July 13, 2023
DAVID BEVAN: James Paterson is a Victorian Liberal Senator who's chairing the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media. Ok, which is a very long title, which explains that he's heading up a parliamentary inquiry that's looking at this business of misinformation online. Good morning, Senator Paterson.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
BEVAN: Could the cure be worse than the disease?
PATERSON: That's exactly what I fear in this case. The government is right to recognise that disinformation, particularly when it's propagated by foreign states into our democracy, is a serious problem. But their misinformation and disinformation bill, which would really empower ACMA to oversee the social media companies’ enforcement of these standards would potentially have a very serious, chilling effect on free speech. And you don't need to take my word for it. The social media platforms themselves have said they're worried that this will lead to the censorship of Australians' sincerely held beliefs.
BEVAN: Well, but they would say that, wouldn't they?
PATERSON: Well, I mean, to be fair, they were previously regarded as having been supportive of this. The government previously said that the social media companies were on board, but when I asked them this question when they appeared before the committee this week, they said in fact that wasn't the case, at least for Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Twitter who are both very concerned that this law will have unintended consequences because it attaches very significant financial and potentially even criminal penalties for a social media platform that doesn't censor enough so-called misinformation, which could include people being completely innocently wrong on the internet, which really is a very different problem to a foreign authoritarian government trying to influence our political system.
BEVAN: Now, we put in a request to speak to, I think, both the federal Attorney-General and the federal Communications Minister, but they weren't able to join us today. But can you, from your point of view, James Paterson, can you explain to us how this would actually work? There's a body that's been around for ages called ACMA, had some dealings with ACMA. Would they have their powers beefed up so that they could scan across social media and say, well, I don't like that. I think that's misinformation. I'm going to require you to prove what you've just said and if you don't satisfy me, I'll fine you. Is that the way it would work?
PATERSON: No, ACMA wouldn't be directly involved in the enforcement of these codes themselves. They'll be effectively outsourcing that to the social media platforms. But what they'll be saying to those social media platforms is, if in our view, you don't do this adequately or sufficiently or in a tough enough way, then we'll fine you. And so if you're a social media company and you want to avoid those fines, what are you going to do? You're going to pre-emptively censor much more content than you already do on your platform because you want to avoid those fines and potentially even criminal penalties. That's where the chilling effect on free speech comes in, because things that you and I post a social media company might be worried would fall afoul of ACMA's proposed code, and therefore they'll stop us from posting it or take it down altogether.
BEVAN: Right, now Michelle Rowland in an ABC piece is quoted as saying, she's the federal Communications Minister, is quoted as saying, "the government has no intention of stifling freedom of speech in this area but instead aims to keep Australians safe." Now that is a noble goal, isn't it? Do you agree? We do need to be kept safe from misinformation. Or are you saying, look, it's a tough world just be grown up enough to work out what it is that's reliable and what's not? Leave it up to the individual?
PATERSON: Every government in the history of governments have justified new powers for themselves by saying that was to keep other people safe. And frankly, I don't think they've got the balance right here. And it is eerily reminiscent of what the last Labor government tried to do. You might remember under the Gillard government they had a so-called independent news arbiter who was going to be regulating the free press. That was supposed to protect us from fake news as well. Now they abandoned that plan in the face of a massive public backlash, and I think they're facing the same problem here. People are disturbed by
the fact that in some instances already social media platforms censor too much content. They have agreed that even during the pandemic period, that some of the things they regarded as misinformation at the time, we don't regard as misinformation now, and they were too sensitive to censoring our content. So we really don't need to encourage them to do that anymore than they already are. There are better ways of tackling this problem. This is a problem, but transparency is a much better way of dealing with it than censorship.
BEVAN: Can you give an example of misinformation. I mean, would it be during the vaccination debate? Would it be, I don't know, human rights violations by China or Russia or Ukraine or whatever? Would it be the debate over the Voice? Are they the sorts of issues that are obvious flashpoints for misinformation from all sides of the political spectrum?
PATERSON: Probably the best example that the platforms now admit they probably got wrong was after the outbreak of the pandemic there were some people who said this might be an accidental lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And Facebook and others labelled that misinformation, and they banned it or restricted it on their platforms. Now, fast forward a couple of years. We still don't know the origins of the pandemic. It could be natural of origin. It could have been a lab leak. But the Biden administration commissioned its intelligence community to do a review into this, and about half the intelligence community believed it to be the lab leak and about half of it believes it's natural of origin. Something that was regarded as misinformation only a couple of years ago, is now a mainstream, respected alternative theory for the source of the pandemic. It never should have been censored. And if the platforms are doing that already without the threat of fines and enforcement, imagine what they're going to do in the future.
BEVAN: Ok, so where does this go? It's been considered by the committee that you chair, that is the Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media. Where does it go from here?
PATERSON: So the draft bill is out there right now and we asked ACMA about it yesterday. And I thought the very interesting response from the chair about of ACMA was that this is only a draft bill and that the concerns that have been raised, I quote, are very valid concerns. So I really hope the government is going to go back to the drawing board and not proceed with it, because if we did land with this thing with unintended restrictions on free speech, I think that would be a massive step back for our democracy.
BEVAN: Ok, well, Senator Paterson, thank you very much for your time.
ENDS
