After the massive outcry against the Misinformation Bill, the Labor government is now attempting to censor free speech on social media services via added regulations to existing “Basic Online Safety Expectations” (BOSE).

If signed by the Minister for Communications, the proposed “additional expectations” to the BOSE Determination would require online platforms to “identify and mitigate” (i.e. screen out/censor) “unlawful and harmful content” as well as “hate speech”.

It therefore goes far beyond the existing powers to block content that is “serious harm” to “a person’s mental health, whether temporary or permanent” including “serious psychological harm” and “serious distress”.

Neither “hate speech” nor “harmful” are clearly defined.

A recent eSafety Commissioner’s report claimed that “Unlawful and harmful content” could include subjectively-defined “hate speech and other online harms”.

Bolstering the Commissioner’s backroom-pressure powers may again silence or restrict the reach of criticism of a ‘medical intervention’, just as the Department of Home Affairs did for years.

The E-Safety Commission is the leading agency behind the “The Global Online Safety Regulators Network, which includes France. The French Parliament will soon pass a law supposedly against “sectarian abuses”, banning online “provocation to give up or refrain from medical treatment therapeutic or prophylactic”, and punishable with up to 3 years imprisonment and 45,000 euros.

We do not want any government bureaucrat being given powers to determine without citizen’s oversight, knowledge or vote what is “harmful” and what Australians can and cannot say online.

We must protect freedom of speech, association, religion, and medical choice!

Please join our campaign to tell:

· Communications Minister Michelle Rowland,

· Prime Minister Anthony Albanese,

· Shadow Communications Minister David Coleman, and

· Opposition Leader Peter Dutton

…to oppose this clandestine censorship using the Online Safety Act.