Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak in support of this urgency motion. In 1949, George Orwell wrote the dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four, and many generations of students since then have studied this in their English classes. I think there is nothing that more distinguishes those opposite, both the Greens and Labor, from those on this side of the chamber than our respective responses to this book. Those opposite clearly, from the evidence of this bill, read Nineteen Eighty-Four and thought at the time: 'Wow. What a great system this is!' Those on this side of the chamber were horrified and have continued to be horrified by the concept of the Thinkpol, who control thoughts, free speech and actions on behalf of Big Brother.

This piece of legislation that the Labor Party put forward is not just one, two, 10 or 100 Winston Smiths sitting there in the bureaucracy, rewriting history according to the prevailing political party's truth—in that case Big Brother. Poor Mr Smith worked in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, and he not only had to rewrite history; he also had to identify people to ghost or, as we'd call it today, to cancel—with cancel culture. So, while this morning it was humiliating for this government to table the committee report and then exactly five seconds later withdraw this incomprehensibly bad legislation—actually, it's not incomprehensible, because it's one piece in a long line of appalling legislation that this government has tried to ram through this place.

As other speakers have said, this should be withdrawn permanently, and it's not just us on this side of the chamber saying that. All of us have been flooded with feedback from Australians all around the nation who have spoken up against this bill. One would have to wonder, if this bill had passed, what the thought police and the Winston Smiths of the Labor Party would have done to people who had expressed their point of view about this very legislation itself. No minister and no bureaucrat have a monopoly on truth, and we have debated many times in this chamber and in this place about what constitutes political truth. The last Labor speaker, I think, did absolutely bell the cat in terms of this legislation: what they think is the truth and what we think is misinformation—you just said it. But, as good as it is that this bill is going, it is not just those opposite that think this way.

For 18 months, since the government spoke about bringing this bill forward, Australians have voiced their concerns. In fact, the government received nearly 28,000 submissions against this bill and this gagging of free speech.

The Human Rights Commission itself sent forward a submission, and it warned that this bill needs it to be recognised that information may be opportunistically—politically opportunistically—labelled as misinformation or disinformation to delegitimise alternative opinions and to limit open discussion about issues of public importance. So I'm glad—I am so happy—that we fought to have this bill withdrawn. But it should never— (time expired)