STATEMENTS BY SENATORS
Senator WHITTEN (Western Australia) (13:09): The digital duty of care is the worst piece of antispeech legislation to ever see the light of day in this place—maybe anywhere in the world. It is an affront to all Western, liberal democracies. It is a direct attack on the Australian people.
I thank Michael Shellenberger and the Institute of Public Affairs for their tireless work exposing this blatant attack on free speech. The exposure draft was so bad that the US embassy took the extraordinary step of weighing in on the consultation. Our most important ally was deeply troubled by this bill.
I've asked the eSafety Commissioner before whether she worries about upsetting American relations with her tireless censorship efforts. Is this clear enough now for her? The first draft was so extreme that Labor is frantically backpedalling on the naked powers of Minister Wells to define harm itself as anything she doesn't like.
That single change does not make this bill remotely palatable. I said in my maiden speech that I'm a free speech absolutist, and I stand by that today. The exposure draft and its draconic provisions fly in the face of the free speech that I cherish.
The bill extends to the vast majority of online services, an extremely broad group of providers that extends well past social media to websites, hosting services, search engines, app stores, messaging services and more. It would require these services to police their platforms for anything that could cause harm or risk a $109.2 million fine. The fine that large to ensure they will be heavy handed, not lenient, on free speech.
Platforms will overcomply. They will strip lawful speech rather than risk the fine. Your right to be heard in the public town square fall will to a risk assessment made by online platforms, weighing up your right to speak against $110 million fine.
Sadly, I don't like the average punter's chances. Platforms are noncompliant if they fail to address seriously harmful material and conduct. Included in that definition is material or conduct that encourages, promotes, urges or instructs abhorrent violent conduct.
These definitions matter. The Left love the mantra that words are violence. How long until an activist judge rules that something said online that they simply do not like meets that test?
A red line must be drawn on free speech, and it must sit on the side of letting people speak. That is not the only problem we have seen in the bill. Buried in the exposure draft are the so-called sock-puppet provisions.
They allow the eSafety Commissioner or an approved researcher to legally create an unlimited number of false or fictitious identities online. The draft calls them sock-puppets—cuddly little fellas here to help out. Let us call them what they are: government sanctioned propaganda bots.
These bots are given the power to carry out any of the commissioner's functions or powers under the act, despite anything to the contrary in any other law and with civil immunity, for the purported exercise of the power. That is a very wide and ever-widening scope. How long until these false identities are used to generate false consensus, to nod along to the current government position, to shout people down online when they disagree with the approved government line—maybe it wasn't safe or effective—or to scare ordinary Australians into silence because they no longer know whether the person arguing with them is a government agent.
Some of this may sound far off, but we saw what the government's hell-bent consensus can do to free speech during COVID. Thank goodness for Elon Musk and the Twitter files for bringing the levels of government coercion and cancellation into the light. It is telling that Labor wants to introduce legalised government bots.
Let that sink in. After all, it was a Labor government in WA that accused One Nation of mobilising an army of bots in our crushing win in Secret Harbour. What are the chances Labor throws around these accusations while working towards the very thing it accuses others of doing?
This legislation is unworkable. It's undemocratic. It is thoroughly broken.
It will hurt everyday Australians who want to speak their minds online without a bureaucrat deciding what is safe. It will also hurt our international relations at a time when we need them most. Labor, I know you do not have many friends online.
Have you stopped to think that maybe it's just you? One Nation will keep fighting for the right of hardworking Australians to speak freely, without Canberra deciding the limits on their words, now and forever. Free speech is not optional.
It is for the people in this place to decide what their fellow citizen can say. Every one of you in here is here to serve the Australian people—to make their lives better. How can you expect to know what the Australian people need if you are silencing them?
Shame on you, Labor.