ADJOURNMENT
Senator COLLINS (New South Wales—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (20:19): I rise to speak on Labor's proposed digital duty of care exposure draft. This legislation is a masterclass in policy deception. Sold as yet another tool to protect children online, it is about control, not care, and Australian adults are the primary target.
This socialist agenda is not new for Labor. In 2013, they introduced six controversial media bills to police the press. The backlash was swift from all sides, except for Labor, and those authoritarian changes were dumped.
We know that those on the socialist benches have always wanted this control, and now they're trying to take it again, but this time they're using the cloak of child protection. Let us look at the logic. They want to choose what is harmful content and make it illegal, but illegal content is already illegal under existing Australian law.
As for protecting children, Labor claims that kids are no longer on social media anyway, following their age restrictions. So how exactly does this new regime help them? It doesn't.
Instead, this digital duty of care is about handing enormous powers to the government to define and censor good and bad content. In a recent interview, Minister for Communications Anika Wells admitted that she would personally determine what is harmful content via regulation, guided by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. So under this bill we will all end up in Minister Wells's corner of the internet.
God help us all. The full scope of these regulations will not be known when parliament votes on the bill, but we do know that this bill is designed to make Minister Wells the ultimate information umpire. Wells admitted her powers as digital commissar would extend to news sites, exposing Labor's endgame.
This bill is not about protecting citizens; it's about protecting Labor's grip on power, because the internet is no longer working in their favour. This entire exercise reminds me of the final chapter of George Orwell's Animal Farm. The pigs are now walking on their hind legs, pretending to represent us while moving to silence us.
We will not be silenced. Labor claims that, under their socialist bill, any parliamentarian can trigger a disallowance vote 15 sitting days after a new category of harm is censored by the Labor minister. But with the parliamentary calendar the minister knows that, when we are two weeks from an election, there is no parliament.
It means an underperforming Labor minister will be able to silence critics at the eleventh hour of an election. The public may not be aware, but if one of these disallowances was triggered this Friday, the House would not vote on it until next February. This is what the government thinks is oversight.
Fifteen sitting days is nowhere near enough time to protect Australians from an undemocratic minister being authoritarian with the truth—a minister, I might add, who cannot even manage her own travel allowance correctly. Labor's ministry of truth, headed by Minister Wells, is actually—to quote Orwell—the ministry of lies. When the executive government— The PRESIDENT: Senator Collins.
Senator COLLINS: I quoted there, President. The PRESIDENT: It doesn't matter whether you're quoting or not; you're to withdraw. Senator COLLINS: Understood—I will withdraw.
The PRESIDENT: Thank you. Senator COLLINS: When the executive grants itself the power to decide what constitutes the truth, reality becomes whatever serves the party's political interests. With harmful content being defined behind closed doors by political appointees, how long will a free press last?
How long will Australians be allowed to challenge government failures before critical reporting is simply scrubbed from the internet as disinformation? Once these initial parameters are in place, they will be weaponised. I don't care how anyone in this place tries to hide behind a false notion of protecting our kids.
I will not vote for this dangerous, condescending and outright authoritarian slop. They want to control what you see, what you hear and what you think. If this horrific legislation passes this place, it is a dark day for Australia and a dark day for our democracy.
I urge this Senate to outright reject this dangerous assault on our fundamental freedoms.