QCCL SUBMISSION ON MISINFORMATION BILL
The QCCL has made a submission opposing the Commonwealth Government’s proposed Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 (the Bill)[1].
QCCL President Michael Cope says, “The legislation has two fundamental flaws. First the Parliament will be delegating to the Media Authority enormous power to deal with one of the fundamental rights of all Australians, the right to freedom of speech. It is our position that the Parliament should not delegate its power to make laws on this topic. It should make those laws itself.”
“Secondly the Bill will enable the Authority to inappropriately control significant amounts of political and social speech.”
That freedom of speech will be implicated by these laws is clear when you consider the extremely broad definition of harm including such amorphous concepts as “disruption of the public order” and “economic harm to Australians”. This definition of harm would permit the Authority to issue codes requiring social media platforms to take down significant amounts of political content.
“The Bill will exclude election related material made for the dominant purpose of influencing elections. But of course, most political statements are not made for the dominant purpose of influencing elections, so the exclusion is of little value as a protection of free political speech”
Erroneous statements and exaggerations are inevitable in the heat of political debate. There are very few if any political claims that do not involve or rely upon either stated or unstated factual assumptions.
“A body run by politicians ie the government, is to be put in charge of deciding what statements made about politics and society are true or false. Clearly the government is not and cannot be impartial in deciding the truth in social and political debate. This is not meant to be some conspiracy theory. It derives from the fact that in the words of Lord Acton “All power tends to corrupt.”
What must be added to this is the notorious fact that Governments consistently overestimate threats to the country and to their policies.
“The inability of government to act as arbiter in its own cause means that freedom of speech includes the right to make false claims about social and political matters. In order to sustain uninhibited political discourse, the state cannot prevent resort to exaggeration or offence or even to false statements”, says Mr Cope
Of course, outside the debate about social and political matters there can be prohibitions on lies about matters to do with politics. There is no objection to laws preventing false or misleading statements about the electoral process (eg when and where you can vote, how to cast a valid vote etc) or materially false statements of fact about a candidate. These are questions on which the State can be neutral and where the claims can be subject to empirical evaluation by ordinary process of law
Given the lack of consensus about values in our society the underlying idea must be that everyone of us would want equal freedom with everyone else to be able to express our values and ideas as they relate to government and the management of our society.
“It is said that for our democracy to function there must be some agreement about the fundamental underlying facts of social life. However, if that agreement is imposed by the government then we no longer have a democracy. That agreement must come as a result of debate: of speech and counter speech not government fiat”
For further information contact Michael Cope President QCCL on 07 3223 5939 during office hours and at all times on 0432 847 154
23 August 2023
[1] Found here https://www.qccl.org.au/newsblog/dtmnw01b53xraie6vsd45zgfnx08xe