Key senators are blockading a divisive Government plan to crack down on lies in major public debates, threatening to vote down the bill and adding to a logjam of more than 20 bills stalled in the Senate. Source: The Age.
The new warnings put the contentious plan on a path to defeat unless the Government convinces at least three independent senators to set aside their concerns about giving a federal agency sweeping power to oversee content safeguards on social media.
The setback comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calls on the Senate to pass Government bills including aged care changes, anti-scam measures, a school funding boost, new merger laws, the creation of an environment protection agency and housing reform.
The misinformation regime aims to give federal authorities the power to force tech giants to act on alerts about damaging falsehoods and stop them spreading before they cause serious harm, citing cases such as the misidentification of the Bondi Junction knife attacker earlier this year.
But independent senators including David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie, Tammy Tyrrell, Fatima Payman and Gerard Rennick are holding out against the plan, putting it on course for defeat even if Labor gains support from the Greens.
Senators said they were receiving hundreds of emails and calls from voters who opposed the draft law because they believed the Australian Communications and Media Authority should not have the power to check the controls on social media content.
Senator Pocock declared his concerns on Friday afternoon ahead of a Senate committee hearing today that will hear from experts about how the law might work.
Senator Lambie said the Government plan assumed it was easy to identify mis- and disinformation but experts said it was not.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland put the misinformation bill to parliament in September after a year of dispute over draft changes that drew objections from the Law Council of Australia and civil liberties groups about the threat to free speech.
The bill includes exemptions for the media and ensures that satire, parody and religious content will be protected.
FULL STORY
‘Deeply flawed’: Truth bill on the brink in Senate showdown (By David Crowe, The Age)
