Australia's own 'Ministry of Truth'
A draft ‘disinformation bill’ has been introduced to combat the spread of 'fake news' effectively restricting free speech online - some are calling it a 1984 style Ministry of Truth.
In late 2022, Elon Musk opened Twitter’s internal communications to investigative journalists. It revealed the US government abused its power by colluding with tech companies to censor Americans online.
Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic watched in disbelief as the saga unfolded, and wondered if the same thing was happening in Australia.
His hunch paid off.
Under Freedom of Information laws, Antic discovered that digital platforms worked with the Australian Department of Home Affairs whereby social media posts were flagged for removal if they were deemed to represent “misinformation” or “disinformation”.
“In my view, this represented an utter scandal yet there was little to no interest from the mainstream media, this was a massive story,” said Antic.
The documents showed that the Australian government intervened over 4000 times to restrict or censor posts about the covid-19 pandemic.
“These posts were taken down, many of them included information that almost certainly has since turned out to be true. This is dangerous stuff,” said Antic.
Now, if the current Prime Minister has his way, the government will bestow power on the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to censor or curtail free speech online.
The proposed draft legislation in the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation bill 2023, allows the media watchdog to impose significant penalties on social media platforms if they publish content that it perceives to be misinformation and disinformation.
“Some have likened it to a 1984 style Ministry of Truth,” said Peter Fam, a specialist human rights lawyer of Maat's Method law firm based in Sydney.
“The definitions of misinformation and disinformation are so amorphous and vague that it doesn't have any capacity to protect Australians, which the government says, is the purpose of the legislation,” said Fam.
Any publicly disseminated information on social media posts, podcasts, or blogs can be flagged. Penalties for non-compliance can be up to $500,000 for individuals or into the millions for digital media platforms.
“As a human rights lawyer, I am surprised about how brazen it is. The government is not even trying to hide how it wants to control the narrative,” said Fam.
“I think the government is threatened by how covid-19 went - now we’re dealing with the Voice to Parliament – and it wants to control the information people see online. In their ideal world, government messaging is the only thing that reaches people’s ears and everything else is blocked out,” added Fam.
Currently, the government has no formal powers to regulate the internet, but if this bill becomes an Act (law), it will allow ACMA to create codes of practice that any publisher of public information will have to abide by.
“I don't think they've really thought through how they're going to cope with the fact that information is constantly changing. There's no such thing as misinformation, really, if you think about it - there's just information and some of it is reliable, and some of it isn't,” said Fam.
“They're just trying to give themselves as much power as they can to control the dissemination of information in a crisis context and we'll have to see how they use it to nefarious ends much later,” he added.
Fighting censorship in the US
In the US, there is a more explicit right to free speech in the constitution. Americans fought for their freedoms in the War of Independence, which has built a strong protection around the First Amendment.
A lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden brought by attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana along with several medical experts and journalists, alleges key officials from the Biden administration colluded with social media platforms to censor their views, which ran counter to the government’s official covid narrative.
On July 4, 2023, a US federal judge issued an injunction temporarily barring several federal agencies and Biden officials from contacting social media companies such as Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram and other platforms for the purpose of;
“..urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
District Court Judge Terry Doughty indicated there’s ‘substantial evidence’ that the US government violated the First Amendment by engaging in a widespread censorship campaign and that “if the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
The Biden Administration appealed the decision, asserting that agencies “face irreparable harm with each day the injunction remains in effect,” but their motion to stay was denied.
[UPDATE: On 14 JULY 2023 the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans granted the Biden administration’s request to put the censorship-by-proxy ban on hold.]
Aaron Kheriaty, a physician and plaintiff in the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, recently wrote in The Federalist:
“Government censorship is unconstitutional regardless of whether the information censored turns out, upon critical examination and debate, to be true or false. Government officials cannot arrogate the power to decide for all citizens what is true and what is false — as they are not God.”
The legal system grinds slowly, but Kheriaty also promised that, “however long it takes, we will continue to fight this battle until the government’s censorship empire is dismantled and Americans regain their First Amendment right to free speech in the digital public square.”
Aussies are lukewarm to censorship
Antic says he is surprised by the lukewarm attitude to censorship in Australia.
“Australians were alarmingly comfortable with being controlled and dictated to during the pandemic. Perhaps it’s because we’ve not had the same experience as Americans that we're more blasé with our freedoms,” said Antic.
He speculates that because Australia has been ‘the lucky country’ for so long, people may be very comfortable with our institutions, and trust that our government “will do the right thing.”
“Certainly, people who’ve had to flee their country or who’ve lived under communism in Eastern Europe say to me, ‘oh, we’ve seen this sort of government over-reach before.’ It’s clear they understand,” said Antic.
“A healthy, functioning democracy requires freedom of speech, which means that ideas from across the ideological and political spectrum are discussed and debated with the hope that good arguments, guided by the light of truth, will win the day,” he added.
Is free speech or censorship safer?
Andrew Lowenthal is a #TwitterFiles journalist and consultant focused on digital authoritarianism & civil liberties. He says that even though free speech has trade-offs, it’s always the better option.
“Free speech is democratic and messy, and people can abuse it. But the alternative - whereby the government decides what is allowable - is far more dangerous. People with very fringe views are generally ignored anyway, and the scale of their misdemeanours are often minor compared to what the government gets wrong,” said Lowenthal.
“Weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq war come to mind. Governments knowingly lied to take us to war. Politicians are the last people you should trust with determining the truth,” he added.
Lowenthal’s article on the Australian #TwitterFiles reinforced concerns raised by Antic about the government censoring its citizens, and highlighted the absurdity of relying on unqualified staff to fact-check the accuracy of online posts.
“The Australian Twitter Files revealed that the Department of Home Affairs was relying on Yahoo! News and USA Today (among others) to justify their take down requests or they’d hire journalists without scientific credentials. We need dialogue, not diktats, to determine what is true,” said Lowenthal.
Fam agrees, and says that the proposed bill by the Australian government is only going to pave the way for more censorship of dissent.
“Even though censorship is heavy now, to some extent, the internet is still a marketplace of ideas. If this new bill passes in its current state, the internet could turn into something that is monitored and policed, just like the government in China. It would just be the end of the internet really,” said Fam.
Public consultations for the “Combating Misinformation and Disinformation” bill 2023 are now open and will conclude on August 6, 2023.
In medicine, those of us suggesting the lockdowns were unscientific and posed a significant danger to health; that the Covid "vaccines" were potentially dangerous and were not likely to work, faced possible deregistration. Patently obvious at the time, and confirmed beyond doubt now, the claims at the time were considered "misinformation".
The bill is simply a push by the Marxist left, who now control all government and all institutions, to eliminate any alternative views on anything deemed a threat to their total control. Sadly, Morrison was trying to push the same bill on us. Even more sad, as Alex Antic suggests, is the complete disinterest from the majority of Australians, who seem to be more concerned about the footy results than freedom.
I too share a fear that Substack, which represents the last bastion of truthful discourse, will be in their sights.
Imagine if they came for us on Substack. I gave up on Facebook and gave twittered but love the community here. It is the last refuge for truth and rational discussion.