Mr RAMSEY (Grey—Opposition Whip) (17:34): I rise to speak on the government’s Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024. George Orwell has had a bit of trot-out in this debate. I’m not surprised. He published Nineteen Eighty-Four 75 years ago, a novel about the control of people’s lives through surveillance, propaganda and thought control. The technologies don’t seems so outrageous in today’s electronic world. Its underlying themes highlight the dangerous overreach that is represented in this government bill on combating misinformation and disinformation.
I can understand why the government feels as though it needs to make an attempt to condition the information that some people receive. My daughter once wrote an article in the Stock Journal in South Australia. She was writing a regular column at the time. She said that, given modern information platforms, consumers need to be able to identify and assess the value of the source of the information—whether there are vested interests, where the author sourced the material and whether it’s well researched or relying on second-hand hearsay, second-rate primary material. I can only heartily agree.
The demise of traditional media in Australia is, as I have said in this place on a number of occasions, an underlying threat to our democracy. The funding sources that have paid for traditional media are quite quickly slipping away. They’ve all gone to the computer in our pocket—this thing here, our mobile devices. Real estate, cars, property, advertisements are all on the internet, hollowing out the funding streams for traditional newsrooms and journalists, who were expected to check sources for veracity, to clip things that were actually true. The replacements do not, and the question today is: do we legislate against misinformation, even in genuine error, or do we educate against it?
My greatest concern about this bill is that honestly held opinions of Australians would be able to be deemed misinformation, with digital platforms required to remove them in such cases. So what of religious beliefs? Can they be categorised as wrong or right? This external assessment of beliefs is an area of concern for the religious community. Can those assessments impact on the religious schools that are operating in the education system? The bill gives the government regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, extraordinary powers to regulate speech. I’m not questioning either the independence of the ACMA or its record, but I do make the point that its chair is appointed by the Governor-General at the behest of the government of the day. That opens up questions about independence and perhaps predilections and existing opinions that they may have.
More concerningly, the minister of the day will have the ability to exempt their preferred platforms, providing enormous power to control the news stream, to effectively control the message. This is where the reference to George Orwell stands out like a beacon of light—even the chant from Animal Farm, the decree of the ruling force summarised by the pigs: ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’ It’s a perfect example of one-line propaganda. Then, as the ruling forces adapted to the benefits of power and wealth, the chant was altered to, ‘Four legs good, two legs better,’ in a complete rejection of an earlier slogan, the important point being that the ruling power controls the message. Orwell said, ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people things they do not want to hear.’ I think that’s a very telling quote—the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. While we all have concerns about some of the rubbish peddled on the online platforms—me as much as anyone else, I’d have to say—we should not risk muzzling the ability of the minority to question the ruling point of view.
Well-functioning democracies require open and vigorous questioning. It is the firewall which corrals corruption. Oppositions must be able to pursue questions which go to the heart of government management and honesty. This legislation risks that function. The legislation determines the minister will be able to decide whether the platforms have sufficiently censored the online posts to meet their interpretation of the truth. Inevitably governments will believe that they speak the truth and that their critics do not. The legislation will allow communications minister to personally order a misinformation investigation and misinformation hearings on terms of their choosing. The legislation will allow noble government officials to require the handover of information and documents related to information.
If the major platforms do not sufficiently censor misinformation—take it off their sites—they face large fines; in fact, up to five per cent of global turnover. You would know, Mr Deputy Speaker Buchholz, that Google is a major player in this space. Google global turnover last year was US$307 billion, five per cent of which is US$23 billion. One could forgive Google if they became conservative about what they allow on their pages. In fact, they have to make a qualitative decision in front of the ACMA examination of their work.
It is worth reflecting that Galileo in the 15th century was tried and found guilty of heresy and was confined to house arrest for the final nine years of his life for opposing the scientific consensus of the day that the earth was at the celestial centre of the universe and all the planets were revolving around it. He questioned the ruling scientific general opinion of the day and gave up nine years of his life for it. ‘As the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?’ John Maynard Keynes is often given the benefit of being the first user of that clause but it is contested. In this changing world, the concept of challenging the established order can be deemed as misleading and thus illegal. Can a case be built against the status quo? How can a case be built against the status quo?
For instance, could the exposure of thalidomide or of the Khemlani loans affair happened if this legislation had been in place at the time? Could Australian whistleblowers have raised sufficient concern to have caught the attention of the public on issues such as PFAS contamination to prosecute their case? I am indebted to the member for Barker, who just spoke on the recent referendum in Australia. What constraints would have been put on at least one side of that referendum debate by the minister of the day being able to control which organisations can sell the message and which ones can’t? Can they refer an investigation on the very things that the member for Barker raised? Are all of those concerns unknowns? It just feels like overreach on every level. Is it the baby or is it the bathwater? Me thinks, in this case, the bill goes too far.
This legislation is unparalleled in other like-minded countries. Places like the USA and the United Kingdom don’t have laws that even come close to what the Albanese government is proposing. Like other MPs, I have received a high level of concern on this, and I can assure the public that the coalition is strongly opposed to it. There are so many other things that sit within it. I talked about the newsrooms of Australia and the fact that they are fewer and further between the journalists, the people who we would trust with the kind of information that we rely on. We were given an apology from the ABC again yesterday. The one news organisation that this parliament funds to give a true and factual correct record has been caught out yet again. There seems to be a conga line of apologies coming from the ABC. There have been people on this side of politics who have for a long time thought that the ABC is a biased organisation; it is no longer trustworthy. In fact, why would an organisation that had the most trustworthy news service in the world have to continually advertise that fact to us? Methinks that maybe they are not confident about their own claim.
We are reducing all the time. We don’t have those radical news sources now. While on one hand the government argues that the contributions of those who are mischievous is causing a problem, it should also concede that there are people out there who have genuine concerns and are able to raise issues, using the megaphone of the electronic media, and bring this parliament’s attention to the problems that exist within. Without that megaphone that they have at the moment, perhaps they can’t move the case. So it’s too dangerous for me. We are a free democracy. I think we need to find another way to crack this nut, if that’s what is required. So I will be voting against this along with my colleagues, and I commend that case to the parliament.