Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We've just heard 15 minutes of absolute and complete red herrings, trying to create an excuse as to why the Greens think it is okay to subvert elections, to deny fair and true election results, through impersonating government bodies. Clause 150.1(7) clearly states:

conduct does not include conduct engaged in solely for genuine satirical, academic or artistic purposes. Would anyone think that the brilliant satire of John Clarke would not come under that definition?

That is what the Greens expect us to believe. They are trying to create a red herring in the debate about this bill.

Deputy Speaker, I'll tell you why this bill is most important. There can be nothing more critical in maintaining our democracy than that elections are fair and they are free and they are decided by the fair will and true desire of the Australian people. Nothing could be more important; no principle that we have to uphold in this House could be greater.

Yet at the last election, we saw the Australian Labor Party engage in a deceptive and fraudulent campaign to intentionally mislead and deceive the Australian public. They sent out messages—and they didn't just send the messages out; they actually put the spadework in; they put the groundwork in to try and convince the Australian people that perhaps the coalition was, absurdly, selling Medicare. How you could sell Medicare is simply beyond me. I remember standing at Jannali railway station during the last election campaign, and there was a large crowd of people going through and one guy yelled out, 'They're selling Medicare!' I thought to myself, 'That is just nonsense.' How could anyone actually believe that? But the Labor Party had been sowing the seeds for their campaign of deception and dishonesty. And we know, Deputy Speaker, that in the dying days of the last election they sent out perhaps thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of text messages purporting to be from a federal government agency—purporting to be from Medicare. It was a line-ball call as to whether they actually broke the law: if they had impersonated an officer of Medicare, they would have broken the law, but the way our laws were written, no-one expected that a political party would engage in such dishonest and deceptive conduct as the Australian Labor Party did at the last election.

That is why we must fix this law up—because, if we do not do this, who knows what cunning plan the Labor Party will come up with at the next election? Will they impersonate Centrelink? Will they impersonate Veterans' Affairs? Who knows? Do you know why we have to ask that question, Deputy Speaker? Because they showed no contrition whatsoever for their past misdeeds. You would think they would have been a little bit embarrassed, a little bit apologetic, and that they would have said, 'We are sorry that we tricked and misled thousands and thousands of Australians into believing that the coalition was going to sell Medicare; we are sorry.' But instead they came into this parliament and they wore it as a badge of honour. The Australian Labor Party wear as a badge of honour the fact that they deceived people at the last election. That is why this is so important.

We've seen time and time again that the Australian Labor Party have no respect for our democratic traditions. We've seen, with the citizenship issues, how they have no respect for the Constitution. Before parliament rose for Christmas, we saw the Australian Labor Party knowing full well that they had members of parliament on their side who would not be fit to sit under section 44. The coalition had done the right thing: the member for Bennelong had resigned from parliament because he was not able to prove 100 per cent that he complied with all of section 44 and went to a by-election. So we were short on this side of the parliament, and the Australian Labor Party took advantage of that, knowing full well that they had members, such as the former member for Batman, who should not have been here. That is the respect that the Australian Labor Party have for the Constitution. We've seen the respect that they have for our democracy. That's why this bill must be supported—because at the next election, even though people are going to be aware, we do not want to see a repeat of those tactics of dishonesty, by impersonating Medicare or going on to impersonate other government agencies.

I now turn to the specifics of the bill. The bill introduces new offences under the Criminal Code Act 1995 to criminalise the impersonation of a Commonwealth body. Specifically, the offences will prohibit a person from falsely representing themselves to be, or to be acting on behalf of or with the authority of, a Commonwealth entity, company or service. So, to pretend that you are from Medicare or that you represent Medicare will be an offence. To pretend at election time that you are from Centrelink in order to frighten old-age pensioners will be an offence. To pretend that you are from Veterans' Affairs at election time in order to mislead and deceive the Australian public will be an offence, and so it should be.

These arrangements will cover the false representations in relation to a wide range of government bodies, including departments such as the Department of Health, Commonwealth corporations such as NBN Co, as well as Commonwealth services such as Centrelink and Medicare. The new offences will address a possible gap in our criminal law, which means that some conduct purportedly on behalf of a Commonwealth body has not been appropriately criminalised. The bill will promote public confidence in representations that come from Commonwealth bodies and, by doing so, safeguard the proper functioning of government. More importantly, they will safeguard the proper functioning of our elections—nothing could be more important.

The bill introduces both a primary and an aggravated offence to ensure that the punishment reflects a person's state of mind in making a false representation. I would say that a state of mind to deceive people at election time should be one of the highest levels of aggravated offence. Under the primary offence, a person who is reckless as to whether their conduct will result in a false representation that they are, or act on the behalf of, or with the authority of, a Commonwealth body will face up to two years imprisonment. Under the aggravated offence, a person who engages in such conduct with the intention of obtaining a gain, causing a loss or influencing the exercise of a public duty will face up to five years imprisonment. These penalties are consistent with those for other similar offences under the Criminal Code for impersonating a public Commonwealth official. It's a simple principle. There should be no difference between impersonating a Commonwealth official and impersonating a Commonwealth entity. That was the loophole that the Labor Party cynically exploited in order to deceive voters at the last election. That is the loophole that this legislation seeks to close, and I hope that we have full support from the opposition on this.

These amendments are essential to a well-functioning democracy where people can have trust—which they never had with the Labor Party at the last election—in the legitimacy and accuracy of statements that the Australian government makes. It is already a criminal offence to impersonate a public official such as a minister, a member of parliament or an employee of a government department. This exposes the complete red herring that we heard from the member for Melbourne when he was trying to create a reason to oppose this legislation, to try and enable those on the Left to engage in deception and dishonesty. The law is already there. It is already a criminal offence to impersonate a public official such as a minister or a member of parliament. That law exists at the moment. I'm not aware of any action under the existing legislation against any satirical comic or the like, or an artist or someone doing an artistic work. It is there in black and white. If the issues that the member for Melbourne talked about and the red herrings that he raised were a problem, they would have already occurred under the existing legislation. The fact is that they haven't, and it shows that his whole argument is nothing more than a complete red herring. The new offences will put the criminalisation of this conduct beyond doubt and ensure that those who create false representations in this way are punished with the full force of the law.

The new offences will capture various types of conduct including, but not limited to, writing a letter on a letterhead of a Commonwealth body, and sending an electronic communication, including an email or text message, imputed to be from or on behalf of a Commonwealth body—as we saw at the last election with hundreds of thousands of those text messages sent, organised and paid for on behalf of the Labor Party, purporting and creating the false and misleading impression that they were from Medicare when they were from the Australian Labor Party and were designed to deceive people. It will also be an offence to take out an advertisement in the name of a Commonwealth body or issue a publication in the name of a Commonwealth body.

None of these offences is intended to infringe the implied freedom of political communication or to unduly limit freedom of expression. The offences do not cover conduct that a person may engage in for, as I said before, genuine satirical, academic or artistic purposes. They also do not affect comment or criticism of a Commonwealth body, provided this is done without falsely representing that the conduct is undertaken by or on behalf of the Commonwealth. To make the matter very clear, the legislation expressly states that the new offences do not apply to the extent, if any, that they infringe on political freedom of communication.

As I commence this debate, amongst everything that we do in this parliament, the most important task that we have is to uphold our democracy, and that requires that we have fair and free elections without fraud or deception. Political parties can advocate their cases. They can gild the lily, and they can make predictions of the future, but they cannot, and they should not, engage in deception. And that, sadly, is what we saw at the last election.

This is important legislation. It goes to the integrity of our political process. I would expect not only that every single member of the Labor Party that was elected at the last election, both here in the House of Representatives and the Senate, vote for this bill but that, when they do so, they show some contrition about the deception and the dishonesty that they showed at the last election. They should come into this parliament and they should apologise to the Australian public for that misleading and deceptive conduct. That, and support for this bill, would go a long way to show that the Australian Labor Party believe in our democracy and believe in fair and free elections. I hope that, when the vote is called, that is what we will see. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

Debate adjourned.

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