How much do you trust the government? If you trust Albanese and Chalmers, how much do you trust Peter Dutton and the Liberals?

If you think at least one side is lying, well I have bad news: soon they will have carte blanche to lie and you will not be able to talk back. Such is the impact of the government’s proposed anti-‘misinformation’ laws.

These anti-‘misinformation’ laws were brought in to supposedly ‘protect’ citizens from false, misleading, or deceptive content. The problem is that these have become weasel words. Draconian and extreme laws have previously been pushed under the guise of ‘protection’.

The government’s anti-‘misinformation’ law would deputise social media platforms with identifying and suppressing so-called misinformation. The laws contain a broad definition of ‘misinformation’ and allow the relevant minister to direct social media companies to consider specific matters when identifying misinformation. There are penalties for failing to suppress misinformation but there are no penalties for suppressing content that is not misinformation.

Let’s consider the core problems.

The most fundamental problem is, what is misinformation? Knowledge evolves over time. What was yesterday’s ‘misinformation’ is today’s ‘fact’. Consider, the paradigm examples. We once thought the Sun revolved around the Earth and that the Earth was flat. It was heretical and ‘disinformation’ to question this. But, we now know that the Earth revolves around the Sun and that the Earth is round. This alone should put paid to the idea that we should stop people challenging the status quo.

In the political regime, the term ‘misinformation’ is even more nonsensical. Just think on the Voice referendum. Albanese claimed that the proposed Voice body would be merely ‘advisory’ and have no power. He said that claims otherwise were ‘misinformation’. But, this ignores that the Voice would be the only constitutionally enshrined body that would be implicitly guaranteed funding, a right to make representations, and an implicit right to be consulted. Access and funding gives power.

Albanese’s comments were the real misinformation, not the rebuttals. Let’s not forget the government’s misinformation about taxation. Albanese and Chalmers said they would deliver the Stage 3 tax cuts in full. They didn’t. Albanese and Chalmers said they would not change superannuation tax. They moved to increase it. The government has form misleading voters.

This raises the next fundamental problem, who is exempt from anti-misinformation laws? It is quite one thing to apply the same misguided laws to everything. It is another matter entirely to exempt yourself from your own badly written rules. That is precisely what the government proposes to do.

The government’s anti-‘misinformation’ laws are surreptitious and malign in their construction. The Exposure Draft explicitly exempted the government from its own rules. The legislation presently allows the minister to direct social media companies to consider specific matters when identifying misinformation. That is, the minister could exempt the government via fiat. In many ways, this is worse as it is buried and clandestine.

The result is that the government can spread misinformation and assert that its own false statements are the ‘truth’. It can then claim that rebuttals are misinformation. In essence, the government can entrench a false self-interested narrative.

The following issue is enforcement, whose job is it to stop misinformation, and how do they do it? Here, it is social media companies. Social media companies in turn are likely to outsource this to ‘fact-checkers’.

There are significant incentive problems with the enforcement regime. Social media companies risk fines, and opprobrium, if ‘misinformation’ slips through the cracks. They do not risk fines if they wrongly suppress ‘correct’ information or mere opinion. It is obvious that this incentivizes over-suppression. It’s contract theory 101.

There are also major issues with relying on so-called ‘fact-checkers’. Fact-checkers are an unaccountable, often biased, entity. They also make significant mistakes. A key example is the ‘controversy’ over whether the Uluru Statement is one page. Peta Credlin argued that the statement is more than one page because the words on the official single page are vague and in need of further definition. Ergo, it is appropriate to look at the background documents to be able to define those words. This approach was labelled as false by RMIT’s Factlab, which Facebook had tasked with its fact-checking. However, ABC Media Watch refuted such a characterisation. The Fact-checkers are not perfect. While Peta Credlin has a platform from which to push back. Other citizens do not.

The result is clear, the government’s anti-‘misinformation’ rules are censorship, plain and simple. The problems are so fundamental as to be fatal to the bill. It has no redeeming features whatsoever. It cannot be salvaged. The failings go to the very core of the legislation.