Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

To the people of Australia, congratulations—you've won. You put so much pressure on the 'uniparty' that you won; they folded. Four years ago I came out against the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, and it's been a slog ever since. That's when the Morrison-Joyce Liberal-National government introduced it. I'll just make some comments there. This is a part of five components—the mis- and disinformation bill; the Digital ID Act; identity verification bill; under-16s banned from social media; Reserve Bank of Australia working on a digital currency that'll be connected to a global digital currency—of a package towards social credit. The second point is that that package is being put by the major parties—Liberals, Nationals and Labor. The third point is that it's connected to implementation of a similar package around the world in many other nations right now. It's led to the arrest of 150 people in the United Kingdom, with jail for some, simply for making comments dissenting against the British government.

This misinformation and disinformation bill had some worthy sections on regulating the tech giants, but it was primarily about censorship and censoring the Australian people. One Nation supports a referendum to enshrine freedom of speech in our Constitution. One Nation supports legislation to mandate and enable free speech and to make free speech sacrosanct so that no state can trump it. One Nation wants to appeal 18C. This has come out of 18C, which is scandalous. They're some of the basics.

I will read part of my dissenting report on the Senate's inquiry into this bill. It began:

1.1 I thank the witnesses for their submissions and for attending the hearings.

There were many, many witnesses. Thank you, Australia.

1.2 The committee report—

as it was originally drafted—

into the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 flies in the face of the expert evidence the committee has received across three days of hearings into the bill.

That evidence just completely smashed it and reversed it. But, with the tidal wave of views from across Australia, the committee changed its view—wonderful.

1.3 A committee inquiry should not perform the function of gift wrapping a decision which has already been taken. A committee inquiry should have the role of deciding if the decisions taken in the bill are correct.

The first report did not do that fundamental thing.

1.4 For three days, the committee heard from human rights advocates and stakeholders who all criticised this bill on human rights grounds, and added warnings the bill would backfire.

That's what the committee heard almost unanimously.

1.5 It is extraordinary the committee would choose to ignore the recommendations of the very people who they invited to attend to advise them on this matter.

Only when the public turned savagely against the government was the committee report changed at the last minute to reflect today's motion. The action of the committee to that point would have made it harder:

… for any Senate inquiry in the future to attract the quality of witnesses this inquiry attracted.

Censorship was the purpose of this bill. Censorship was the purpose of the committee report. The criticism of the bill was well placed. My comments continued:

1.7 The Australian Human Rights Commission questioned a basic foundation of the bill—the definition of 'information'. In the Explanatory Memorandum the term 'is intended to include opinions, claims, commentary and invective'.

1.8 The Australian Human Rights Commission stated 'considerable caution should be exercised before including opinions and commentary within the scope of "information" as this significantly broadens the potential reach of this legislation and increases the risk of it being used to censor legitimate debate about matters of public importance.

That is profound. That is the bedrock of a democracy.

1.9 One Nation agrees with this concern. The bill misconstrues human rights as relative, indeed as subordinate to the need of government to suppress opinions they don't like.

That's what you tried to do.

1.10 The Human Rights Law Centre recommended Clause 11(e) should be amended to reflect a broader commitment to human rights in the bill's objectives. It also recommended the Australian Human Rights Commission should be consulted on the development of codes.

'Consultation'—that'd be nice.

1.11 Several submissions related to the specific areas of misinformation. The Australian Medical Professional Society submitted:

By centralising control over what constitutes medical 'truth' in the hands of government regulators, we risk creating an even more Orwellian twist in a system that is already subject to manipulation by powerful interests, to further suppress inconvenient facts and legitimate debate. This would be disastrous not only for free speech and democracy, but for public health as well.

People's lives depend on this. And you wanted to stop it.

1.12 The report failed to address a critical failing in the debate around COVID. Namely that information presented as medical truth at the time has been proven to be wrong—

not only wrong but completely contradicting the truth—

and information banned as misinformation has now been proven to be true.

Repeatedly, repeatedly and repeatedly.

1.13 On the issue of COVID messaging, One Nation has maintained a contrary position to the Government of the day since 2020. This followed expert testimony from multiple specialists, research doctors and whistle blowers which contradicted the official narrative.

1.14 The implication is simple—what is misinformation one day is truth the next. This is the danger in the Government deciding what is and is not misinformation. The bias will always be in favour of the government's 'truth'.

I asked every witness a fundamental question on the last day of the hearing: who is the arbiter of truth? No-one could say who is specified as the arbiter of truth in the bill. They all said that it would default to ACMA. Other provisions in my additional comments included: religious freedom, inauthentic behaviour and media literacy. But the fundamental thing is this was an attempt by the Labor Party to build on the Liberal Party's previous attempts at censorship by corralling misinformation under their definition, and then driving the social media organisations, the big tech companies, to ram it down people's throats. That was what you were doing. I'm pleased to see that the people of Australia have put the brake on you.

Now I appeal to the people of Australia to keep a foot on their throat because we must stop the banning of under-16-year-old people from social media.