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https://www.communications.gov.au/have-your-say/consultation-bill-new-online-safety-actThe Exposure Draft Bill for Online Safety needs your feedback. I think that this Bill will just allow certain interest groups to shut down discussion about things that they find "offensive". The test as to "offensive" includes whether an online
2.communication is likely to cause "serious harm" to a person. Serious harm includes mental harm on a "temporary basis". You can see what this is going to do from a distance - people are going to claim to be seriously harmed by anything that they find offensive and lawyers, like
3. me, are going to have to argue, in terms of criminal law, that political views are protected by the Lange Privilege and that the Bill goes further than it needs to in order to protect people's hurt feelings. I draw to the attention of non-lawyers that the usual test for mental
4. harm for "nervous shock" in Tort is extremely difficult to satisfy. The test promulgated is lower, it calls for a judge to decide whether an "ordinary person" would have been mentally distressed as a consequence of a post or email.
Bear in mind, we already have laws that are
Bear in mind, we already have laws that are
5. generally ignored by police to the effect that death threats and revenge porn are illegal. To get police to pay attention to you, you have to be famous or infamous - otherwise they complain that it is too difficult to "prove" who was behind a particular text message or account
6. So this law is just going to be used to shut down freedom of speech - to stop people from saying things that might "offend" people who are so fragile they'd be "seriously harmed" by "offence" itself. you know the classes of people who'll to use this: it is utterly predictable.
7. I should add that no-one in their right mind should want to be the test-case for this. If you are a victim of bullying and have to prove that you have suffered mental injury, then you know that the logical and permissible and required thing for the barrister on the other side
8. is to rifle through your medical and legal history to find out whether you previously suffered harm or used drugs etc and then try to prove that you are unusually sensitive such that any harm suffered was actually suffered BEFORE the insult or offence, not FROM it.
