Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Like the member for Groom giving his passionate address, I also rise to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024. We have seen this before. There was an exposure draft last year. It was condemned by a range of groups including human rights groups, civil liberties groups, lawyers and proponents of free speech in this country and it was withdrawn. What has come back is no better. What has come back is a shocking attack on free speech in this country.

But before I go into detail about what I believe is wrong with this bill, let us talk about the principles that we believe in and that we should believe in in this country. We should believe in free speech and we should believe in the fight to defend it. As the member for Riverina said earlier, there is a memorial not far from here which details the sacrifices and courage a lot of people who went before us in this country showed in order that we could have a free and fair society, and freedom of expression is part of that free and fair society.

I believe in the often-quoted Voltaire line in relation to freedom of speech: 'I disapprove of what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.' That should underpin and indeed has underpinned the principles of Australian society. It is what makes living in Australia and comparative free nations in North America and Europe different to the lives of people who live in regimes in parts of Asia, in Eastern Europe pre-1990, when those freedoms were not afforded to those people and those societies did not succeed.

Some people come into my office and I fundamentally disagree with them. I fundamentally disagree with them, but isn't it great that we live in a society where they can come into their local member's office, put positions that are at odds with what I believe but that I am obligated to listen to them? I don't want their right to put those views on social media to be taken away from them, even though I disagree with those views. This happens on a regular basis.

The key problem with the government's misinformation bill is it has a very broad definition of what 'misinformation' is. That captures opinions that can be held in good faith. There is no requirement in this bill that the maker of the statement is actually maliciously intending to deceive people. If something is reasonably verifiable as misleading and reasonably likely to cause and contribute serious harm, it can be captured as misinformation. We use the word 'reasonable' a lot in this place, and it's in a lot of laws. What's reasonable, and who decides what is reasonable?

I'm just going to give you an example of something. Liberal Senator Chandler said something in the Tasmanian newspaper the Mercury in 2020. I'm not commenting on the issue itself; I'm commenting on the reaction as to whether her comment was reasonable or not. Senator Chandler said:

You don't have to be a bigot to recognise the differences between the male and female sexes and understand why women's sports, single sex change rooms and toilets are important.

Now, there will be people who don't agree with that. I think it's a pretty reasonably held view, but this is what Tasmania's Anti-Discrimination Commissioner said in relation to that. It determined that 'a reasonable person is likely to anticipate that a person who is a member of the LGBTIQ+ and gender-diverse community would be humiliated, intimidated, offended and insulted' by that comment. I use that example just to show where some of this bureaucratic reasonable opinion can lead us.

The definition of 'serious harm' in this is also broad. It's possible that a large amount of material could be captured as serious harm, and this can happen in areas such as elections—we're going to fight an election campaign next year, and I want that to be a battle of ideas; I don't want people banned from putting up on social media things that they believe to be true—and referendums—and we've been through this. It also includes—and I love this one—imminent harm to the economy or financial markets. I might quote our shadow minister for communications, who commented that 'imminent harm to the economy or financial markets' could cover just about all of the Greens' economic policies.

Digital platforms will face huge fines for failing to manage misinformation and disinformation, and they'll be incentivised to censor content. Platforms will self-censor. Given the broad definitions of 'misinformation' and 'serious harm', that censorship will capture legitimately held views of Australians.

The legislation endows the Minister for Communications with extraordinary powers. The minister can personally order misinformation investigations and hearings on his or her terms. A lot of people have invoked George Orwell in this place—the Ministry of Truth. It's a slippery slope to a place where we don't want to go. There are existing powers which now could be used under this bill to order ACMA to conduct specific investigations. The minister can order public hearings. The only constraint on that power is that it cannot relate to particular content posted on a digital community platform by a single end user identifiable by ACMA. I think the way this bill is drafted means that it's open to political abuse, and that's inconsistent with what our democratic values are and should be.

Also, different classes are treated unequally by this bill. Anything that is reasonably distributed for an academic purpose cannot be misinformation, but the same exemption does not apply to everyday Australians, so there's a bit of elitism creeping in there. The same exemption rules apply to anything that is distributed for an artistic or scientific purposes or things said for the purpose of parody or satire. If something appears in professional news content, it cannot be misinformation. But, if that same view or a contrary view were put outside professional news content—and, let's face it, a lot is in our discourse—it could be misinformation. This also applies to journalists, who would be protected in publishing within professional news content but not on their personal social media.

This is our view in parliament, but let's have a listen to what some other people have said on Labor's misinformation bill. There was a terrific contribution to the Senate inquiry from the Victorian Bar association, and I'm going to quote from that submission:

… the Bill's interference with the self-fulfilment of free expression will occur primarily by the chilling self-censorship it will inevitably bring about in the individual users of the relevant services (who may rationally wish to avoid any risk of being labelled a purveyor of misinformation or disinformation).

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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. The perceived silencing or targeting of these groups is unlikely to address the underlying social problems animating the dissemination of false information. It is widely accepted in liberal democratic societies that it is better to fight information with information and to attempt to persuade rather than coerce people towards positions grounded in evidence and fact.

That brings me back to what I said earlier. This is why our society has flourished and Western society has flourished—because we combat bad ideas with good ideas. Some people might think, 'Their idea is bad; my idea is good,' but that discourse is important. Rather than shut down the debate, let's win it. The societies that I talked about, such as eastern Europe in the latter part of the 20th century, just sought to shut it down. That's a dangerous way for society to go.

Some faith groups have had some things to say on this bill. The Australian Christian Lobby said:

There is no excuse for what's proposed in this bill.

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Where the government should be safeguarding the free speech of Australians, it will instead require social media to control our public discourse. From public health to politics to the economy and ideology, how this bill defines harm will determine what you are allowed to say online.

The Australian Jewish Association submitted concerns:

… it is not the role of a government or regulatory authority to censor political speech or opinion, nor should the government or regulatory authority be the arbiter of truth.

There is overwhelming opposition to this bill, and that's with good reason. The problem with limiting free speech is: who gets to decide what the limits are and who it is applied to? This is what New South Wales Solicitor-General Michael Sexton said about the legislation:

It targets contestable political opinions on social media and is based on the patronising assumption that members of the community cannot make a judgment about those opinions but must be protected from the obvious inadequacies of their judgment.

It's paternalism. It underestimates the capacity of Australians to make up their own minds.

In a democratic society, we might not always like the result that Australians come to. I didn't particularly like the result of the previous election in Australia, except for the seat of Nicholls, but it was a free and fair contest of ideas, and the Australian people made up their minds. Next year, the Australian people are going to make up their minds on how good they think this government has been, and people should be able to express that. Even in question time today, there was an attempt to have some legitimate opinions that were put forward ruled out of questions, and those were that this is the weakest and most incompetent government since the Whitlam government. That's a view that some people will have. It's a view that other people will disagree with. But let's have the debate. Let's have the discussion. Let's put the ideas out there, and the Australian people can make their minds up. I think this bill will restrict Australians' free expression, and I think it will diminish our democracy, and that is why I oppose the bill.

See this speech in context