Source: @elonmusk
Commentary on the government’s draft of the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2023 has reached a fever pitch.
The bill sets up Canberra to be a ‘back-up censor’ ready to urge the big tech companies to ‘engage in the cancellation of wrong-speak’, wrote Peta Credlin in The Australian under the headline ‘“Ministry of Truth” clamps down on free expression’. For Tim Cudmore writing in The Spectator, the bill represents nothing less than ‘the most absurdly petty, juvenile, and downright moronic piece of nanny-state governmental garbage ever put to paper’.
In reality, the intentions of the bill are far more modest than the establishment of a so-called Ministry of Truth. Indeed, they’re so modest that it may come as a surprise to many that the powers don’t already exist.
In my latest piece, published in The Strategist, I explain why everyone needs to calm down. Read it here.