Prime Minister of this country in his own country. If that does not ring alarm bells, I don't know what does in this place.

The 1688 Bills of Rights, something that all parliamentarians should read up on, established modern democracy, and the Westminster democracy that we're a part of in this place. The Bill of Rights said:

That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.

Yet we have big tech taking down from their platforms videos they don't like of parliamentary proceedings, debates and even quotes from debates.

It extends from members of parliament to media organisations. Sky News had many videos removed from YouTube not for illegal things, again, but because they breached what these big tech outfits call their community standards. There's another term for community standards; it's call editorial guidelines, but these outfits pretend that they're not publishers, and by calling them community guidelines rather than editorial guidelines they gets away with it and they don't face defamation. They can't have it both ways. They can't be editors that are chopping and changing content on their platforms and not be liable for things that are said on those platforms. But I would prefer that free speech was let run unabated on these platforms, except for illegal speech or defamatory content.

The fact is that foreign social media services are interfering with the political discourse in this country. I have outlined that already. In this parliament, we have protected big news media against foreign social media services, or, at least, we've put the money of big tech into the pockets of big news corporations in this country, but we have done nothing to protect the little people out there. My bill seeks to do that in two respects. It gives a terminology of protected persons, which forms the pillars of democracy in this country. It says that there should be no censorship against lawful content from politicians, political candidates, political parties, journalists and news organisations. At the same time, it would provide recourse for people who are censored for their philosophical discourse on social media, allow them a pathway to go to the Australian Communications and Media Authority to adjudicate whether it was right for that censorship to occur, and, if it doesn't, in both instances, there would be fines of over $1 million against these big tech outfits. This is very important.

I will close with a large quote from Joel Kotkin. It explains everything. Read the book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. It reads:

Not satisfied with controlling information pipelines, the tech oligarchs have been moving to shape content as well. Controllers like those at Facebook and Twitter seek to "curate" content on their sites, or even eliminate views they find objectionable, which tend to be conservative views, according to former employees. Algorithms intended to screen out "hate groups" often spread a wider net, notes one observer, since the programmers have trouble distinguishing between "hate groups" and those who might simply express views that conflict with the dominant culture of Silicon Valley. That managers of social media platforms aim to control content is not merely the perception of conservatives. Over 70 percent of Americans believe that social media platforms "censor political views" according to a recent Pew study. With their quasi-monopoly status, Facebook and Google don't have to worry about competing with anyone, as the tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel observes, so they can indulge their own prejudices to a greater extent than the businesses that might be concerned about alienating customers. With their tightening control over media content, the tech elite are now situated to exert a cultural predominance that is unprecedented in the modern era. It recalls the cultural influence of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, but with more advanced technology.

This bill is important. It provides for no less than safeguarding of Australian democracy against the big tech oligarchy that threatens to remake the world, including our country, in their own woke image. We need to act before it's too late.

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