The Coalition is willing to back the Albanese government’s draft misinformation laws, provided they strike the right balance between protecting freedom of speech and limiting the proliferation of harmful content online, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has said.
The Albanese government is preparing its second attempt at draft misinformation laws after strong pushback against its first proposal last year.
“We are happy to have a look at anything that government puts forward,” Dutton said on ABC’s Insiders.
The opposition leader said social media companies had “snubbed their noses” at governments around the world for many years, including in the United States, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia.
“They’re allowing paedophiles to distribute, through their networks, images and videos of children being sexually abused. They’re impeding the investigations of the police. So there are many aspects here that we need to deal with,” he said.
Asked whether the stabbing events in Sydney last week had prompted the Coalition to change its position on Labor’s misinformation bill, Dutton said the opposition continued to believe, as it did last year, that the bill needed to better balance the protection of free speech and restriction of harmful content.
“We don’t want to impinge on your ability to express a view in a democracy. It’s a key, fundamental element of who we are that people express their views, but they need to do it respectfully,” he said.
“The same laws need to apply in the real world as they do online, and it’s a matter of enforcing the laws and taking action, giving the eSafety Commissioner further powers if that’s required.
“But I think here we’re talking about images in particular, which are offensive and which can trigger violent reactions, as we saw earlier this week.”