‘Censorship’ - Warnings about PM’s online safety laws 🤐

0:00You're listening to the Ben Fordham Podcast, and now Ben Fordham comments. We need to be very wary of Anthony Albanese's new online safety laws. The Prime Minister promises they're not about government control. He says it's not about censorship. Well, maybe everyone should read the bill. Because this thing is a hell of a lot more than the cute shoes your algorithm policy, the PM selling us. Section 26 says online services must provide so far as is reasonably practicable, a safe online environment. Well, that sounds nice. Until you ask who decides what safe means. Section 25C lists the harmful material Australians are meant to be protected from. All abuse, terrorism, death threats and serious harassment, all obvious stuff. But then it says this, any other material or conduct that the communications minister

1:01decides may cause serious harm. Hang on a minute. We're going to leave it up to the communications minister, Anneke Wells, to decide what's harmful online. They must think we have short memories. As during Labor's failed campaign for an indigenous voice to Parliament, they were warning about the same thing, harmful online content. At the time there was nothing the yes campaign or the Labor Party could do about it, because social media allowed free speech. And Australians were expressing themselves loudly online that they didn't like the voice proposal. When Anthony Albanese struggled to answer basic questions on 2GB breakfast, the video spread like wildfire. And over the days and weeks that followed, more people switched from the yes camp to the no mob. Back then we didn't have the kind of online safety laws the Prime Minister now wants in his back pocket. If Labor had them available back then, there's a chance a lot of the negative material about the voice would have vanished.

2:02According to the spin, the government is worried about child abuse, terrorism, harassment and threats. But the list is not locked. A minister can expand the list later without Parliament having to pass a whole new act. There's no specific protection for political speech, no clause saying political commentary is allowed, no carve out saying criticism of politicians or governments is accepted. The builders not say criticism of government is considered harmful, but the bill openly talks about emerging categories of harm. Now we're not just talking about illegal material, we're talking about attitudes and ideas. And again, the minister can add more categories later. Then comes the enforcement, platforms have to identify all reasonably foreseeable risks from their content algorithms and design. They have to mitigate those risks, document them and keep reviewing them. And if the E-safety office thinks they haven't done enough, section 26D lets the commissioner

3:07order them to take specified action. Well, that sounds like government control. A government regulator ordering private platforms to act under a government-made rule. And the panel is a huge, more than $100 million. So put yourself in the platform shoes. A minister can expand what counts as harmful, a regulator decides if you've handled it properly and getting it wrong can cost millions. So what do you think the platforms are going to do? Fight for our free speech or delete first and ask questions later. And then there's the genuinely bizarre bit. Section 205J lets the E-safety commissioner use fake identities while exercising powers under the act. Yes, the same government lecturing people about accountability online wants to creep around using fake profiles. Anthony Albanese wants Australians to hear all of this and then believe this isn't government control. This is the same PM who's complained in the past about people making memes of him online.

4:12Make no mistake in the middle of an election campaign, the temptation will be real. If you're losing the argument online, the definition of what's harmful may instantly grow wider. And once you build the censorship machinery, you don't get to decide who uses it next. It's one of those policies that looks warm and fuzzy on the outside, but the devil's in the detail.