Albanese government’s draft misinformation laws denounced as the ‘worst piece of legislation for free speech’
Media lawyer Justin Quill described the government’s proposed crackdown on misinformation as the “worst piece of legislation for free speech” that he’d ever seen, while Sky News Australia host Andrew Bolt said it would have a “chilling effect on very important debates”.
Albanese is throwing a tantrum because his Communist voice is nosediving!
The Albanese government’s proposal to combat online misinformation has been attacked as a major threat to freedom of speech by one of Australia’s most prominent media lawyers.
The draft legislation, released on Sunday, would grant the Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA) the power to issue massive fines to social media companies that fail to adequately crack down on misinformation on their platforms.
The draft legislation defines misinformation as information that is “false, misleading or deceptive; and… reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm”.
Speaking to Sky News Australia’s Andrew Bolt on Thursday night, experienced media lawyer Justin Quill said the proposal was “the biggest imposition on free speech that I’ve ever seen in a piece of legislation”.
“I’ve long been an advocate for free speech. I’ve had concerns… about legislation like section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. But I can tell you in my 27 years in this job… this is, without doubt, the worst piece of legislation for free speech that I have seen,” Mr Quill said.
“If it was brought out on April Fools, April 1st, we’d all say it was an April Fool’s joke. It’s that bad.”
The Thomson Greer partner said there were “all sorts of inconsistencies and questions” about the legislation, citing the fact that there was no definition of “serious harm,” despite it being the relevant trigger for action in the prohibition section.
“It’s poorly drafted, and it’s poorly thought out. It is half baked,” the media lawyer said.
Bolt explained he was “shocked” reading through the proposal, pointing out that while the bill would target everything from blogs, podcasts and people posting on Twitter, state and federal governments would be exempted.
“So governments can tell lies, spread misinformation that they call truth, but you could be banned from challenging it,” the Sky News Australia host said.
Social media platforms have already signed up to a voluntary code for combatting misinformation – developed in response to pressure from the Morrison government.
But Labor’s proposal goes much further, giving ACMA the power to force social media companies to change how they deal with misinformation and disinformation.
ACMA will be able to force digital platforms to adhere to an industry-wide “standard” for the removal of harmful content, with failure to adhere to the standard leading to fines of up to five per cent of a company’s global turnover.
In the case of Facebook, that’s $8 billion.
Bolt warned the powers would lead media companies and internet platforms to get “nervous” about the threat of fines and the cost of having to defend themselves adding it would lead to excessive censorship.
“This is going to have a chilling effect on very important debates,” he said.
Asked what he thought the biggest danger in the bill, Mr Quill said it was the lack of a proper definition of what counts as misinformation and disinformation.
The media lawyer also pointed out the approach to tackling misinformation was likely to have the opposite result as what is intended.
“Does the Attorney General really think does, the government really think, that the best way to stop conspiracy theorists is to try and push them underground?” Mr Quill asked
“If someone’s throwing (a) silly conspiracy theory out and all of a sudden their tweets and their Facebook posts just disappear, because the government have said that they’ve got to disappear, do you think that’s going to make that person or anyone who they might be in contact with them say, ‘Oh, it must be untrue because the government have taken it down?’
“No, they’re going to say the exact opposite. This is going to have the exact opposite effect that the government intends it to. And it is crazy.”
Mr Quill said a far better approach was to allow truth to prevail through the open contest of ideas.
“Things develop over time, things we thought were absolutely not true at one point we now realise are true or vice versa,” Mr Quill said.
“You’ve got to allow a people’s understanding of beliefs to develop over time, we can’t be sort of set in stone with with our views, we’ve got to let them develop.
“And part of the way we develop these views and people putting forward views that are wrong, and then they’re debated.”
The experienced media lawyer cited the example of Sky News Australia host Sharri Markson’s reporting about the COVID-19 originating from the Wuhan Institute of Virology to show how once scorned ideas can go on to be widely accepted.
“They were laughed at when they were saying that. Sharri and the Daily Telegraph were laughed at; Media Watch on the ABC were literally laughing at them,” Mr Quill said.
“Now, as it turns out, we’ve seen in recent weeks… declassified documents from US intelligence have shown that it’s absolutely true.”
