Australian Censorship Bill Clashes with American First Amendment, By James Reed
As George Christensen has recently noted, the authoritarian Albo Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill in clause 3, extends the operation of Schedule 9 of the Broadcasting Services Act to acts, omissions, matters, and things outside Australia. This will in effect be Australian censorship imposed upon the world, imposing massive fines upon the likes of Elon Musk, who was in mind no doubt when this Bill was being drafted. The aim is to subject Musk's X to Australian Leftist government control. As George notes: "This is censorship on a global scale. Platforms that refuse to bow to the Australian Government's demands (via the Australian Communications and Media Authority or ACMA, which will become an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" under the bill) will face crushing penalties: up to 5% of their annual turnover or 25,000 penalty units for breaching misinformation standards. These financial threats will force platforms to police speech aggressively, even if it means trampling on the rights of users worldwide. The result? A chilling effect on free expression across the internet. Australian bureaucrats would dictate what billions of people can see, hear, and say. Australian bureaucrats will force social media platforms to censor, censor, and censor some more. Australian bureaucrats will be able to have the political views of American citizens and others around the world removed from the internet."
As covered in other articles at the blog today, President Trump is undertaking a war against just this type of regulatory control of free speech. He is therefore committed to a war against the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill which the Albo government pushed through the lower House while attention was focused upon the US election, and is now aiming to do the same for the Senate. We have heard vice president-elect J. D. Vance object to the EU version of these laws, saying it may affect US support of NATO. With Musk now a member of Trump's cabinet, the game has changed, and it will no longer be Musk v Albo, but the might of the Trump administration against a relatively puny Labor government. The threat of withdrawing military support for Australia, or crippling trade sanctions, might give the Albo regime some food for thought. Get this message of love out there, folks! Let your Senator know what they face if they pass this Bill.
https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/australian-censorship-laws-set-to
Here is what the Americans are thinking now:
"In a crushing blow to free speech in Australia, the lower house of federal parliament has passed an amendment, known as the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. It imposes obligations on digital communications platform providers to prevent the dissemination of content "that contains information that is reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive, and is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm of a specified type (misinformation and disinformation)."
Several dissenting politicians have expressed outrage and incredulity at the legislative move. Nola Marino, a member of the right-wing opposition Liberal Party said that she did not think that Australia, a liberal democratic society, would ever be "debating a bill that is explicitly designed to censor and silence the Australian people."
National Party member Keith Pitt described the legislation as a "yawning chasm that is incredibly … dangerous to this country." He expressed shock that the amendment was being put forward, adding that Western democracies such as Australia have been built on freedom of expression and freedom of religion. Such principled objections were ignored, however. The legislation now has only to pass in the Senate (the upper house) to become law.
The first and most obvious criticism of the law is that it puts the government authority, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in the ridiculous position of deciding what is and isn't "false" information. That is not only absurd – how could ACMA, for example make judgements on subjects like vaccines or viruses – it means that the law cannot be applied universally.
Governments routinely put out false information, arguably more often than they put out true information. Will they be penalized? Of course not. Advertizers present information that is false. Will they fall under his law? No. It will only be directed at people who are saying things that the government does not like, especially in relation to health policy. It is politics, not law.In a crushing blow to free speech in Australia, the lower house of federal parliament has passed an amendment, known as the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. It imposes obligations on digital communications platform providers to prevent the dissemination of content "that contains information that is reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive, and is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm of a specified type (misinformation and disinformation)."
Several dissenting politicians have expressed outrage and incredulity at the legislative move. Nola Marino, a member of the right-wing opposition Liberal Party said that she did not think that Australia, a liberal democratic society, would ever be "debating a bill that is explicitly designed to censor and silence the Australian people."
National Party member Keith Pitt described the legislation as a "yawning chasm that is incredibly … dangerous to this country." He expressed shock that the amendment was being put forward, adding that Western democracies such as Australia have been built on freedom of expression and freedom of religion. Such principled objections were ignored, however. The legislation now has only to pass in the Senate (the upper house) to become law.
The first and most obvious criticism of the law is that it puts the government authority, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in the ridiculous position of deciding what is and isn't "false" information. That is not only absurd – how could ACMA, for example make judgements on subjects like vaccines or viruses – it means that the law cannot be applied universally.
Governments routinely put out false information, arguably more often than they put out true information. Will they be penalized? Of course not. Advertizers present information that is false. Will they fall under his law? No. It will only be directed at people who are saying things that the government does not like, especially in relation to health policy. It is politics, not law.
Disinformation is defined as information that is "intended" to mislead and to cause harm. With misinformation there is no such intent; it is just an error, but even there it requires determining what is in the author's mind. The aim is to outlaw thinking that is not congruent with the governments' official position.
Determining a writer's or speaker's intent is all but impossible, however, because we cannot get into another person's mind, only speculate on the on their motivations. Thus, someone who produces content that is deemed to be false and have caused damage could say that it was meant as irony, not literally. How is it possible to prove otherwise?
Pointing out this definitional slipperiness could be the basis for an effective rebuttal of the legislation. Courts are very poor at establishing intent.
A second problem: How do we know what meaning the recipients will get? Glance at the comments on social media posts and you will see an extreme array of views, ranging from approbation to intense hostility. To state the obvious, readers think for themselves and inevitably derive different meanings. Anti-disinformation legislation, which is justified as protecting people from bad influences for the common good, is not merely patronizing and infantilizing, it treats citizens as mere machines ingesting data – robots, not humans. It is legislation that is not just aimed at controlling the thoughts of the producers of the content, it is targeted at the thoughts of the recipients: two layers of absurdity. The result would be like targeting the "thought crimes" depicted in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four.
Censorship regimes operate on the assumption that if a sufficient proportion of the available content is skewed towards pushing state propaganda, then the audience will inevitably be persuaded to believe the authorities. But what matters is the quality of the content, not the quantity of the messaging. Repetitious expressions of the government's preferred narrative eventually become meaningless, while sound analyses will cut through.
The main purpose of the legislation is to silence critics of the Australian government's response to the COVID-19 crisis. The aim is to ensure that in future health authorities and the political class are immune from scrutiny and criticism. It is unlikely to be effective. What they have done instead is demonstrate that Australia does not have adequate protection for free speech, nor is it genuinely a democracy."
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