Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Well, the misinformation and disinformation bill is dead. Rejoice! But the thing is it's not dead, because the threat of authoritarian governments is never-ending. What we've seen here with the attempted passing of this bill by the Labor government is a government that is more interested in control than serving the people. With the greatest of respect, Senator Grogan—through the chair—I do enjoy debating with you on opinions.

We know that while people may not have gone to jail because of this particular bill, the fact is that censorship can have devastating impacts on people's lives. I saw that. Almost the entirety of the back half of my Senate term has been dictated by the rubbish that was sprouted throughout COVID. I took a stand there. I was ridiculed at the time. I had posts censored, and people have been injured. One of the really sad things about this is a lot of people come and say to me, 'Senator Rennick, you've done a really good job on this', and I say, 'No, actually, I haven't.' I took the stand and I was ridiculed, and because of that I think it's been harder to get help for people on these vaccine injuries. If a mainstream party leader had led the charge and done the right thing, we probably would have got help. But, no, the slurs went on and on. When Facebook and those social media companies were censoring posts that were starting to question the narrative, it got shut down. Sure, we didn't go to jail, but people got hurt.

This is the problem when you shut down free speech. These people had good intentions and they had a healthy scepticism of government. At the end of the day, governments are the biggest purveyors of mistruths; everyone knows that. Trust in government has completely collapsed, and when you try and censor people you're only destroying that confidence even more.