If you thought the Covid era was bad, just wait for the New Acma era to begin! Acma is of course the acronym for the Australian Communications and Media Authority, with the emphasis being on that last word – authority. Although it’s tempting, don’t confuse ‘Acma’ with ‘Acme’, the latter being the fictitious brand responsible for every conceivable crazy explosive invention in the Road Runner cartoon series. Although there is one glaring parallel: Acme products invariably blow up in the face of Wile E. Coyote, leaving him with blackened soot all over his face. There is a slim chance that Wile E. Albo could suffer the same fate with his latest Acma weapon. Let us hope so.

Up until now the luvvies have been complaining that Acma ‘doesn’t have enough teeth’. This is because there are still a tiny handful of media outlets – this one proudly included – that don’t toe the woke/Labor/Greens line on every single issue of the day and instead, in the eyes of the rabid left, cause ‘harm’ to the general public by, for example, opposing the Voice, denying that ‘climate change’ is an existential threat (or even that it exists), proclaiming that there are only two genders, opposing gender surgery for kids, etc.

So in their infinite wisdom the federal Labor government is on the verge of ushering in a new Bill with the innocuous sounding name of the Communications Legislation Amendment Bill 2023, to give Acma certain ‘new powers’. It’s the bit in brackets that rings alarm bells: ‘Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation’.

But who or what is Acma exactly? According to the typically bureaucratic and bland blurb on their website, ‘We are an independent Commonwealth statutory authority. We regulate communications and media services in Australia. We have an Authority that makes decisions and an executive team that oversees our work.’

That executive team includes five women and – for a bit of diversity, one assumes – one man.

Acma’s remit covers ‘the internet and phones, TV, radio and content, spectrum and equipment compliance’. This includes everything from monitoring the levels of electro-magnetic energy being emitted from telco towers through to ensuring compliance with the various codes of practice that exist to police, for example, the content of free-to-air TV networks, subscription channels and so on. Members of the public who feel aggrieved that such and such a current affairs commentator or news anchor has misrepresented or wrongly reported on such and such an incident may complain to Acma who then investigate, release their findings and may impose certain penalties on the offending outlet.

So what’s new in the new powers? Well, this latest Bill will extend that remit to give Acma the power to determine what is ‘misinformation’ and what is ‘disinformation’ on the internet – and their word will be final. Through a complicated mechanism that allows for total government control but zero government accountability, Acma will advise social media platforms what constitutes misinformation and disinformation on any given topic and then impose crippling penalties on those platforms if they themselves don’t clamp down on individuals or accounts that are guilty of spreading said mis/disinformation. Oh, and did we mention that the government itself is exempt from its own rules? (Depressingly, similar online censorship legislation was being planned by the unlamented Morrison Labor-lite government.)

So, as Wile E. Albo might ponder as he sets his latest conservative-baiting trap, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ Well, pretty much everything. Under this regime, social media in Australia will very quickly become nothing more than a mouthpiece for left-leaning governments and woke ideologies. Any opposing views to the orthodoxy will rapidly disappear and, inevitably, go underground and onto some version of the dark web. Because the new legislation requires social media platforms to keep records of offending accounts, surveillance of individuals will ramp up dramatically, and the pressure will be on ‘right-minded’ individuals to ‘dob in’ their family members or work colleagues for any perceived ‘wrongthink’. We saw during Covid how many of our fellow Australians not only adapted to but adopted the Stasi-like habits of authoritarian oppression not only out of fear for their own ‘health’ but also with apparent ideological glee.

There is no question that this legislation is a grotesque abuse of every democratic norm and spells the end of freedom of expression in this nation, regardless of any assurances or claims to the contrary.

How do they define mis- and disinformation? Basically it’s whatever they say causes ‘serious harm’? And what defines ‘harm’? Well, cynics might not be surprised to learn that ‘harm’ includes ‘harm to the Australian environment’. Ah, that’d be ‘climate change’. Kiss goodbye, then, to any dissenting opinions anywhere on social media about the perils of ‘global warming’ or indeed any mention of the benefits of fossil fuels. ‘Harm’ of course also constitutes ‘racism’, ‘transphobia’, ‘homophobia’ and the rest of it.

The intended consequences of these new Acma powers are bad enough, let alone the potential unintended ones.

When governments and their bureaucracies set themselves up as the sole arbiters of ‘the truth’, it is inevitable that great and grave injustices lie ahead.