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Human rights and civil liberties groups have expressed serious doubts about Labor’s move to quash misinformation, claiming its proposed law threatens free speech and democratic rights.
The rights groups join a growing coalition of voices criticising the Albanese government’s bid to give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) powers to penalise groups like Meta if they fail to remove misinformation and disinformation.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland.Credit: Rhett Wyman
As Yes campaigners file regular claims of Voice misinformation ahead of the referendum in October, NSW and Queensland’s peak civil liberties bodies have both revealed their opposition to sections of Labor’s draft bill, arguing it gives the government body too much power to police speech.
Earlier this week, the Australian Human Rights Commission sounded the alarm about the draft laws.
The proposal in the bill to clamp down on people whose commentary may disrupt public order or cause economic harm could have a “chilling effect on the right to protest, stifling debate and freedoms of assembly,” according to NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Josh Pallas.
Pallas said the proposal to exempt government information from being categorised as misinformation carried the implication that governments were, by definition, truthful at all times.
“This is a dangerous proposition for any free society,” he said.
False claims on social platforms have become the subject of intense political debate and scrutiny from regulators across the globe.Credit: AP
Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said the proposal, at its core, was about the creation of “a body run by politicians … to be put in charge of deciding what statements made about politics and society are true or false”.
“Clearly the government is not and cannot be impartial in deciding the truth in social and political debate. This is not meant to be some conspiracy theory. It derives from the fact that in the words of Lord Acton: ‘All power tends to corrupt’,” he said in his submission to the government’s consultation process.
“There is no objection to laws preventing false or misleading statements about the electoral process … or materially false statements of fact about a candidate.”
“The parliament will be delegating to [ACMA] enormous power to deal with one of the fundamental rights of all Australians, the right to freedom of speech. It is our position that the parliament should not delegate its power to make laws on this topic. It should make those laws itself.”
“The bill will enable the authority to inappropriately control significant amounts of political and social speech.”
In its submission, the Australian Human Rights Commission acknowledged the harms caused by online mis- and disinformation, the former being unintentionally misleading information and the latter being known falsehoods.
“This necessarily requires a balance between censoring harmful untruths without unduly curtailing the human right to freedom of expression,” it said.
“The commission holds serious reservations about the current version of the exposure draft bill’s ability to strike the correct balance.”
Coalition’s communications spokesman David Coleman.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland told this masthead in July that ACMA would have no role in determining the truth of online content, rejecting Coalition MPs’ suggestions the laws would make ACMA an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”.
The Coalition’s communications spokesman David Coleman said civil rights groups’ protests were a “powerful intervention which eviscerated this disturbing bill”.
“The bill makes the government the arbiter of truth in political debate. This is totally unacceptable in a democratic society,” he said.
Rowland said in a statement on Friday: “This consultation process gives industry and the public the opportunity to have their say on the proposed framework, which aims to strike the right balance between protection from harmful mis and disinformation online and freedom of speech.”
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