Ben Morton (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

No, they didn't say 'Sorry'; they didn't apologise. In fact, on 2 July, a spokesman from the Labor Party told news.com.au that the party was not responsible for the bulk message and denied knowledge of the last-minute text message campaign. On the day the message was sent, the Labor Party denied all knowledge of the deceptive text message. What did they say a month later, after much public pressure to tell the truth? Kicking and screaming, they confirmed that they sent the text message—surprise, surprise!—but a spokesman said it was not intended to give the impression that Medicare was the sender; rather, that Medicare was the subject of the message and there should be no surprise that it was not a government message.

Despite how the ALP spin machine tells us about their campaigning abilities and strategies, are we really to believe that there was panic and confusion within the Labor Party on election day—that they really didn't know whether they had sent the message or not? Are we really to believe that they sent the message out not as they intended? Are we really to believe that the Labor Party, on election day, sent a political communication out but not as they intended? Are we to believe that they didn't carefully consider every word of that text message? Are we to believe that they didn't send it to an internal test group to check, proof and understand exactly how that text message would be delivered? And are we to believe that this is the first-ever text message sent out by the Labor Party so that they could claim that they had made a mistake and it wasn't as they intended?

I believe that it was certainly the very first text message sent by the Labor Party where they very calculatedly and knowingly placed the name of a government department in the sender field and then, after the fact, claimed they thought it was the subject. The Queensland LNP hit the nail on the head in their submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry. They said:

... ‘Medicare’ text relied upon the fact that they would not have to include a Labor Party authorisation. If it had, voters would have the information they needed to judge Labor’s actions for what they were ...

Interestingly, during the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters inquiry, I asked Mr Carroll, the national secretary of the ALP, if it were a strategy to make sure that the sender of the text message was unknown. Guess what? I got no straight answer.

This event shows us exactly that the ALP cannot be trusted or believed. Most worryingly—and this is why I'm pleased we will pass this legislation—in my final questioning of Mr Carroll, I repeatedly asked, 'On the basis that the law didn't change, would the ALP rule out further sending of such text messages?' He would not rule out doing it again—whatever it takes.

When this bill passes, he won't be able to do it again; the Labor Party won't be able to do it again. To enforce the new requirements, the bill introduces a wider range of enforcement options for the Australian Electoral Commission, including expanded injunction powers, enforceable undertakings, new information-gathering powers to support enforcement and more substantial fines. The Australian Electoral Commission will also be able to issue legislative instruments to explain how communications in various media should be authorised, for example social media posts or robocalls. This will keep the regime up-to-date as new technology emerges and it will simplify compliance. Schedule 1 of the bill preserves the ability to communicate anonymously for sensitive material or for academic or artistic purposes. The news media will continue to be able to protect the identity of their sources, staff and collaborators. This bill also explicitly exempts personal and internal communication of disclosure entities.

The work of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters is not complete. It will now turn its attention to political donations, not just to political parties but to all political actors. In the same way that the Electoral Act has not evolved over time with respect to authorisations, the same can be said for dealing with political donations, given the rise of non-political actors in this space. The committee is united in its desire to recommend meaningful and implementable reforms. That's why I'll be working to make sure that Justin Liberman is called before the inquiry in the public hearings of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. There are a lot of explanations that third parties and their donors need to make about how they operate for support of political parties. In 2007, the Liberman family donated $50,000 to the left-wing GetUp! organisation, the third-biggest donation they had received by that time. It was very interesting, because a few months later Mr Shorten was at the Imperial Hotel, a mecca for political junkies—

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