According to the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, “Misinformation and disinformation pose a threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy”.

In response, the Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, announced in January this year that new laws are being proposed which will provide the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), with additional powers to fight online “misinformation” and “disinformation”.

The government states that these powers are limited to misinformation and disinformation that is likely to cause only “serious harm” which includes “harm to the health of Australians”.

• Also read: ‘Information integrity’: How far would you trust the government?

However, the Australian Medical Professionals Society (AMPS) has advised Canberra Daily that this week they lodged a 16-page submission on behalf of their members to dispute this.

In its submission, the AMPS states “The potential harm stemming from misinformation and disinformation is well understood, as it can erode public trust, misguide decision-making, and undermine societal well-being”.

However, the AMPS members hold serious concerns as to how “harms to health” referred to in the proposed Bill will be defined, and who will decide what is untrue.

A fact sheet on the draft Bill says that decisions will be made by “fact checkers” and other “systems and measures” put in place by online platforms.

In doing so, they will seek to avoid large penalty fines imposed by the ACMA, rather than the ACMA having direct powers to remove content themselves. “…(ACMA) would have no role in determining truthfulness and would not be able to request digital platforms to take down individual pieces of content,” says a departmental spokesperson.

It therefore appears unclear as to who and how both misinformation and disinformation will be determined. For if ACMA has no role in determining truthfulness, how will they assess the compliance of online platforms in monitoring content?

By nature, medicine and science are constantly evolving.

“What is thought to be correct in medicine one day will be wrong the next and vice versa. There is no single arbiter or panel of truth” the AMPS Vice President, Dr Duncan Syme told Canberra Daily.

“For example, the father of handwashing, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis was long ridiculed for his suggestion that unwashed hands contribute to death and disease. Hand washing is now considered an essential part of all medical interventions”.

In its submission, the AMPS also states that ‘throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, any scepticism toward government-endorsed public health messaging was promptly labelled as the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation. Unfortunately, with the passage of time, it has become evident that much of the officially sanctioned government communication – spanning from the lab leak theory to mask usage, lockdowns, and the effectiveness of vaccines in stopping transmission – was riddled with inaccuracies.”

Kara Thomas, the AMPS Secretary, told Canberra Daily “… of concern are the Bill’s potential implications on healthcare practitioners’ capacity to fulfil their code of conduct requirements, duty of candour and international obligations to protect the public.”

While Australia is seeking to limit what can and cannot be asked or stated online, the United States appears to be frowning upon it. In what has been described as one of the most important free-speech cases in the nation’s history, Biden vs Missouri, Judge Terry Doughty’s concluding judgment states “As a government commits to stifling opposing voices, it inevitably descends down a path of increasingly authoritarian measures, leading eventually to becoming a source of terror.”

A spokesperson for the Department said, however, that “The draft Bill has in-built protections to protect freedom of expression and public debate on a range of social, scientific and political issues”.

Ms Thomas told Canberra Daily that their lengthy submission was necessary because “When we evaluated the potential impact of this Bill on ethical evidence-based medicine, we deemed it crucial to address legal, constitutional, and both national and international practitioner obligations”.

AMPS is not alone in its detailed opposition to the proposed legislation. A departmental spokesperson stated that “The Department continues to receive a large number of responses to the public consultation which ends on 20 August”. Included amongst them are the Victorian Bar Association, who agrees with the AMPS on a range of concerns in their own submission.

The Victorian Bar asserts that the term “harms to health of Australians” is “overbroad and insufficiently calibrated. It involves matters of potentially controversial medical or scientific judgement on which ACMA has no expertise”. For example, both consuming poison and eating too much chocolate could both be “potentially harmful to health”. So, considering the burden of disease and death attributed to obesity in Australia – and “given that the definition of ‘misinformation’ requires only a contribution to serious harm – can one be sure that encouraging people to eat chocolate would not involve the reasonable likelihood of at least a contribution to a serious harm to health?”

Does the AMPS have an alternative solution for addressing misinformation and disinformation?

In their submission conclusion it states, “The only way to cope with mis or disinformation is to encourage more debate and to create a society where critical thinking and intellectual curiosity is the norm”.

The Australian Medical Association was also approached for comment on the proposed Bill. A spokesperson responded that the AMA “is unable to assist at this time”.

Public consultation closes this Sunday 20 August 2023.

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