Every few years we get all worked up as a country, and Canberra gets itchy feet about how to slap a new law on a problem and call it a fix.

However, when it comes to the internet, the ‘fix’ always looks the same: a vague new power, a reassuring name, and a minister who promises it’s ‘only for the bad stuff’ under the guise of safety and protection.

I’ve spent my career studying how governments regulate speech, and I can tell you exactly how this story ends. We’ve already lived through previous ambiguously-worded law changes that only end up facilitating those in power to reach for more censorship and control.

Which is why I’m worried about the government’s proposed Digital Duty of Care (DDoC). It is a sensible idea on paper: online platforms should provide a safe environment, prevent harm to young people, and keep harmful features in check.

The proposed core components of the DDoC will place a proactive obligation on online service providers to assess and mitigate risks on their services, including across content, activity and features.

Sounds great on paper, but what’s troubling me most is the language being contemplated for the plan.

Buried inside the proposal is a phrase doing an enormous amount of quiet work: content or activity that ‘presents a seriously harmful threat to public safety’. It’s a phrase designed not to mean anything in particular, but presents as a blank cheque that the government gets to fill in later.

This language is entirely subjective. What can be harmful to one person could be normal to another, and vice versa. But once you let ‘harm’ be defined by whoever’s in the minister’s chair that week, you’ve handed them a lever to pull on anything they’d rather you didn’t say.

Although Australia does not have constitutionally enshrined protections for free speech, we have come close.

A High Court decision from Justice McHugh concluded that there is a strong history of protecting the implied right to freedom of political communication, stating:

‘It is a freedom from laws that effectively prevent the members of the Australian community from communicating with each other about political and government matters relevant to the system of representative and responsible government provided for by the Constitution.’

And it’s the hard-fought principle of free speech that is at risk here – and it matters now more than ever.

Roughly 80 per cent of 16-24-year-olds go online to get their news and 75 per cent sourced this news specifically from social media. Creator journalism has become the new medium for the exchange of ideas and political debate. This will only grow as this generation gets older.

If we hand the government a bevy of open-ended powers to decide what’s allowed online, we’re moving away from safety measures and towards control by stealth. It’s a total rewrite of who gets to speak to whom.

Australia has form in this area too.

The introduction of the Online Safety Act in 2015, had then Liberal Democratic Senator David Leyonhjelm expressing concerns. He argued that legislation that seeks to ‘protect the children’ is ‘a cry that is too often turned into an excuse to restrict everyone’s liberties’.

And he was right.

Within a few years the powers had grown to cover ‘adult cyber-abuse’ too, with the mission creep happening exactly as the sceptic’s predicted.

Then came the case that should have been a national wake-up call: the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, with footage of the attack geoblocked across Australia by order from the eSafety Commissioner.

Bishop Emmanuel was reported being strongly of the view that he wanted the footage of his stabbing to stay online. He wanted the world to see the horror, but one phone call from a bureaucrat, and it was gone.

The current DDoC framework would empower the Minister for Communications to include ‘additional harms as being within the scope of the duty’ and allow, at will, to require the removal of content without any parliamentary scrutiny or consultation by experts. My concerns are exacerbated by the fact that the Minister can delegate this power to the eSafety Commissioner, an unelected bureaucrat.

The good news is that the proposed DDoC can achieve the objectives of keeping Australians safe from the harms of the internet – but we just need to ensure it is not ambiguous and doesn’t push too far. Allowing Australian children to access online services, but in a system that includes features to protect them, will empower young Australians without taking away their voice – and potentially the online voices of many more Australians to come.

Any duty of care needs hard limits on ministerial power and a genuine, enforceable protection for lawful speech – no matter how uncomfortable – written into it from the start.

The cornerstone of a functioning democracy isn’t a safer internet. It’s one where the government doesn’t get to decide, quietly and unilaterally, what you’re allowed to say on it and how you interact with it.

Dr Alexander Hatzikalimnios is a legal academic and commentator. He writes on digital regulation & technology, free speech & expression, and fundamental rights.