Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about misinformation, and I particularly rise to talk about Labor's draft Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 in light of the recent Voice referendum. I think we can have a look at a real-life experiment in what is branded as misinformation and would potentially be labelled as misinformation under this misguided, poorly drafted, poorly thought through Labor misinformation bill. In fact, on the night of the referendum result, we had Labor ministers talking about the impact of misinformation on the vote. I think the day after the referendum we had the Greens leader talking about how misinformation legislation was now urgent and how we had to pass misinformation laws because of what had happened in the referendum. The Australian people can now judge Labor's misinformation bill against what occurred in the referendum.

Let's use as our source a journalistic outfit that I don't think anyone would say leans to the right of politics. Let's look at the Guardian. They happened to publish an article called 'Voice referendum: factchecking the seven biggest pieces of misinformation pushed by the no side'. Here we have from the Guardian a list of what they consider to be the seven biggest pieces of misinformation out there. I won't go through them all, for the sake of time, but I'll go through the top four. To be perfectly honest, I think the other three are pretty marginal—a long bow to draw—and certainly were never raised with me once throughout the referendum campaign. But let's have a look at the others that the Guardian call misinformation, which, therefore, are at risk of falling foul of Labor's misinformation bill. Let's see if they would fall foul of that bill and if they should rightly be characterised as misinformation.

The claim that the Guardian first says is misinformation is that the proposal was legally risky. Even proponents and people who said they were going to vote yes, with extensive legal backgrounds, said that there was legal risk involved. Malcolm McCusker KC, a very well known juris from Western Australia, made it very clear that, in his considered view, there were legal risks in the proposal in front of the Australian people. But who said it wasn't legally risky? Let's consider this for a moment: the Solicitor-General. Under Labor's misinformation bill, a source that comes from the government cannot be misinformation, but a source that comes from anywhere else in the community, like from a private citizen, can. Those social media platforms, when assessing whether the Voice was legally risky—or whether the proposition that the Voice was legally risky is a piece of misinformation—would say: 'There's a government solicitor saying that it's not. Governments can't say misinformation; therefore it must be misinformation.'

They are going to tend to trust, under the government's own legislation, the government source, so suddenly the claim that the voice was legally risky has the potential to become misinformation, which is just a nonsense. There were clear legal risks involved. It was clearly an important point that needed to be highlighted in the debate. It was clear from jurists—even jurists who supported the 'yes' case—that there were legal risks involved. So how could it possibly be that that would be misinformation?

The second piece of supposed misinformation that the Guardian puts forward is that the Voice was divisive. Well, that is a political argument. It's not a piece of misinformation. You can say it's not a divisive proposal—fine. You can argue the point, as Senator Scarr said. It's an opinion. But to label it as misinformation, particularly if a government source then put out something to say that it wasn't divisive—suddenly then the social media platforms would have to think very hard about taking down any comment from anyone such as Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as saying that the voice is divisive would potentially fall foul, would potentially be misinformation as the Guardian labels it.

The third piece of supposed misinformation that the Guardian puts out is that the Voice would lead to treaty. Well, the slogan was 'voice, treaty, truth'. You can argue if you want to it wasn't a foregone conclusion, but the idea that this wasn't part of the thinking, part of overall process that was being put forward, again, is a political debating point. It's not a statement of whether something is misinformation or whether it isn't. Yet, again, to go back to Labor's misinformation bill, something from a government source is protected. It's assumed to be truth. The Prime Minister said this wasn't leading to treaty, so, therefore, the opposite case suddenly becomes misinformation. Suddenly you can't make the argument. It's going to be taken down on social media.

The last one—point No. 4—is almost the most humorous. The Guardian article puts forward as misinformation that the Voice had no detail. Well, to me that was an absolute statement of fact. The government said that they weren't going to put forward the detail, because that was up to the parliament to decide. They said that there was no detail there. To say that that is a piece of misinformation is, I think, the height of hypocrisy.

We can see with these examples very clearly how labelling something as misinformation, particularly when protections are put in this draft bill that make government sources of information protected, and then relying on social media companies to judge the question of misinformation versus truth against an arbitrary standard but one where the government speaks the truth—what is that social media platform inevitably going to default to? It's going to default to the safe position, which is that the government said it and the government doesn't speak misinformation; therefore, everybody else's opinion is misinformation. That, if you think about it for just a few seconds, is an extremely dangerous world and an extremely dangerous proposition to put forward in a democratic society.

The fact is we did have a referendum. The Australian people did get to speak. They spoke with a clear voice and a very loud voice that this proposal wasn't to be supported. But, in doing so, it is also very clear that the government's misinformation bill, if it had been in place prior to the referendum going forward, would have shut down numerous voices, would have shut down numerous key, reasonable arguments for why this Voice was opposed and should have been opposed by the Australian people.

The fact is many Australians who I spoke to in the course of the last four or five months did consider this proposal to be legally risky. No matter the opinion of the solicitor-general, they did believe that the Voice was divisive. No matter the statements from government ministers, they did believe that there was a link between, as the slogan goes, voice, treaty, truth, and it was quite reasonable for those issues to be discussed in a political context. Any legislation that threatens that discussion is a dagger pointed at the heart of democracy and that is why we should all be staunchly opposed to Labor's misinformation bill. In fact, it should never see the light of day in this place.