Why the misinformation and disinformation bill is binned for good

The Australian Government’s misinformation bill was formally abandoned over the weekend after it failed to secure support in the Senate.

The proposed legislation aimed to force social media companies to prove they were taking steps to curb the spread of misinformation and disinformation, with penalties of up to 5% of their global revenue for non-compliance.

Originally opposed by the Coalition, the bill made its way through the House of Representatives earlier this month following several amendments. It was backed by Labor and the Teals, while the Greens abstained from voting.

However, by last week, it was evident that the bill would not achieve the same success in the Senate. Support from independent crossbench senators quickly evaporated, and the Greens’ decision on Friday to not back the bill sealed its fate.

“Based on public statements and engagements with Senators, it is clear that there is no pathway to legislate this proposal through the Senate,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement, announcing the withdrawal of the bill just a day before it was due to be voted on.

The Senate passed a motion on Monday to officially acknowledge the “shocking flaws” of the bill and demanded the government “categorically rule out reintroducing it.”

The Senate inquiry into the bill received over 30,000 responses, underscoring widespread public concern about the proposal. Yet, only 105 of these submissions were made publicly available.

When the bill was reintroduced in September, Rowland emphasised the need to “carefully balance the public interest in combating seriously harmful misinformation and disinformation with the freedom of expression that is so fundamental to our democracy.”

Criticisms focused on the bill’s vague definitions of “serious harm,” “misinformation,” and “disinformation,” as well as its inclusion of “opinions” in content that could be censored. Further concerns included a lack of transparency in the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) decision-making, the potential for government overreach, and the possibility that powerful media corporations would be exempt from the rules, giving them an unfair advantage over smaller, independent news outlets.

Liberal Senator Dave Sharma remarked that the committee’s report made a “valiant attempt” to garner support for the legislation, but acknowledged the harsh reality: “almost no witnesses who appeared before the committee were prepared to speak in support of it.”

Despite the committee’s assertion that “doing something is better than doing nothing when it comes to keeping Australians safe online,” the report’s sole recommendation was that the bill be “withdrawn immediately.”

One of the major points of contention during the Senate inquiry was the bill’s requirement for social media platforms to determine whether content should be censored or downranked. Legal experts, including James McComish from the Victorian Bar, raised significant concerns about the lack of clarity on how truth would be determined.

ACMA claimed it would not arbitrate the truth but would instead apply a “systems-based approach” to scrutinise platforms’ processes for dealing with misinformation. Constitutional scholar Anne Twomey warned that this would outsource censorship to foreign corporations such as Elon Musk’s X platform or China-owned TikTok, a situation she called “generally not a good idea.”

Despite the genuine concern over the spread of misinformation and disinformation online, senators opposing the bill argued that it was not the right solution.

Greens spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who voiced her opposition on Friday, said, “We are concerned this bill doesn’t actually do what it needs to do when it comes to stopping the deliberate mass distribution of false and harmful information. It does little to stop non-human actors like bots flooding social media and boosting dangerous algorithms.”

Independent Senator David Pocock agreed that the bill “takes the wrong approach,” warning that it threatened free speech while failing to address key issues like algorithm transparency and bot activity.

With the bill now officially shelved, the debate continues: can Australia tackle the challenge of misinformation online without sacrificing essential freedoms?

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