Shut up, they argue

In The Australian (paywalled, alas), media lawyer Justin Quill addresses the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Act 2023:

… the bill proposes enormous powers be given to the Australian Communications and Media Authority to force social media companies such as Meta or Twitter to take down posts or tweets that ACMA, in its apparent all-knowing wisdom, decides is false and causes serious harm.

If the information deemed “false” is not taken down, these companies face fines of billions of dollars. No, that is not a misprint, they could face fines in the billions because these fines can be up to 5 per cent of a company’s global turnover, which for Meta could mean a fine of over $8bn given the company’s global turnover is around $170bn.

If there’s another piece of Australian legislation providing for fines of anything even close to that sum, I don’t know of it. So, in a nutshell, the government (through a government agency it declares is “independent”) will decide what is true and what is false, and then determine what you can and can’t read. Given the government can appoint ACMA, direct ACMA and sack ACMA, I’d hardly consider ACMA “independent”. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was reported this week saying the proposed legislation is “not about moderating content”.

Frankly, Minister, my reading of the proposed legislation says that is exactly what it’s about….

Worth noting is that this isn’t the first time a Labor government has set out to impose the full weight of the law on those daring to publish opinions with which the Left disagrees, plus information that, for whatever reason, it would prefer not to see in circulation. Those who recall and remain appalled by the volumes of incorrect, misleading and deliberately misrepresented ‘information’ circulated by governments here and abroad during the Great Covidiocy’s lockdowns have a particular reason to be concerned.

Back in 2013, Julia Gillard instituted her Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation — the so-called Finkelstein Report — which recommended that editors found to have published what these days is being called ‘misinformation’ be compelled to publish corrections as ordered. Should they decline to do so, such defiance was slated for the same penalties applying to contempt of court. In other words, up to and including incarceration.

For interested readers, the latest Labor attempt to regulate what you are permitted to read, say and disseminate can be read in draft form here.

— roger franklin