Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As our world tries to deal with this pandemic and as one of the world's most important democracies held its presidential election, questions about how we get our information and worries about the spread of misinformation have never seemed so important. Many of us have spent hours glued to our televisions for the past five days, awaiting a result from the US election. We couldn't help but notice the other decision-making process that was happening at the same time: the decision of what broadcasters internationally and locally were deciding to air on their networks and how they were reporting the ballot count.

At 6.30 pm local time on Thursday, President Trump gave a press conference at the White House to falsely claim that the election was a fraud and that the Democrats were stealing it away from him. The US networks ABC, CBS and NBC all made the decision to cut away from the President's press conference as he was citing false statements and unfounded conspiracies. This is something we have not seen before during the Trump presidency—the media reporting Trump's baseless rhetoric as lies and misinformation and choosing not to broadcast it. But we know that this is not isolated. The areas where fake news and the rise of conspiracy theories continue to flourish are wide. Due to rapidly growing digital platforms and social media and a decline in traditional media, this is not unique to the US. We are all at risk from the spread of denial, mistruths and misinformation, yet this government has no serious plan to support public interest journalism.

President Trump's election-rigging conspiracy theory was parroted here in Australia, in fact—most shockingly by government members. Both George Christensen and Matt Canavan used their official social media accounts to share posts alleging voter fraud in the US—

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