A conservative Christian advocacy group has said that the government’s impending Misinformation Bill could stifle the evolution of knowledge, impacting society as a whole.
At a recent Senate inquiry hearing, Elisabeth Taylor, an independent researcher and previous research director at the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), raised concerns about whether it was appropriate for the government to completely crack down on “misinformation.”
“The misinformation of today may be proven to be correct tomorrow, or new information may come to displace the incumbent orthodoxies of the day. This is the process of progress,” she said, pointing to the changing nature of information.
“This progress is not just achieved by the expert class, or academics, or journalists, or the professional religious who are protected by this bill,” Taylor said in reference to the exceptions in the Misinformation Bill.
She also said the process of learning involved exposure to different views and that it was strange for a person, such as a journalist, to arrive at the truth without encountering incorrect opinions.
“We hear a number of different views. You tell me what you think and why you think it. I examine the evidence, and I form my own judgment on the basis of that,” she said.
Misinformation Bill is Wrong in Principle
At the same time, Taylor stated that the bill was wrong in principle.“In principle, this approach is wrong. [It’s wrong] to provide wide capacities to suppress information and then to provide carve-outs for areas that are regarded as legitimate,” she said.
“I would say the problem really goes to the approach for the whole bill in principle, which is to look only at the harms caused by misinformation and not to address the problem of harms caused by the suppression [of information].”
In addition, Taylor said the religious exemptions provided under the bill were “paltry and miserly” as it was unclear what would be excluded under the current definition of dis- and misinformation.
“So, in this case, the religious exemptions are far too narrow for a start,” she said.
However, it does not indicate whether religious expression would be exempted.
In late 2023, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the government would include new religious protections to the bill to address concerns of faith groups.
At the time, she said nothing in the bill would inhibit religious expressions.
Questions on How Misinformation Will Be Decided
Regarding the role Big Tech companies need to play in implementing the Misinformation Bill, Taylor said there was very little transparency about the process.“The Australian public has very little visibility on how that is being applied,” she said.
“Part of the problem with censorship is that if something is being suppressed, and you know about it, that’s one thing, but in this case, it would just be invisible, so things would disappear into the ether, and no one would know that their information has not been received by other people or is not visible to the public.”
Under the Bill, social media companies will need to actively censor content that could run afoul of an agreed standard of conduct on misinformation. There are arguments that this could encourage companies to simply “over-censor” to stay on the safe side of regulation.
