ADDRESS TO PARLIAMENT - BILLS - Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024 - Second Reading
Between 1991 and 2002 I edited a daily newspaper in Wagga Wagga. That newspaper first published on 10 October 1868, at which point, above its editorial comment piece of the day, it used these words: 'This is true liberty, when freeborn men, having to advise the public, may speak free.' It is a verse attributed to John Milton, a 17th-century English writer, who, in 1644, addressed the English parliament on unlicensed printing. But the context of his speech and the theme of his words during that address are about freedom of speech. Milton's verse, as it became known, was used by me as well. I continued the tradition of editors of the Daily Advertiser since 1868 and used that very good line on the editorial comment piece each and every day of the years that I edited the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser. It is a shame that it is not still there—it has been taken down in recent years—but the precepts of the line remain so for that publication because free speech is vital.
We are lucky because we are covered by parliamentary privilege in this place. We can stand at this dispatch box and say whatever we like without impunity by the courts. But with free speech and with parliamentary privilege come responsibility and we ought never forget that we need to be responsible as community leaders and parliamentarians for what we say because words are important. I'm pleased I can say this is where I am because outside these hallowed halls, this hallowed room, I may not get away with it. But in recent days we have seen a couple of court decisions which have shown that our court system is an interesting beast at times. I refer to a court case involving senators Mehreen Faruqi and Pauline Hanson just last Friday, when Senator Hanson was found by the court—the Federal Court, no less—to have defamed Senator Faruqi in a tweet. The post on Twitter, now X, was described by Justice Angus Stewart as 'an angry personal attack' that conveyed a 'strong form of racism'. Never mind the fact that Senator Faruqi had herself posted some things online about former prime minister Scott Morrison which, coming from a parliamentarian, were less than parliamentary.
Mr Hill interjecting—
Mr McCORMACK: Scott Morrison saved lives and jobs during COVID, Member for Bruce, and I will stand by him for as long as I have breath in me.
Mr Hill: Worst Prime Minister in the modern era.
Mr McCORMACK: We ought to be civil. I think we could agree about that—that between parliamentarians, we should be civil, whether it's online or in here. We may agree to disagree. I just disagreed with what the member opposite had to say. He disagrees with what I had to say, and that's fine. In a civil society, we are allowed to do that. But this court case involving Senators Faruqi and Hanson has ended up in the federal court. The federal court has made a decision which you would find that many Australians would not agree with.
Today we've got a case in which we've had a ruling about the ankle bracelets worn by people. A court has determined that that should not have happened. These decisions make ordinary, everyday Australians shake their heads and think: 'Why is this so? Why is this happening?' As I said, we're lucky because we get parliamentary privilege, but the bill before the house, the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, is, as the member for New England has just eloquently described, an attack on free speech. It is. The coalition will always stand up to defend free speech, just as the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser has done since 1868. We are so privileged to live in a society where we can, within reason, exercise free speech.
Just down the road there is a monument at which there are bronze rolls of honour commemorating 103,000 lives lost by men, and women too, who've gone to war and fought so that we can have a free, fair and democratic society where we can have free speech, we can have free votes and we can have fair trials. We ought to not ever forget that. I have had any number of people who have written to me and taken the time, trouble and effort to question the legislation before the House. As the member for New England correctly questions: why would the government, just months out from an election, want to put this before our nation? What effectively this legislation does is give the Australian Communications and Media Authority alarming power to determine what content is allowed on digital platforms.
As Robert Coombs of Wagga Wagga said to me, 'It would potentially act as a ministry for truth.' He was talking about ACMA. He said, 'I urge you to reconsider this bill and protect the democratic values that are fundamental to our society.' His words were ringing true in so much of the correspondence I received. John Sparkes of Cootamundra wrote: 'We've always had the freedom of speech for everyone in Australia. What will happen with this bill is one group will censor those they disagree with. We should not pass this bill.' I wholeheartedly agree. Graham Oakes of Yerong Creek said: 'I'm very concerned about the bill being pushed through by Labor and its cronies. This bill impeaches upon my freedom of speech.' 'Impeach' is one word; 'Impinge' is another. Either way, it definitely encroaches on people's freedom of speech.
I don't always agree with some of the correspondents who wrote to me about this, but the theme that went through their emails, letters and notes to me were all of the same theory. They do not want ACMA or a group of people who are unelected having to determine what they can and cannot post online. Whether it's the pub test, the courts or the general public, the fact remains that, if you put something online that is misinformation or completely defamatory, you will end up suffering the consequences. I don't agree that the court decision last Friday was necessarily correct, but that's my view, and I'm allowed to say it. I think many Australians would have the same view.
Freedom of expression is unfairly infringed by this bill. It's misinformation and disinformation. Even the two words are misnomers in themselves. If you went down the main street of any regional town—indeed, any community in Australia—and asked what the difference between mis- and disinformation are, you'd get a lot of different views. A lot of people wouldn't actually even understand what the difference was. But they do know that they have a right to genuine free speech. They do know that they don't want their views censored, and they do know that their forefathers fought so that they would be able to have freedom of speech.
The bill is untimely. No matter what time the government ever brought this in, it was going to be the wrong time. This is a reconfiguration of an earlier version of the same bill that Labor went away and tried to fix up. It has come back, and it's still all about face. It's still not right. It's still wrong. What's going to happen is that ACMA are going to have huge power, huge authority, over what people can and cannot say. Who are ACMA to determine what people can or cannot say? Due to the backlash and significant issues with this bill, Labor scrapped plans to introduce it late last year, opted to overhaul it and have now brought it back again. It's still a dog's breakfast. It stifles academic debate. How can a single authority claim it can determine and regulate the supposed objective truth of science or morality?
I can well recall a press conference when I was Deputy Prime Minister—I might even have been Acting Prime Minister—where I was asked a question and I said that facts could be argued about a certain matter, and I got absolutely slammed by the usual suspects on X or Twitter. Call it what you like, but it was Twitter back then. Still to this day, people throw it up at me. There are so many subjects where you get people of academia and learned authority who are steadfastly of one view. To say that they are 100 per cent correct is always sometimes subject to question. If we still went along with that theory that authorities are always right, we would still believe right now that the earth was the centre of the solar system or the universe. Copernicus was absolutely maligned for having his view. People were burnt at the stake for having certain views that were different to the church and the crown at the time. Those views that were being expressed by the crown and the church at the time have now proven to be completely wrong and completely distorted.
Even Meta and X are concerned that this bill goes too far. The member for New England said that he would campaign against it and encouraged the government to bring it on. There are so many people out there who are just so sick and tired of their views being stifled and their opinions being shut out. We've seen all too often, particularly in recent years, how the bubble here in Canberra have thought one thing and the silent majority out in the rest of Australia have known the other thing. They've expressed it at the ballot box. They expressed it at the referendum ballot last year when the Voice was roundly defeated. But many people's views at that time were also shut out. In a future referendum over any particular subject or other, would people have their views censored by ACMA if this bill were to succeed?
At the moment, as I speak, we're seeing an American election. I remember that the last time we had an American election we had people being able to take PTSD leave after the result went one way or the other. Even when Donald Trump won the first time, people were seeking leave from their work because they didn't like the result. There were so many things said and done over that election that just caused so much division within society. Thankfully, we're not quite there yet, and hopefully we will never get to that stage. I think this parliament and this society is far more conciliatory than the USA. That said, this is bad legislation. This is a bad bill. It needs to be rejected. It must be rejected for the sake of freedom of speech in Australia.