Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (10:18): I rise today to add my voice to the hundreds of thousands of Australians—progressive, conservative, left and right—who have all indicated their strenuous opposition to this Albanese Labor government's attempt to curtail our freedom of speech and expression. This bill that we are debating, the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, is the second attempt by the Labor government to regulate freedom of speech in Australia—individual citizens' online speech. They have done it a different way, but it is no less threatening to our ability to think, express and judge than the previous bill, which was opposed by over 20,000 submissions and groups across Australia.

I have had form in this. I have opposed these sorts of bills since I came to this parliament as a young person. People will remember the Rudd government's internet filter, which every technical expert said could not work, would not work and would not filter the internet, and yet the Rudd government pursued this vainglorious and stupid attempt to filter the internet. We had to fight that then and we had to defeat it. As a parliament now, whether you're progressive, whether you're conservative or whether you're from the Left or Right, we need to rise up and oppose this bill, and join the chorus of Australians who have paid attention to this and who understand that the government's function is not to regulate in a free society the content of peoples' minds. It isn't their role to arbitrate over the free thought, free expression and free speech of people. You're getting that from every quarter of Australian politics and Australian society in opposition to this bill. It's universal. There is no support for this bill, yet the government cannot take the cue to understand that combating misinformation and disinformation pertains to foreign powers trying to interfere in Australia and to malign actors from overseas interfering in Australia. That's what a properly constructed legislative regime should look like—not regulating in a free country our individual citizens, our private groups and our freedom of thought, worship and speech.

This misinformation bill that the government is desperate to get through reveals their agenda. Why is the government so desperate to pass a misinformation bill on our own citizenry? When you look at the notable failures recently—and I will certainly call out both sides when they've failed on this—I had great scepticism about the appointment of an esafety commissioner, and I was convinced about it because it would pertain to the protection of children. However, what we saw from the eSafety Commissioner is another example of what will happen under this bill, when the eSafety Commissioner decided to take legal action against an international platform, X, with Australian taxpayers' money to challenge a jurisdiction which she has no control over and which Australia has no control over.

The humiliating backdown of the eSafety Commissioner is another example of what will happen if the communications media authority, ACMA, is given power over Australians' decision-making. There will be litigation. They will take action against our citizens, and they will take action against platforms because they haven't taken action against our citizens. Why do we need this bill? It's a fundamental question. Why do we actually need it?

An honourable member: Elections!

Mr HAWKE: Yes—my colleague says, 'Elections.' This bill does cover elections and political thought, clearly in violation even of the United Nations. I'm not a big fan of the United Nations in general, but the United Nations rapporteur has belled it correctly when he calls out that this kind of misinformation bill and this kind of misinformation violate international principles of people's ability to speak freely and to think freely. Even the United Nations has said this would be a violation of the right to free speech. So, when we ask why is this bill happening, the answer seems to be that this is a bill from a government that is obsessed with silencing opposition or having the ability to intimidate commentary that disagrees with its agenda, which is what any citizen in a free society should be inherently sceptical of.

When you look at modern examples of regimes like China which have total control over the internet and total control over thought and expression, or regimes like Iran, where they turn off the internet when there is a protest or riots—they simply turn off the platforms and turn off access to the platforms—it is terrifying. It is the Orwellian example that was written about many years ago coming to life now in the digital age when government without restraint, government without control and government that isn't controlled by the people and the citizenry in an affected society can do terrifying things to its own citizens. Imagine living in Russia, Iran or China and trying to express a different political view online, trying to access digital content or trying to test the government's provided information?

The key failing of this bill is that it assumes, incorrectly, that the government are the people who can decide what is misinformation and disinformation. I would suggest that government records throughout history suggest that the government is as guilty of disinformation and misinformation as any other body, privately constructed, or individuals. It is absolutely stunning to think that the government could think that the ACMA, an unelected body, would have arbitrary power to decide what it regards as misinformation. Having had some exposure to ACMA through government and through the executive of the federal government, I will go a little bit further than some of my colleagues and say the ACMA is completely incapable of fulfilling this function. They have neither the people you would trust, if you met them, to make a determination about misinformation or disinformation nor the technical capacity in terms of the digital age, when people from the private sector are on X or Facebook or other major platforms.

It's no reflection on ACMA. They are simply good people doing their own work inside the communications portfolio of the Australian government, but they are simply unable to fulfil the function that this legislation would give them power to arbitrate. It is our role as a parliament to say: 'Take a step back. They should not have that power in the first place.' We don't want government bureaucrats to have the power to decide what is misinformation in our private interactions online. It is, of course, assuming that people are stupid. It's an assumption which the Democrats have made in the United States, to their discredit in recent times, and the US public have seen through that. The Labor government here is assuming that people are uneducated and that people can't make their own judgements about information they receive online.

I think that is a false assumption and a dangerous assumption for a government. Think through the consequences of saying, 'The government knows better than you what you should be thinking and what you should be saying online and what is dangerous to you.' It is a false assumption, and I think it's something that everybody—Left, Right, progressive or conservative—can accept is dangerous. That's why the Senate committees have recommended several times that this bill not be passed. That's every committee that's looked at it. There's another one coming. I guarantee you, without pre-empting that committee, they'll also agree, whether they are Left, Right, progressive or conservative, that there is danger in this bill.

Yet there is one group of people in Australia not listening, and that is the Albanese Labor government. It is not listening to anybody in our society about this bill. It's not listening at all. What is the moral justification for a misinformation and disinformation bill about our own citizenry in our country, Australia? I believe most people are able to make their own judgements about information. They have so far done so very well. They're able to think through these things.

We might need laws to combat foreign powers using money to deceptively promote misinformation, and, certainly, that can happen in elections. We have foreign interference laws and foreign donation bans. We have passed many good laws to prevent malign actors from interfering in our polity or our information flow, yet here the government is saying government bureaucrats will now be the supreme authority in relation to the correctness of information.

We don't need these laws, and we don't need this bill. But the government is not listening to anybody, whether they are Left, Right, progressive or conservative. It's not listening to one submission. It's not listening to the United Nations for once. We must listen to the United Nations on everything else, but not on this, according to the Labor government. We need to take the time to have a look again, and I would encourage Australians everywhere to wake up in relation to this bill. Australians have a very laid-back culture. We take our freedom for granted; we take our free society for granted; we take our freedom of thought, speech and worship for granted. We assume that we have freedom.

Every bill like this that passes the parliament curtails individual thought and expression. That's why all my colleagues are here today opposing it. That's why the Liberals and the Nationals have opposed this bill so vehemently because a bill that's supposed to be about misinformation from foreign actors and bad people interfering within Australia has become about Australians' freedom of expression. It's somehow become about what we say and think to each other and that somehow the ACMA is going to know better what we should be saying and thinking to each other. I think we all know where this goes, so we will certainly oppose this bill.

Again, I highlight the case of the eSafety Commissioner from personal experience. As a former multicultural affairs minister, it must have been 15 minutes after the tragic stabbing of Mar Mari Emmanuel in south-western Sydney occurred—before I'd seen it on the news—that I had received the video of the incident from contacts within the Assyrian community and faith communities. It was circulating rapidly. In this day and age, that's completely normal. People circulate content. They share, in good faith, information with each other to say, 'Look what's happened down here.' Yes, it's terrifying. Yes, it's disturbing content. Yes, it's concerning. But we are all adults, and we are all familiar with this process in 2024. There are upsides to it; there are downsides to it.

But the government is naive to think that somehow a bill or a regulator can interrupt those interactions and stop them. We shouldn't attempt to set bureaucrats up over those processes because they will fail, like they do even in tyrannical regimes like Iran and China. Information gets through; information is circulated. Information will continue to circulate. But, in a free, democratic Western society, we should not attempt to have government bureaucrats sitting between those processes.

When the eSafety Commissioner issued the orders to stop that content, it was well after the fact. The horse hadn't bolted; the stable had bolted. The entire Melbourne Cup field was galloping all over the country. Then the eSafety Commissioner said, 'Oh, we need to stop this content,' after millions of people had seen it. Compliance with Australian orders is one thing, but taking legal action internationally is, again, an example of a government appointed bureaucrat, which has a track record of taking legal action internationally on jurisdictional questions against this particular company, extending their mandate without authority and without the consent of the people to do so. That isn't an isolated example or incident. It is an example of what will happen with the ACMA. It's an example of what will happen if we pass these laws.

Government overreach is the biggest danger in these sorts of things, and the construction of this bill, the provisions that this bill has put in place to hold the power to regulate what they do and how they behave over digital platforms, will mean they have the power over us. It is not power that we want to give the government. It's not power that we want to give those free-speech platforms. It's not power that we want ACMA, in particular, to hold.

The government, of course, refuses to listen. The Labor government is pushing ahead with misinformation and disinformation, saying that the Australian people are generating the misinformation and disinformation. The fact that elections, referendums—we've just had one—public health preventive health measures and imminent harm to the economy or financial markets are just some of the topics that will be covered by this bill is chilling. It ought to be chilling to people in Australia today. We've enjoyed the ability to speak freely, to think freely and to worship freely. Each one of these bills that gets passed will see more and more of these litigated cases from government bureaucrats, which will curtail our freedom of speech. So today I rise with my colleagues to oppose it.

I think the best thing that can happen now is the government scratches this bill for a second time—listens to every progressive organisation in the country and every conservative organisation in the country, Left and Right, which are aligned in 20,000 submissions against what the government is doing in their approach. Rewrite the bill to what it's supposed to be: curtail malign influence that is not genuine from overseas and onshore people that are doing it deliberately to deceive or misinform. It is not appropriate to set up a government regulator or bureaucrat over the Australian people and over their good judgment and their ability to freely access information. That's why you have unions, former union leaders, civil liberties councils, lawyers, law bodies, the United Nations, health officers and people from a wide variety of places not just sounding the alarm bell but actively opposing the Albanese government's approach on this bill.

I say to every Australian that you only have one recourse in the next six months. The government intends to pass this bill. The Liberal and National parties will oppose it vehemently through the House and the Senate. But Labor with their allies, the Greens, have the capacity to pass this law. If passed into law, every single Australian that is concerned about this bill and the government's approach to regulating their freedom of speech needs to go to the next federal election to fight the Labor Party and to defeat them at government. We have committed to repealing this legislation. We've committed to fixing it if the government passes it. There are millions of Australians already concerned. There will be millions more when this bill comes into operation, I can assure you, and when the ACMA starts determining things about freedom of speech. To every one of those Australians, I say to you that the power is with you through this parliament at the next election. Do not forget that this Labor government's main priority is to regulate your free speech and your freedom of thought.