The attached pdf has the footnoted references included
Btw if pressed for time the Free Speech Union of Australia has a tool that allows you to make a submission in one minute https://freespeechunion.au/misinfo/ thanks to Danielle in the comments
TO: Committee Secretary
Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications
PO Box 6100
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Phone: +61 2 6277 3526
ec.sen@aph.gov.au
Dear Committee Secretary,
I'm writing this submission in relation to the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024.
This proposed bill is such an incredibly, staggeringly massive violation of the principle of freedom of speech, that it is hard to come up with any other conclusion than that it is clearly designed to make it impossible for the allegedly free citizens of this country to speak up when the Australian government does something that is wrong, or contravenes human rights, indeed, it would potentially silence anyone who points out when someone in authority claims something is true when it is clearly not true.
Even if the government and the bureaucracy and the ACMA itself was composed of spotless, lily-white saints who were exemplars of shining virtue and who had no personal flaws and never told a lie and were so omniscient that they never, ever even made a single mistake of fact, this kind of power to control what is true and what is not true in the public eye would still be dangerous and completely unacceptable in a democracy. Given the parliamentarians we actually have today and the people in academia and professional journalists and the bureaucrats in positions of power, who are clearly not such virtuous flowers of excellence that their word can always be trusted and can never be contradicted, and who indeed are actually notable for how often so many of them are caught out in their lies and hypocrisy and mistakes of fact and Pontius Pilate-like evasions and petty thievery of public money, it is essential that the citizenry of our country has freedom of speech, in other words, the ability to call out the bullshit of all our leaders online and in social media.
This legislation, in other words, fails the “pub test.”
The exemption of the mainstream media including the ABC from this bill is flagrantly ridiculous after the ABC were caught recently blatantly spreading misinformation in the form of a doctored video with regard to allegations against military personnel of shooting at civilians. This was the most grievous and immoral example of misinformation in modern times in Australia. If this bill passes, anyone who points out what the ABC did might well be prosecuted for spreading misinformation online, but the ABC itself will remain exempt no matter what disgusting crimes of misinformation it commits.
You must surely realise that any parliamentarian who votes for this bill will go down in history with all those other villains who censored the truth in the past, from the Athenians who commanded Socrates to drink hemlock to the grand inquisitors of medieval Spain, from the German government of the 1930s-40s to the censors and book burners of Stalinist Russia, from Pinochet’s Chile to the Iranian government of the Ayatollah, all of whom have instituted censorship in order to protect the illegitimate actions of governments who were doing the wrong thing.
For the sake of their own legacy and their standing in history, I hope every senator in Parliament votes this ridiculous bill down.
Free speech is exemplified by the words Evelyn Beatrice Hall put into Voltaire’s mouth in her biography of the great man: "I disagree with what you have to say, sir, but I will defend, to the death, your right to say it,” but this elitist bill apparently says, “I disagree with what you say and so you’re going to get a huge fine, sir, so suck it in and enjoy it, you pathetic little flea, you execrable commoner, for we your noble betters know better than you do what is true and what is not true.” If you find this summary offensive, you still have no right to censor it, if this country is in fact still a democracy.
Free, unfettered debate is the only way that politics or science can proceed in an informed, open and transparent way.
You may or may not remember (most people seem to be trying to forget) that during the pandemic the TGA without evidence claimed the newly minted experimental mRNA Covid vaccines were “safe and effective”, without citing any studies or data, when the normal testing period for an experimental medication before approval is 12-14 years. Disagreement with this undeniable fact was censored on Facebook and other social media in Australia at the behest of the Department of Home Affairs, and in America at the behest of the FBI and in many other countries, thus enabling the violation of the Nuremberg code by our state and federal governments in Australia.
Subsequently the FOI release of the TGA approval documents showed what a bad joke the TGA assertion of safety was: the lipid nanoparticles containing the mRNA did not stay at the injection site as was claimed but went to the heart, liver, lymph nodes, and ovaries — strangely enough there is now a widely acknowledged explosion in deaths from heart problems, liver cancers, lymphatic cancers, and cancers of the ovaries, and even the TGA now agrees that the vaccines cause myo/pericarditis, something that was for a very, very long time deemed misinformation.
The TGA is a bastion of misinformation, actually, for they demonstrably spit on the rights of people to know how many deaths were really caused by the Covid vaccines, after they declared only 14 out of more than 1000 DAEN reports as genuine without doing any autopsies or any research whatsoever, but if this ridiculous bill passes, no one will be even able to point out this undeniable fact online without being threatened with the removal of all their property to pay the comically massive fine, while the TGA will be able to continue spreading lies with impunity. The fines for spreading misinformation are so huge they are indeed hilarious, and will lead to the government being discredited and mocked mercilessly should such fines ever be put into place; in fact, such fines will ultimately undermine the system of fines and penalties completely, morally speaking, which cannot be a public good.
The suppression of information about vaccine injuries on Facebook during Covid, which was recently acknowledged as something Mark Zuckerberg regretted (he being another lily-white example of uncontested virtue) is an example of what we can expect, only amplified a hundred-fold, under this ridiculous law that is clearly designed to stifle legitimate public debate.
The right to free speech is such a widely acknowledged human right that I should not even have to cite it. Whoever drafted this bill, however, must need to have the list of our humans rights read to them like primary school students who do not yet know how to read: look, spot, look! It’s on a government website. How about that. https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/freedom-information-opinion-and-expression
And because we don’t have free speech enshrined in our constitution it is up to parliament to protect our rights to free speech in this country.
May God save our country.
Or perhaps our senators can help save it too, by not voting for this outrageous bill.
Please, please, don’t vote this in.
Andrew P Partington
Thanks for sharing. That helps in preparing a submission. If people are pressed for time the Free Speech Union of Australia has a tool that allows you to make a submission in one minute https://freespeechunion.au/misinfo/