The federal government has beefed up the legislative toolkit against misinformation with new laws designed to bring digital platforms to heel. There are carve outs in the legislation for legitimate media activity and parody, and ongoing safeguards on free speech, according to Minister Michelle Rowland who introduced the bill this morning.

But digital platforms are in the cross hairs following their failure to bring especially nation state scale disinformation to heel. "Platforms will remain responsible for managing content on their services. Importantly, the bill will enable the ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority] to require digital platforms to be tough on disinformation involving inauthentic behavior such as bots or troll funds. This type of manipulative behavior has been a major vector of foreign interference and is an ongoing threat to democracies around the world."

Speaking in Parliament earlier today, Rowland said: "Digital platforms need to step up to protect Australian users from the threat of seriously harmful mis and disinformation online. This bill seeks to strengthen the voluntary code by providing a regulatory backstop." And on this point she specifically called out the failure of Elon Musk's X and Telegram, who's founder Pavel Durov is currently under arrest in France.

Rowland said the bill will empower the ACMA to review the effectiveness of digital platform systems and processes, and will improve transparency about measures platforms have in place to protect Australians from mis and disinformation on their services and she claimed it establishes a proportionate, graduated and flexible regulatory framework, while safeguarding the freedom of expression.

According to the government, the Bill also ensures that it is digital platforms that remain responsible and accountable for the content they host and promote to Australian users.

"To protect freedom of speech, the Bill sets a high threshold for the type of mis and disinformation that digital platforms must combat on their services, it must be reasonably verifiable as false, misleading or deceptive, and reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm. [And] the harm must have significant and far reaching consequences for Australian society, or severe consequences for an individual in Australia."

The types of serious identified harms in the bill include

• harm to the operation or integrity of an electoral or referendum process in Australia,
• harm to public health in Australia, including to the efficacy of preventative health measures,
• vilification of a group in Australian society on the grounds of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, nationality or national or ethnic origin, or an individual because of a belief that the individual is a member of such a group
• intentionally inflicted physical injury to an individual in Australia,
• imminent damage to critical infrastructure or disruption of emergency services in Australia, and imminent harm to The Australian economy.

"The bill will impose core transparency obligations on digital platforms, requiring them to be upfront about what they are doing on their services to combat mis and disinformation, digital platforms will be required to publish their current Media Literacy Plan, setting up the measures they will take to enable users to better identify mis and disinformation."

In anticipation over a fight about free speech, Rowland said: "The bill has carefully calibrated definitions of serious harms that align with Australia's international human rights obligations. The bill does not apply to professional news content or content that could be regarded as parody or satire. It also does not apply to the reasonable dissemination of content that is for academic, artistic, scientific or religious purposes. Nothing in the bill enables the ACMA themselves to take down individual pieces of content or user accounts."

Serious fines

Rowland said  The bill will enable the ACMA to use a proportionate, graduated and risk based approach to non compliance and enforcement.

"This may include the ACMA issuing formal warnings, remedial directions, infringement notices, injunctions, as well as pursuing civil penalties, depending on the severity of the action, digital platforms may be subject to civil penalties of up to 5% of global turnover for breaches of a standard and up to 2% for codes."

She acknowledged that the penalties are high, but said were necessary necessary in response to egregious and systematic breaches and failure to act.

"The bill requires a triennial review of the operation of the legislation, a report of the review must be tabled in the parliament and must follow a period of public consultation and an assessment of the legislation's impact on freedom of expression."

Speaking earlier on ABC Radio yesterday, Rowland said the proposed legislation aims to give regulators more power over digital giants and combat harmful content online.

If passed, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) would have the authority to require digital platforms to keep records on matters relating to misinformation and disinformation and turn them over when requested.

Rowland defended the bill, saying: "We have our top spy saying misinformation and disinformation poses a threat to our democracy, we also have head of defence saying the same thing, regulators saying the same thing, and we know 75% of Australians are concerned about the effects of mis- and disinformation.

"This is purely a systems approach and it goes to what the platforms are doing - they remain the curators of their own platforms, but here, the regulator is able to seek transparency and the public is able to get that transparency about what they are doing to counter it. It's a very high threshold for what constitutes serious harm, and it also needs to be information of a kind that's verifiably false and can cause harm."

The ABC quoted shadow minister for communications, David Coleman, who has previously criticised the draft legislation, calling it "one of the most appalling pieces of legislation ever put forward by an Australian government."

He added, "Let's see what they come out with, but if it's anything like the last one, then it will have a lot of problems."

The proposed bill, if passed, could significantly alter the landscape of digital media in Australia, with implications for freedom of speech and the role of digital platforms in curating content.

Additional reporting by Andrew Birmingham