You should be scared: Bolt slams new misinformation bill from Labor government

today I went through the details of this astonishing draft Bill arrogant draft bill that the Albanese government has put out to cut your free speech on the internet to get blogs and podcasts and so forth and people posting on Twitter even to stop putting out what it calls info misinformation and seeing those details I'm even more shocked and you should be scared this bill has the

orwellian titled combating misinformation and disinformation Bill and it threatens internet platforms like Twitter with fines of up to nearly seven million dollars or five percent of the global turnover whichever is biggest if they don't cut down on suppose misinformation online So that obviously refines like that gives the government massive power but get this this bill says it's misinformation ban does not apply to the federal or

state governments they're excluded so the government can tell lies it can spread in misinformation that they then say well this is the truth but you then could get banned from challenging it and that's of course how you build a big brother government now the obvious problem with this bill of course is as other commentators have been saying last week who trusts governments to Define misinformation government

spread misinformation all the time after all remember in the pandemic they told us it wasn't safe to let children play outside well that was false they've told us that nuclear power is too unsafe to use here that's also totally false they tell us global warming is an existential threat false stolen Generations I could go on but there's actually more to this building this double standard there

are other strange things in this a Sinister overreach which gives the bureaucrats of the Australian media and Communications Authority that will be administering these Powers even more power than they have already to shut down important debates that offend the left now this draft bill defined specific formation as information on the internet that for instance is false misleading or deceptive and reasonably likely to course or contribute

to Serious harm oh ham what is that exactly you might ask and then things get really Shady the bill says ha means among other things information that could cause hatred against the group on the basis of ethnicity nationalities race gender sexual inter orientation Age religion Etc and you can see exactly where that's going that list as I found already going to make a very dangerous to

discuss for instance dangers of multiculturalism dangers of a certain Faith ethnic crime whites pretend to be Aboriginal could cause hatred you're bad but this bill says that harm also means internet posts which disrupt public order or Society in Australia What on earth does that mean does it mean for instance that we can't discuss protests against governments that have gone crazy gone too far like by imposing

lockdowns but even more extraordinary is this have a look at this the Albanese governance misinformation bills this is cracking down on misinformation on the internet which causes harm to the Australian environment seriously and there are no prizes for guessing exactly how activists are going to use that they're going to argue as we've seen similar things in the high court haven't we or various courts around the

country they're going to argue that posts and podcasts which argue correctly that global warming is not a crisis or say the global warming schemes are useless well that's misinformation and it's going to harm the Australian environment think of the Great Barrier Reef ban those posts now of course the Australian Communications media Authority may turn down such appeals right but Acme is already only two eager to

talk to you now your view of this misinformation bill uh look Andrew it's it's Half Baked uh and uh worse than that it is the biggest imposition on free speech that I've ever seen a piece of legislation um I've long been an advocate for free speech uh I've had concerns with and you've I've expressed them on your show and other other places publicly about legislation like

section 18 serve for racial discrimination act but I can tell you in my 27 years in this job throw in my five or six years at University uh you know just just over 30 years um actively being in this space this is without doubt the worst piece of legislation for free speech that I have seen and as I say it is Half Baked you put up

the definition of harm fantastic it's got a definition of harm in there concerning as it is but that's not the the relevant um uh trigger in the prohibition section the prohibition section talks about serious harm well what is serious harm who knows it's not even defined uh there's all sorts of inconsistencies and questions with this and and I I am dreadfully concerned about it it's it's

as bad as I've seen and um I I can't I cannot say that enough