Hearings prove Albanese is lying—MAD bill will censor political opinions. Throw it out!

Call the Senate Independents to tell them to stop this attack on free speech—see details below.

Within days of winning his election, Donald Trump fired a shot across the bow of Anthony Albanese’s MAD (Mis- And Disinformation) social media censorship bill.

Trump declared his administration would stop the agenda to censor free speech on social media, and fire anyone in the US government who has been involved in directing censorship on social media.

Given that most of the big social media platforms are owned in the United States, Trump’s emphatic announcement leaves Anthony Albanese and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland out on a limb.

They have been colluding with apparatchiks in the Biden administration such as Nina Jankowicz, the former Chair of the former Disinformation Governance Board, a.k.a. Ministry of Truth, which was disbanded in 2023 after only four months as it was deemed unconstitutional.

Jankowicz has been pushing Australia to implement a censorship regime here that is illegal in her own country.

Albanese and Rowland have also been colluding with the British government, which has a Counter Disinformation Unit influenced by intelligence agencies that actively censors social media.

After the exposure draft of this bill was inundated with an all-time record number of submissions last year—24,000—Albanese and Rowand pulled it for more consideration, but before bringing it back this year Rowland signed a memorandum of understanding with the British government, flagging the government’s intention to follow the British path.

Their agenda to censor social media now puts them on a collision course with the Trump administration.

Hearings expose truth

The government’s denial that the bill is a censorship bill has been obliterated by the hearings of the Senate inquiry currently underway.

As Nationals Senator Ross Cadell asked the Communications Department, which insists it consulted widely with stakeholders on the bill:

“Then how is it at this point of the day, not one witness who isn’t a government agency … says this bill should pass as it is?”

The explosive testimony came from two legal and constitutional experts, Emeritus Professor Ann Twomey and Victorian Bar Association representative James McComish.

Both witnesses exposed a crucial point: even where the wording of the bill sounds innocuous, the real intent is laid out in the Explanatory Memorandum (EM).

The EM of a bill explains what the government intends the language of the bill to mean; it also guides future interpretations of the law if it passes.

The wording of the EM about this bill is chilling.

Under the all-important “Clause 13—Meanings of misinformation and disinformation”, the EM quotes the bill’s definition of “misinformation and disinformation”, which defines misinformation in part to be “information that is reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive”.

But then the EM adds this explanation:

“‘Information’ is intended to include opinions, claims, commentary and invective.” (Emphasis added.)

The EM gives as an example a recent German election where opinions that the drafters of the EM labelled “misinformation” motivated voters to support a “far right” party, which the Albanese government claims is an example of misinformation “undermining an electoral process”, which this bill would censor.

As Professor Twomey explained, this means that the bill is intended to go far beyond just censoring presented facts that can clearly be proven to be false, such as scam Facebook ads claiming billionaire Twiggy Forrest supports such-and-such investment.

The law is intended to censor political opinions! Albanese and Rowland are liars.

Twomey pointed out something that should be the bleeding obvious: that political opinions are just that, opinions, and just because some university department staffed by young people calling itself a “Fact Check” unit puts out a statement that the opinion is false, doesn’t mean they are right.

Stealing ideas for what to censor!

James McComish dropped a bombshell on the hearing when he exposed how the government came to include the words “opinions, claims, commentary and invective” in the EM.

Those words originated in the Victorian Bar Association’s submission to the exposure draft last year, which pointed out that in attempting to regulate mis- and dis-information, i.e. facts, the bill cannot regulate “opinions, claims, commentary and invective”.

The Victorian Bar Association chose these words very carefully to capture all possible forms of opinion.

But the government has taken that formulation of words and inserted them in the EM to effectively say “yes, we will regulate opinions”.

McComish said this “most peculiar insertion” in the EM is “one of the most disturbing aspects of this bill”.

Call the Independents

This bill must be thrown out, and depending on the Greens it may come down to the seven independents in the Senate—the government needs three of the Independents and the Greens to vote “yes” for the bill to pass.

The good news is that aside from disgraced ex-Liberal Senator David Van, the rest of the Independents are either very sceptical or not yet persuaded.

The government passed the bill through the House of Representatives last week, where it controls the numbers, with only the support of most Teals except Allegra Spender—the genuine Independents all voted “no”.

Curiously, the Greens abstained, indicating they haven’t decided yet.

The good news is every participant in the House of Reps debate highlighted the huge flood of calls and emails they are receiving against this bill.

To stop the government trying to ram it through in the last sitting of the year at the end of this month, all concerned Australians should call and email the Senate Independents and Greens to insist they must protect free speech—especially the Independents.

Click here for the list of Greens Senators: https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian_Search_Results?q=&sen=1&par=295&gen=0&ps=12

Click here for the list of Independent Senators: https://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_Members/Parliamentarian_Search_Results?q=&sen=1&par=290&gen=0&ps=12