Police abuse of Harmful Digital Communications Act must be the end of this law

The Free Speech Union is appalled by revelations of Police weaponising the Harmful Digital Communications Act (HDCA) against the woman who brought allegations against the disgraced former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming. 

This is precisely the kind of overreach and weaponisation of law that the Union has been warning about for years.

“This is a shocking abuse of state power,” says Free Speech Union chair Stephen Franks. 

“We’ve been trying to warn for years about the sinister misuse of this terrible law, in which truth is not a conclusive defence. The HDCA was sold to the public as a tool to prevent bullying and online harassment, but it has become a weapon for censorship and punishment of speech that authorities simply dislike.

Mr Franks says that the McSkimming case exposes the inherent flaw in the HDCA that it allows for criminalisation of speech even when it is true, fair, or in the public interest. 

“When truth can’t protect you, and when offence becomes a crime, we are no longer a free society,” he says.

“The Police should never have been able to use this Act to silence or punish lawful expression, let alone to punish a woman for disclosing allegations against a high ranking police executive.

“This should be the death of the current Harmful Digital Communications Act. It cannot be patched or prettied up. It must go. Parliament should dump it now. Repeal it to stop the appalling abuses now, and start again on the replacement.”