Politics with Michelle Grattan: shadow communications minister David Coleman says misinformation legislation ‘one of the worst bills ever’

The government has embarked on a raft of new online safety measures aimed at protecting Australians from the excesses of misinformation and social harm online.

However, these policies have been met with backlash. Experts criticise the plan to enforce an age limit of 16 on social media access. Both the federal opposition and several crossbenchers have come out against Labor’s misinformation bill.

At the same time, the government has to produce its long-anticipated changes to gambling advertising.

On this podcast episode we’re joined by shadow communications minister David Coleman to discuss these issues.

On the government’s proposed misinformation and disinformation reforms, Coleman is trenchant in his criticism:

The fundamental problem here is it gives the digital platforms an immense financial incentive to censor the free speech of Australians because if ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority], the regulator, decides that a digital platform isn’t doing enough in the eyes of ACMA to censor misinformation, they’re up for massive fines.

So, what’s a digital platform going to do in that circumstance? It’s going to say we don’t want big fines. We care about our profits. They don’t care about the free speech of Australians. So, the sensible thing for them to do economically is err on the side of caution and censor a whole lot of material.

I think it is literally one of the worst bills ever put forward by a government. And whilst it’s changed a bit since the first version, it actually hasn’t changed all that much, and the fundamental problems remain, and it’s just utterly unacceptable.

On the move to age limit access to social media, which the opposition advocated head of the government, Coleman advocated action as quickly as possible:

We’d like to get it through the parliament this year. And then in terms of implementing it. It should be implemented as soon as it possibly can because this needs to happen. These platforms, for far too long, have got away with basically abrogating their responsibility towards children. There is no question that the very significant rises in mental health conditions that we’ve seen in the past decade – there is a strong link between that and social media.

We cannot trust the social media platforms to do the right thing, and it is appropriate that we put in place rules to require them so that they can’t just let an eight-year-old child on their platforms with impunity as they do today.

On gambling, Coleman outlines what a future coalition government would do and contrasts the lack of movement so far from the government:

We put legislation back in June-July last year to implement the ban on gambling advertising during live sport. The government walked into the Senate chamber and blocked that legislation. Now, if that legislation had gone through, we would now be in a situation where kids would not be seeing that gambling advertising during live sport. We would be better off as a community as a consequence, and the government is just dragging the chain to a dramatic degree on this topic, and it needs to be resolved.

Minister Rowland, who ultimately is responsible, just needs to do something, frankly, because this has gone on for far too long.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.