"Free Speech = Reason = Progress" by Simon Gibbs licensed under CC
No, it is not the year 1984 and big brother is not monitoring our every thought, but the Australian Parliament has introduced legislation that would have scarily close implications to a modern-day Orwellian society. Recently, the Albanese government introduced Bill 2024 to the Parliament, which while attempting to decrease the harm of misinformation could have disastrous effects on free speech.
Bill 2024, would give the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) the power to fine online social media platforms up to 5% of their global revenue. This bill seeks to protect people, but upon further investigation this bill would cause more harm than good.
The issues with this bill begin immediately with the language of the bill. Terms such as disinformation, misinformation, and harm are all loosely defined and subject to a plethora of interpretation. Because of these loose definitions there is an incredibly low threshold for what can get a social media platform in trouble for not acting soon enough. The problem with this bill is the scope is far too broad for any government to monitor without cracking down on free speech.
Another issue with this bill is that it protects all government speech without protecting the speech of the people. If the Australian government puts out a statement that ends up being false, it is just an accident, but if any regular person were to do the same that would be misinformation. That is unfair and holds people and business to a higher standard than government officials. It could be dangerous.
This bill has faced many critics with United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet calling the bill “a dystopian attack on free speech.” This bill would give the ACMA unchecked power to impact the civil liberties of the Australian people.
Senator Matt Canavan has criticized the bill out for limiting free speech when it comes to banks noting, “under these laws those who called out the recklessness of mortgage backed securities before the Global Financial Crisis would have been censored.” Professor Sinclair David has gone on to criticize this bill for its inclusion of health measures nothing how this will make critiquing Australia’s anti-vaping policies illegal and compared them to Australia’s ineffective plain packaging policy for cigarettes.
This bill simply has too much scope and is blatantly dangerous to the Australian people. A bill this controls the population and maintains government supremacy sounds frighteningly close to a dystopian society we have only ever read about.
While we need to respond to the dangers of misinformation, we must remember to strike a fair balance between regulation and freedom. Online speech is still a form of free speech, and Bill 2024 is a serious threat to it and democracy.