Christians warn against Australia’s proposed disinformation law

In Australia, critics of abortion and trans ideologies could be silenced after MPs backed proposed legislation to give the country more media powers, sparking anger from Australia’s Christian lobby.

On November 7, Australian lawmakers approved the Communications Legislation (Combating Disinformation and Disinformation) Amendment Bill 2024 in the House of Representatives by a vote of 78 to 57.

The bill has now been referred to the Senate Environmental and Communications Legislation Committee for further study.

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The legislation amends the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and places certain “obligations” on providers of digital communications platforms to distribute digital content that is deemed to be “reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive”, the Australian Parliament summarized on its website. site, “and is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to the cause of a particular type of serious harm.”

The Act also expands the compliance and enforcement powers of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). This would mean ACMA would be able to obtain information from providers as needed and set standards for misinformation, with parties breaching the proposed law facing financial penalties.

Supporters of the law cited concerns about online misinformation expressed by 75% of Australians in a University of Canberra poll for its Digital News Report: Australia 2024.

However, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) criticized the new law, calling it both “Orwellian” and “an unprecedented threat to free speech in Australia.”

“The proposed legislation would allow the current government to impose its subjective view of ‘truth’ on public discourse and effectively silence dissenting voices,” said Michelle Pearce, CEO of ACL.

Pearce expressed particular concern about the bill’s silence on the rights of pro-lifers and people opposed to trans ideology.

“The department’s own impact analysis shows that the bill would stop the spread of information that could completely change the ‘rights of women and LGBTQI+ people’, suggesting it could well silence pro-life views and views that oppose trans ideology “, Pierce warned.

She added that limiting freedom of speech in this way could jeopardize the country’s democracy itself.

Pearce expressed further concerns that digital platforms would face threats of “huge fines” if they failed to remove so-called “misinformation” if the bill passed through the Senate.

“By giving ACMA the ability to arbitrarily determine what is ‘false, misleading or deceptive’ and what is ‘reasonably likely to cause or contribute to harm,’ this bill gives the government unprecedented control over media storytelling on controversial and controversial topics,” she added.

Pearce compared the bill to a “similar” previous disclosure bill which received 23,000 responses from the public during consultation, raising concerns about the “broad new powers” proposed by the ACMA to censor online content.

“This is particularly concerning for Christians and Australians who disagree with radical ideologies promoted by powerful fringe groups,” Pearce continued. “We have already seen how the E-Commissioner forcibly removed posts on X that were critical of radical gender ideology.”

According to Pearce, who accused the Australian government of “pushing forward this legislation”, many parliamentarians opposed the new law, expressing the same concerns as the ACL.

“ACL is disappointed that the Australian government is rushing these reforms through the House of Representatives, giving Australians just 11 days to formally respond to the bill,” Pearce added.

ACL is now calling on the Australian government to scrap the online disinformation bill and commit to protecting democratic freedom of speech.

In a human rights review report dated 10 October, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights acknowledged that the bill supported a range of human rights in accordance with the Universal Declaration. However, it also found problems with the proposed law regarding the legal rights to freedom of expression and privacy.

The problem with freedom of expression, according to the human rights committee, is that ACMA’s proposed monitoring and regulation of disseminated information effectively “restricts this right.”

Another limitation is the additional powers proposed by ACMA to set standards and set rules, as well as information and documents provided to the media body by digital providers, which may include the disclosure of personal information.

The Committee explained that, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of expression rights may be “shocking or disturbing” and “includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart information.” and ideas of all kinds, orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or by any other means of man’s choice.”

Moreover, the committee acknowledged that this statutory right carries “special duties and responsibilities,” but stated that “restrictions on the right to freedom of expression must be construed strictly and any restrictions must be strictly justified” within certain limits.

On privacy, the committee said the scheme would regulate potentially content that is considered seriously harmful: “However, this will not prevent a digital service provider platform from regulating content in circumstances outside the scenarios envisaged in the Bill to avoid risk. civil penalties for non-compliance.”

As an example, the committee cited a person who posted factually incorrect content about local elections.

Under the proposed law, a platform could remove this content on the grounds that it is inappropriate and political, “even if that end user has very few followers and therefore the dissemination of his views is unlikely to have a measurable impact on this election.” or result in any other appreciable harm.”

The committee also warned that nothing would prevent a platform provider under the proposed bill from “regulating more content than is specified in the code or standard.”