Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Senate to acknowledge the shocking flaws in Labor's misinformation bill, and for the Government to categorically rule out reintroducing it

Today we had the withdrawal of a bill that should never have seen the light of day. I heard speakers earlier today talk about what it was meant to be but what it wasn't. It all comes down to a confluence of many things. The bill, in reality, ended up being three things. It ended up being a bill on disinformation, a bill on misinformation and a bill on accessing data on social media platforms. One of those things had merit. What I hear in this place is exactly one of the problems we had with it: misinformation and disinformation merging; people's real views out there in the world—people's freedom of political expression—and freedom of information merged with inauthentic, unreal bot disinformation.

That was just the beginning of what we saw. This bill tried to fix a credible area around disinformation and inauthentic and non-state actors doing things, but it tried to do it by silencing people at home, people out there with true beliefs, people who want to progress thought in this country. I have many signs around my office walls to annoy my staff. I have Sun Tzu, I have Patton—I have all these things. I think of the George Patton one in my conference room: 'When everyone is thinking the same, someone isn't thinking.' That's what we had in this bill—the absolute predominance of groupthink. If you had any thought that was different from the mainstream, it wasn't wanted.

We hear that in this bill opinion was not excluded, but Senator Sharma, who's behind me in the chamber, pointed out during the committee inquiry that the EM explicitly said opinion, even invective, was included in what could be seen as contributing to serious harm. These are things that the other side will say weren't included. We hear that the bill wasn't censorship, that the government never wanted to censor anything, but under this bill the government wanted to impose such harsh penalties on the platforms that they would have had no choice but to censor. When you are faced with global fines of up to $12 billion if you allow misinformation to continue on your platform, what do you do? You shut down thought. You shut down speech. You shut down the capacity for people to express their opinion. Nations are at their very best when people can think. Nations are at their very best when people can challenge the status quo.

When we are all here and we hear the views of those dialling in, emailing in and writing in and telling us their views, it is only the weak of mind and the weak of thought—only the weak—who are challenged and offended by having that put upon them. That is why freedom of speech should be not only implied in the Constitution. We should look at having it enshrined in the Constitution, because I love it when I can have a conversation with someone where I can hear new information, where I can make a new decision and where I can be challenged.

There were many, many reasons we heard for the bill. They wanted to link it to disinformation all the time. They wanted to link it to the worst of the worst. But, when it comes down to opinion, when it comes to silencing those at home and the penalties it proposed, this had to stop. I raise this MPI today because it should never come back. It is okay that it has been withdrawn. I had second thoughts when I saw Senator Roberts trying to withdraw this bill by himself from the Notice Paper last week. I though that maybe I wanted it brought into this chamber and voted down, because what the government achieved with this bill was something they couldn't achieve last year with the Voice. They unified all of Australia apart from themselves, because they did haven't another vote in this chamber other than that of the government. The Greens, the crossbenchers and every other party here were unanimous. This, as it stood, was not good enough.

It didn't just go in the chamber; it went to the witnesses over three days of hearings, led ably—I must say, very well—by Senator Grogan across the road. Only one witness that was a government agency, the Emergency Management Authority, said the bill should pass, and they put greater stress on the disinformation than the misinformation component. Every other witness had a problem with it on the way through.

I think it is great this bill is gone. I think it should never, ever see the light of day again. I know that Australia is better when thoughts are out there and can be debated and challenged and when people can air their views without fear of persecution.