The government’s strategy for the week of declaring war on big tech has now extended from protecting children to protecting democracy itself.

Legislation has been introduced to parliament today to crackdown on “seriously harmful and verifiably false” misinformation and disinformation spread online. Once again, the government is hoping to have this passed into law by the end of the year.

The pledge made earlier this week to ban children from social media still lacks basic details including what age limit should apply and how exactly kids would be stopped from jumping on TikTok or Snapchat.

At this stage, the priority is more about signalling to parents that Labor understands their concerns and is doing something about it. The prime minister would also rather be seen to be taking charge of this debate, rather than leaving the impression he’s being dragged into action. The states (led by South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas) are already moving in this direction and the federal opposition declared its support for banning under-16s from social media months ago.

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Bill reworked

Far more work, by contrast, has gone into the bid to tackle the spread of misinformation and disinformation.

Draft legislation was produced last year and faced criticism from both those who felt it went too far in curbing free speech and those who felt it didn’t go far enough. After lengthy consultations, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has now re-worked the bill.

Previous exemptions for content from government and political parties have been removed. “Having consulted on that we’ve determined that is not necessary,” the minister told the ABC. 

That should satisfy some critics of the draft bill. It means party political content in an election campaign, including AI-generated fake material, could fall foul of the new law.

Rowland insists a “very high threshold” is being set. The sort of misinformation she wants to stop includes for example content urging people “not to take preventative health measures like vaccines” or the false information that rapidly spread after the Bondi Junction stabbing attack in April, wrongly naming an individual as the attacker.

But the minister is keen to stress this isn’t about policing individual posts. “It does not go to any power being given to the regulator or government to take down individual pieces of content”. Instead this would make the industry’s voluntary code of conduct on mis and disinformation mandatory, and give the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the power to demand answers from platforms as to whether they are sticking to the code.

If ACMA finds a social media platform isn’t complying with the code, it could face fines of up to 5 per cent of global turnover. For companies worth more than the GDP of some small countries, that’s potentially a huge amount.

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Waiting for Coalition response

While the Coalition is all in favour of banning kids from social media, it’s less clear how it will respond to the crackdown on mis and dis-information.

When the government produced the draft legislation last year, Shadow Communications Minister David Coleman labelled it “deeply flawed” and an “attack on free speech”.

After the misinformation that spread following the Bondi Junction and Wakeley stabbings in April, opposition leader Peter Dutton signalled a willingness to work with the government to stamp it out.

Separately, Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers has also been raising concerns about the rise of misinformation in elections overseas and the need for some sort of action here.

ASIO boss Mike Burgess and Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw have also warned about misinformation “pouring accelerant on the flames” of extremism.

The case for action has grown significantly since last year. Rowland is now in a stronger position to encourage parliament to support this bill.

Whether there’s still time for this legislation to pass before the parliamentary term runs out, however, is another matter.

After today, the House and the Senate are only scheduled to sit for four more weeks this year. Passing laws in the new year will be difficult, given an election is almost certain to be held in either April or May.

The government is still searching for a deal with the Coalition on aged care and environmental laws, it’s been frustrated on Reserve Bank reforms, it’s finding no friends for its housing bills, and is yet to produce legislation on gambling ads and political donation reform.

The bill to stamp out serious mis and disinformation and the bid to ban children from social media will now join a lengthy to-do list.

David Speers is national political lead and host of Insiders, which airs on ABC TV at 9am on Sunday or on iview.