The Human Rights Commissioner has today become the latest critic of Labor\u2019s deeply flawed Misinformation plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Commissioner Lorraine Finlay has published her submission ahead of the Government, and has also written a powerful opinion piece in The Australian<\/em> setting out her concerns with the Labor\u2019s proposed Bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Public submissions on the draft Bill closed on Sunday but the Government has delayed publishing them until September, raising serious transparency questions around Labor\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The HRC Commissioner has taken the draft Bill apart, setting out four major criticisms of the Bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms Finlay highlights that authorised government content is excluded from being deemed as misinformation. She says \u201cthis fails to acknowledge the reality that misinformation and disinformation can come from government\u201d and the result would be that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2026government content can never be misinformation but content critical of the government produced by political opponents might be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Commissioner says the \u201coverly broad and vague\u201d definitions of terms such as \u201cmisinformation\u201d and \u201charm\u201d:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2026risk enabling unpopular or controversial opinions or beliefs to be subjectively labelled as misinformation or disinformation, and censored as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ms Finlay says the low threshold on what constitutes \u201charm\u201d is also a concern, noting the Bill requires content to not actually cause harm, but to only be \u201creasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She says that \u201cReasonable people may have very different views about what constitutes harm\u201d and that the harm threshold under the Bill is so low, it \u201crisks allowing an extremely broad range of content potentially to be restricted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Human Rights Commissioner also warns there are \u201cinherent dangers\u201d in giving the power to decide what is misinformation to one body. The risk here, she says, is that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2026 efforts to combat misinformation and disinformation could be used to legitimise attempts to restrict public debate and censor unpopular opinions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr Coleman said the Human Rights Commission is absolutely right to identify that this Bill would restrict freedom of expression in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Australians are entitled to have different views, and the last thing we want is for the Government to decide what is and is not an acceptable opinion,\u201d Mr Coleman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs the Human Rights Commission submission has highlighted, the Bill would allow people to be targeted based on their opinions. This is completely unacceptable in a democratic nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToday\u2019s intervention follows similar criticism of the Government Bill by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, and so we are now seeing both union and human rights leaders criticising the Government\u2019s plan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Human Rights Commissioner has today become the latest critic of Labor\u2019s deeply flawed Misinformation plan. Commissioner Lorraine Finlay has published her submission ahead of the Government, and has also written a powerful opinion piece in The Australian setting out her concerns with the Labor\u2019s proposed Bill. Public submissions on the draft Bill closed on Sunday but … Continue reading “Human Rights Commissioner slams Labor’s misinformation bill”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22503,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22502\/revisions\/22503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}