This Orwellian bill is almost North Korean

The Australian government is proposing a ‘Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Bill’.

The negative effect of this on society, democracy and the Church could be considerable. The bill requires social media companies to remove any speech that causes harm to Australians' health, to the environment or any economic or financial harm. In other words, the government is giving itself carte blanche to censor any view it does not like, as being harmful. Anyone who is critical of transgender, or government policy on climate, or abortion, or even some religions, could be considered guilty of hate speech and causing harm.

Even more disturbing is that the proposed bill would also outlaw speech that ‘harms the integrity of government institutions’. It is hard to think of a more Orwellian law – one which Putin or North Korea would be proud of. Speaking of the latter, the North Korean dictatorship has just passed a law which declares that using certain South Korean phrases is liable for capital punishment, on the grounds that it causes ‘harm’ to the Korean language! We may mock at the absurdity of this – but Western governments are developing their own authoritarian version of censorship.