David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor's misinformation law is an absolute disgrace. It's a law that will be an attack on the free speech of ordinary Australians, with the government going into digital platforms and saying, 'This can be said, and this cannot be said.' It is wrong in a democracy to do that. We know the law exempts the government, so anything the government says cannot be misinformation, but criticisms of the government can be misinformation. We know it exempts comedians and academics but not people expressing religious beliefs.

There are some things that we didn't know about the legislation and only actually discovered through a recent freedom of information request. Remarkably, the minister forgot to tell Australians that in regard to the powers in this bill, which all of the documents released by the government say relate to the regulator, the minister actually has a personal power to order investigations into allegations of misinformation. So we have a minister who is able to say, 'Go and investigate this person because I believe that they have been involved in misinformation.' That is an outrage. This is the letter to the Prime Minister where the minister makes that request. And the response from the representative of the Prime Minister is, 'I agree to your request for additional policy approval.' It is a disgrace, and this bill must not be allowed to proceed.