This Orwellian bill is almost North Korean

The Australian government is proposing a ‘Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Bill’.

The negative effect of this on society, democracy and the Church could be considerable. The bill requires social media companies to remove any speech that causes harm to Australians' health, to the environment or any economic or financial harm. In other words, the government is giving itself carte blanche to censor any view it does not like, as being harmful. Anyone who is critical of transgender, or government policy on climate, or abortion, or even some religions, could be considered guilty of hate speech and causing harm.

Even more disturbing is that the proposed bill would also outlaw speech that ‘harms the integrity of government institutions’. It is hard to think of a more Orwellian law – one which Putin or North Korea would be proud of. Speaking of the latter, the North Korean dictatorship has just passed a law which declares that using certain South Korean phrases is liable for capital punishment, on the grounds that it causes ‘harm’ to the Korean language! We may mock at the absurdity of this – but Western governments are developing their own authoritarian version of censorship.

In May of this year, it emerged that the Australian government during the pandemic had told Twitter and other social media platforms that they should remove posts the government did not like, including those making fun of Dan Andrews, the Victorian premier. It seems that this taste of power has gone to the politicians’ heads, and they now want more. In the US a recent 155-page Louisiana court judgement demonstrated in great detail how the US government had pressured and used social media companies to remove posts it did not like.

Why should we be concerned? Benjamin Franklin was only partially right when he wrote that ‘reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error’. As Christians we know that truth and light are the ultimate disinfectants for falsehood and darkness. But we need to be able to speak the truth. If the government starts telling us what we can and cannot say in public, on the pretext of ‘preventing harm’, then it won’t be too long before the Church is told what it can, and cannot preach. To cite Franklin again – ‘Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither’.