David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) the Government is seeking to impose new misinformation laws in Australia which are deeply flawed;

(b) even before submissions closed on 20 August, the Government's exposure draft bill had already been the subject of an avalanche of criticism;

(c) some of the most vocal criticisms have come from leading lawyers who have clinically taken the Government's bill apart, piece by piece; and

(d) the Minister appears to have had few defenders of her plan;

(2) acknowledges that, under the Government's exposure draft bill:

(a) the definition of 'misinformation' is so broad that it could capture many statements made by Australians in the context of political debate;

(b) authorised content by the Government cannot be misinformation, but criticisms of the Government by ordinary Australians can be misinformation;

(c) nothing an academic says can be misinformation, but statements by somebody disagreeing with an academic can be misinformation;

(d) good faith statements made by entertainers cannot be misinformation, but good faith statements made by ordinary Australians on political matters can be misinformation;

(e) journalists commenting on their personal digital platforms could have their content removed as misinformation; and

(f) if the Minister has a favoured digital platform, then that platform could be entirely removed from the application of the misinformation laws;

(3) condemns the Government for delivering this appalling exposure draft of the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023; and

(4) calls on the Government to:

(a) admit that the Government's plan is deeply flawed; and

(b) bin the bill.

The government's misinformation bill is one of the most disturbing pieces of legislation ever put forward by an Australian government. It strikes at the heart of our democratic rights, and it is an absolute disgrace. I'll come, point by point, to the extraordinary things that are in the bill. But do you know what this bill has done that's extraordinary? It's united absolutely everyone, because everyone is out against this bill, whether it's the civil liberties groups, the Human Rights Commission, religious institutions, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance or the Law Council of Australia. I note that the shadow minister was formerly an esteemed director of the institution, and they have absolutely eviscerated this bill. And so they should, because it is just horribly bad.

We only know about those submissions because those organisations have taken the step of self-publishing, because, despite these submissions closing two weeks ago, they still haven't been published by the government. I understand there are many thousands—maybe even tens of thousands—of submissions on this extraordinary bill, but we don't know what they are because the government still hasn't released them. They need to be released.

The reason everyone is opposed to the bill is that it's just extraordinary. Here's what it does. It says that, 'Misinformation includes a statement which is unintentionally false, misleading, or deceptive.' Think about that. How many things do Australians say every day that someone might say were unintentionally false, misleading or deceptive? Quite a lot—thousands. Under this bill, if ACMA, the regulator, determines that digital companies aren't doing enough to remove that sort of content, and if it's capable of contributing to so-called 'serious harm', they can get massive fines—fines, potentially, into the billions of dollars. So what are those digital companies going to do? They're going to remove the free speech of Australians. They can either run the risk of falling foul of ACMA and exposing themselves to massive fines, or they can remove a whole lot of the free speech of Australians. So what are they going to do? Of course they're going to remove that free speech.

You know what's remarkable? The government has included some exceptions to this rule on free speech. One of the exceptions is for the Albanese government itself. Anything the Albanese government authorises cannot be misinformation under the bill, but criticisms of the Albanese government can be misinformation. Anything that an academic says cannot be misinformation, but criticisms of that academic can be misinformation. If a comedian says something in good faith, that's okay; it can't be misinformation. But what if an Australian says something in good faith about their political beliefs? Well, that can be misinformation. The same applies to religious beliefs, too: there's no exemption whatsoever for religious beliefs under this bill.

This bill doesn't only apply to the digital platforms; it applies to every Australian. As the Law Council of Australia has noted, any Australian is subject to this bill. The Law Council says:

… suspected authors or disseminators of alleged 'misinformation' could be subject to the use of the proposed information-gathering powers.

What that means is that if you don't show up when ACMA, the regulator, asks you to show up to talk about allegations of misinformation, you can be fined $8,000 per day—all of this in one of the great democracies on earth. This is an absolutely extraordinary piece of legislation.

The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties President, Michael Cope, said:

Clearly the government is not and cannot be impartial in deciding the truth in social and political debate.

This puts government regulators in charge of determining what is the truth. In Mr Cope's words:

… the Bill will enable the Authority to inappropriately control significant amounts of political and social speech.

As a government, you don't put out legislation unless you think it's a good idea, so this government put out this legislation because they like this legislation. They want this legislation. They believe in this legislation. When the coalition will fight this legislation every step of the way. We want to bin the bill. If you're opposed to it, sign the petition at binthebill.au to stop this appalling legislation.

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