Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate the great victory for free speech that has been struck this morning, with the government's decision to face reality and discharge the terrible, antidemocratic Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill, the so-called MAD bill. This bill was the most antidemocratic piece of legislation to ever come before this parliament, and it would've effectively established a government ministry of truth to decide for themselves what Australians can or cannot say on social media.

While this was a terrible piece of legislation, what was heartening to see over the past year and a half was the great uprising of Australians who cherish the democratic rights and liberties and the ability to speak our own mind to each other so much that they fought very hard against this bill. I want to say thank you to those thousands of Australians that gave up their free time to fight for the basic rights of all Australians, including future Australians, to make sure we don't have government censorship in this great, free southern land.

The Senate committee on the MAD bill took almost 30,000 submissions. I'd never seen anything like it. I don't think all of them were able to be processed; there were too many submissions coming through. There were thousands of others on social media who raised issues with this. That work did not go unrewarded today, with the final removal of this bill. It was a total victory over those who want to restrict and gag Australians. It also meant that all crossbench senators had come out and declared their opposition. I thank them for standing with the Australian people on this issue.

This defeat has been so comprehensive and so total that, surely, no government ever again will have the temerity to bring forward a piece of legislation which seeks to silence the speech of free Australians.