Critics of abortion and trans ideology may very well be silenced in Australia after parliamentarians backed a proposed law to present the country’s media authority more powers, vexing the Australian Christian Lobby.
Australian lawmakers approved the “Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024” within the House of Representatives by 78 votes to 57 on November 7.
The Bill has now been referred to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for further scrutiny.
The laws amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, and imposes certain “obligations” on digital communication platform providers for distributing digital content deemed “reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive,” summarized the Parliament of Australia on its website, “and is fairly more likely to cause or contribute to serious harm of a specified type.”
The law also expands the compliance and enforcement powers of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). It would mean the ACMA is enabled to receive information from providers as needed, and determine standards for misinformation, with parties falling foul of the proposed law facing financial fines.
Proponents for the law cited concerns about online misinformation expressed by 75 percent of Australians in a survey by the University of Canberra for its Digital News Report: Australia 2024.
However, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) lashed out at the brand new laws, calling it each “Orwellian” and “an unmatched threat to freedom of speech in Australia.”
“The proposed laws would allow the federal government of the day to impose their subjective view of ‘truth’ onto public discourse and effectively silence dissenting voices,” said Michelle Pearse, Chief Executive Officer of the ACL.
Pearse expressed particular worries concerning the bill silencing the rights of pro-lifers and folks against trans ideology.
“The Department’s own Impact Analysis states the Bill would stop the spread of knowledge that may reverse ‘the rights of ladies and LGBTQI+ people,’ suggesting it may possibly silence pro-life views and views that oppose trans ideology,” Pearse warned.
She added that limiting freedom of speech in such a way could threaten democracy itself within the country.
Pearse expressed further fears that digital platforms faced threats with “enormous fines” in the event that they did not remove so-called “misinformation”, should the bill go through the Senate.
“By granting ACMA the power to arbitrarily determine what’s ‘false, misleading, or deceptive’ and what’s ‘reasonably more likely to cause or contribute to harm,’ this Bill gives the Government unprecedented control over the media narrative on contentious and disputed topics,” she added.
Pearse compared the bill to a “similar” previous Exposure Draft Bill, gaining 23,000 responses from the general public during a consultation, with concern concerning the “broad recent powers” proposed for the ACMA to censor online content.
“This is very concerning for Christians and Australians who disagree with radical ideologies being pushed by influential fringe groups,” Pearse continued. “We have already seen the E-Commissioner forcibly remove posts on X (formerly often known as Twitter), which criticize radical gender ideology.”
Many parliamentarians opposed the brand new laws, expressing similar concerns to the ACL, in accordance with Pearse who accused the Australian Government of “pushing this through.”
“The ACL is disenchanted to see the Australian Government rush these reforms through the House of Representatives after giving Australians only 11 days to formally reply to the Bill,” added Pearse.
The ACL is now calling on the Australian Government to desert its online misinformation Bill and commit to protecting democratic freedom of speech.
In a Human Rights Scrutiny Report dated October 10 (2024), the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights acknowledged that the bill supports several human rights, as per the Universal Declaration. However, it also found issues with the proposed law with reference to legal rights to freedom of expression and to privacy.
The issue with freedom of expression, in accordance with the human rights committee, is the proposed monitoring and regulation of disseminated information by the ACMA actually “limits the precise.”
An additional limitation are present in the additional powers proposed for the ACMA in approving standards and making rules, alongside information and documents provided to the media authority by digital providers, which can involve the disclosure of private information.
The committee expounded that freedom of expression rights were allowed to “shock or disturb” in accordance with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the precise to freedom of opinion and expression, and “includes the liberty to hunt, receive and impart information and concepts of every kind, either orally, in writing or print, in the shape of art, or through another media of a person’s alternative.”
Furthermore, the committee acknowledged this legal right carried “special duties and responsibilities” but identified “restrictions on the precise to freedom of expression should be construed strictly and any restrictions should be justified in strict conformity” inside certain limits.
In regards to privacy, the committee said the scheme would regulate potentially content deemed seriously harmful: “However, this might not prevent a digital service provider platform from regulating content in circumstances outside the scope of scenarios contemplated by the bill in order to avoid the danger of a civil penalty for non-compliance.”
The committee gave for example someone posting factually incorrect content about a neighborhood election.
Under the proposed law, the platform could remove this content on the premise that it is wrong and political “even when that end-user had a really small following and so the dissemination of their views can be unlikely to have a tangible impact on that election or result in another tangible harm.”
The committee also warned that nothing would prevent a platform provider, under the proposed bill, “from regulating more content than is laid out in a code or standard.”
