Faith groups and the human rights commissioner say Labour’s proposed bill to combat disinformation would threaten free speech and “undermine democracy”.
The Coalition has strongly opposed the bill, which aims to protect online users from misinformation and misinformation, but which the Opposition says is an attack on freedom of expression.
The bill has also been attacked by religious groups, including the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), which said it would pose a “serious threat to Australian democracy”.
“One of our concerns about this bill is that it has the potential to stifle the processes through which knowledge advances,” said ACL researcher Elizabeth Taylor.
‘Today’s misinformation may be proven correct tomorrow, or new information may arrive that displaces the current orthodoxies of the time.
“This is the process of progress.”
ACL chief executive Michelle Pearse said the bill’s provisions that would protect religious defamation were “an overreaction to censor opposing opinions.”
The Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter A. Comensoli, also questioned who would make judgments about what is considered misinformation and disinformation and said there needed to be more transparency.
Faith groups and human rights commissioner say Labour’s proposed bill to combat misinformation and disinformation would threaten freedom of expression’ (file image)
There are fears that the bill could lead people to self-censorship and prevent them from publishing on digital platforms (file image)
“The legislation itself doesn’t articulately address this… the question of who is going to make judgments about what is truthful, what is a fact, not so much the content itself,” he said.
“The platforms themselves have prejudices.”
Australian human rights commissioner Lorraine Finlay said the legislation needed “greater mechanisms of transparency, accountability and scrutiny” and feared it could create “layers of expression rights”.
Although Ms Finlay said there needed to be laws to “combat misinformation and disinformation”, the bill’s broad definitions meant there was a danger of confusing “misinformation and disinformation” with “behavioral content that we do not understand.” like”.
“We don’t believe the bill in its current form strikes the right balance in terms of the protections it provides, particularly for freedom of expression,” he said.
He also feared that the bill could lead people to self-censorship and prevent them from posting on digital platforms.
“That’s a harm that we say is very real based on the current wording of the legislation, but it’s a harm that’s actually very difficult to measure because we simply don’t know to what extent that self-censorship could occur,” Ms. Finlay said. .
However, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant backed the bill’s powers that would give the communications watchdog, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, greater powers to access and collect information from digital platforms.
“We cannot be held accountable without meaningful transparency,” he said.
“My experience having worked 22 years in the tech industry, and now almost eight years as a (commissioner), (is) we absolutely need powers to demand very specific answers to specific questions about what they are doing and what they are not doing.” doing”.