Brace for the new ‘mega-censor’ who will determine what is correct and true

Yes, please read that last sentence again and let it sink in - governments never make errors or lie.

Story continues below advertisement AD Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down the 2023 Budget in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on May 9, 2023. (Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

Ironically, this enhancement of the ACMA's power is based on misinformation itself.

Originally the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) was asked to look at the question of online misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.

The commission report recommended misinformation not be regulated, and it limited disinformation to things like "doctored and dubbed video footage misrepresenting a political figure's position on issues" or "information incorrectly alleging that a public individual is involved with illegal activity."

In the case of disinformation, the commission also thought that the law already adequately covered things like false and misleading advertising and defamation, but suggested that ACMA monitor the situation.

Not very encouraging from the point of view of state censors who might want more justification for increased powers, but still leaves a thin gap that a crafty bureaucrat could try to widen.

Ignoring the ACCC's reservations about misinformation, the ACMA plowed ahead, commissioning academics at the News and Media Research Centre at Canberra University, which has long been lobbying for censorship in Australia, to investigate the "harms" caused by online misinformation.

The academics produced a report, COVID-19: Australian News & Misinformation Longitudinal Study, which leveraged the threat of COVID to prove that misinformation could cause harm serious enough to regulate it.

Except that it actually proves the opposite. Each of the five propositions they tested as misinformation was either true or a matter of opinion.

If you thought masks made little difference, you were misinformed. Yet the Cochrane Collaboration meta-analysis completed last year confirms you were, in fact, correct.

If you thought there were risks with the mRNA vaccines you were misinformed. The large number vax injured, greater than for all other vaccines combined, says you were actually correct.