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Australian officials have proposed new laws targeting online disinformationwith critics criticizing the measures as potentially over-policing and potentially repressing “difference of opinion.”
“The disinformation legislation introduced in the federal parliament today is a chilling attack on every Australian’s right to free speech. The new bill expands provisions to censor speech that even the government’s fatally flawed first draft did not include,” said John Storey, director of legal and policy at the Institute of Public Affairs. he told Sky News.
Storey called the proposed laws “the greatest attack on free speech in Australia’s peacetime history”.
Australian Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland unveiled the plan on Thursday, telling parliament that the laws are aimed at combating misinformation and disinformation. Rowland called such issues a “serious threat” to Australia’s “safety and well-being.”
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The laws would penalize companies that enable disinformation with fines of up to 5% of their global revenue for failing to prevent the spread of disinformation, while requiring tech companies to establish specific codes of conduct to counter disinformation through an approved regulator.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (center) delivers a speech to the leaders’ plenary during the 2024 ASEAN-Australia Special Summit at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in Melbourne, Australia, March 6, 2024. (Joel Carrett/Pool via Reuters/File Photo)
The laws would also introduce a penalty of up to seven years in prison for doxxing someone – the term used when an individual publicly discloses private information about another person online or uses that information for the purpose of exploitation – and parents can sue for “serious breaches of privacy” related to their children, The Guardian reported it.
The government scrapped an earlier version of the laws after facing widespread condemnation, and the Free Speech Union of Australia argued that the new laws failed to address “key issues” raised by the first effort “despite a groundswell of public concern”.
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The new laws have drawn similar ire from across the media landscape, with Elon Musk calling the Australian government “fascist” in a terse tweet on the matter. Labor deputy treasurer Stephen Jones responded by calling Musk’s comment “crazy stuff” and insisting the issue was a matter of “sovereignty.”
“Whether it is the Australian Government or any other government in the world, we assert our right to pass laws that will keep Australians safe – safe from scammerssafe from criminals,” Jones said in response.
Piano, in a statement released last year When the government made clear its intention to move forward with developing these sanctions for alleged misinformation, it called the effort “disingenuous,” arguing that the government had sought to “confuse the protection of Australians… with the federal government’s plan to empower bureaucrats in Canberra with the right to determine what the official truth is.”
“The federal government is cowardly using growing concerns about current tensions in parts of our community, and the fears of parents and others about harmful online content, as a Trojan horse to push through laws that will essentially impose political censorship,” Storey said.
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Officials say the country faces a foreign threat due to influence spread through social media platforms, and are concerned about the impact this will have on the upcoming federal elections, which will be held later next year. according to the Economic Times.
The Aboriginal and Australian flag flies atop ANZAC Hill in downtown Alice Springs as a crowd gathers for a smoking ceremony with traditional owner Kumalie Kngwarraye. Indigenous Australians react to the Indigenous Voice vote in parliament failing to secure a majority of votes on October 14, 2023. (Tamati Smith for The Washington Post)
However, the government has relaxed its stance on some measures, such as narrowing the scope of what will count as information that is “verifiably… false, misleading or deceptive” and “reasonably likely to cause harm,” as well as excluding the “reasonable dissemination of content for academic, artistic, scientific or religious purposes.”
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The issue came to the forefront during the Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, which would have amended the Australian Constitution to recognise Indigenous Australians in the document. The measure ultimately failed, but the buzz surrounding the vote included the alleged spread of misinformation that was a major concern for officials.
One example included the claim that the body developing the referendum would be able to seize property or land if it passed, or that people would have to pay rent to indigenous people if the measure passed, The New York Times reported it.