Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to put on the record my concerns with regard to the government 's proposed Communication Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023. Every parliamentarian carries responsibilities that come with their position of privilege as an elected official. At the pinnacle of these possibilities is the need to ensure that we work to protect and strengthen our democratic way of life and the liberties of all Australians. In fact, we have perhaps even more of a responsibility to do so than our colleagues in comparable nations. For instance, in the United States of America there exists the Bill of Rights, which clearly prescribes the lines of civil liberties and entitlements, including freedoms of speech, press and religion. In contrast, most of the rights of Australian citizens are correctly found in legal precedent and statutes, not in the Constitution. That means this parliament is the foremost arbiter and we must ensure that we are constantly working to protect the freedoms of all Australians and avoid anything that will undermine our democracy, deliberately or otherwise.

The misinformation bill proposed by the government risks such an undermining, a threat to the freedom of speech of every Australian. While I understand the intention of the draft bill, which is to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation online, we need to recognise that that does not come before the need to ensure that Australians are able to speak freely.

Regarding defined terms in the bill, the Australian Human Rights Commission has noted:

The broad definitions used here risk enabling unpopular or controversial opinions or beliefs to be subjectively labelled as misinformation or disinformation, and censored as a result.

There are many potential examples of this being problematic. I am concerned, as I know many others in the electorate are, especially about the risk of abusing the ability to censor speech that is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm. What does 'harm' constitute? Could it be 'harmful' to post online against one of the government's policies? Could it be 'harmful' to take a controversial view that oneself might disagree with but nonetheless is part of Australians' right to express their own opinions on issues that are important to them?

Giving ACMA power to impose regulations based on definitions of misinformation and disinformation, including enforcing these new standards to technology companies, is ultimately going to compel those technology companies to regulate their platforms severely and lead to wider censorship and proactive removal of some content. Maybe most egregious of all is the fact that government content would be exempt from this provision in the bill.

I'm reminded of how important it is for legislators of all stripes to remember those classical liberal values that are the bedrock of our way of life. I like to think about and constantly remind myself of the very important remark made by no less than John Stuart Mill, whom I would hope is familiar to us all but fear is familiar to only some of us. John Stuart Mill's justifications of free speech can be found in his classical work On Liberty. To quote from that work:

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

We all agree deliberate misinformation online is a harmful and destructive practice. We all agree that accidental misinformation is a regrettable reality. But in Australia, we do not silence what we might deem to be wrong opinions. In fact, this achieves the opposite effect. The more a view is censored, the more it becomes emboldened. In a free society when someone says something controversial, it is our response to meet it with debate and strong arguments. We face error with truth. We face fiction with facts. We trust the Australian people to make up their own minds with their own abilities to explore every viewpoint of information that is available to them. The bill the government proposes threatens to undermine the dynamism of our democracy and must not be allowed to become law in its current form.

Senate adjourned at 15:4 1