Zali Steggall (Warringah, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Today, I again call upon the House to protect voters from misleading and deceptive political advertising. Voters want a debate based on policy and facts, not lies and fear mongering.

We have well established laws to protect consumers from misleading advertising.

We recognise the importance of protecting consumers from scams and unfounded claims. Yet we do not have the same protections for voters.

In consumer advertising, claims in ads and promotions need to be true, accurate and based on reasonable grounds. Any claims advertised must be able to be proved.

Yet politicians and political advertising are not held to the same standard. Are our voting rights not as important as our consumer rights?

The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Voter Protections in Political Advertising) Bill 2023 will prohibit misleading and deceptive political advertising.

This bill is a practical, popular, and proven way to clean up our political advertising. This is constitutionally sound and respects freedom of speech.

This bill fills a legislative gap and vulnerability in Australia's electoral law. It is my third attempt at pushing the major parties to respect their voters' wishes.

I introduced similar legislation before the referendum, and the government declined to act. The referendum brought out some of the best and worst in political debate, with a number of paid ads containing incomplete, out-of-context and down right misleading statements.

As the referendum campaigning rolled out, there was concern from both the 'yes' and 'no' campaigners and supporters about misleading and deceptive advertising.

Exit polling from the referendum showed 83 per cent of 'no' voters and 92 per cent of 'yes' voters polled supported regulating political advertising.

Across all voting intentions, more than three in five Australians agree they are concerned about lies and misinformation circulated on social media during the referendum campaign—with Labor 78 per cent, Coalition 64 per cent, Greens 82 per cent, One Nation 61 per cent and Independents 72 per cent).

Voters want political advertising that they can trust.

Voters of all persuasions want political advertising standards brought into line with consumer advertising.

The feedback from the referendum is very similar to that received after the last election.

If we look back a little further, examples of disputed claims such as 'death taxes' during the 2019 election campaign and 'Mediscare' in 2016 spring to mind.

Currently, we have a scare campaign running on our coast, implying that, somehow, offshore wind turbines will cause whale deaths, with no evidence to support the claim—no data.

The billboards were not even authorised until questions were asked by the media from the billboard company.

A sceptic might claim that lies have always been part of politics. But research shows that the sheer quantity of false political advertising is growing.

Our elections are not just fought by political parties and candidates. We now have third-party organisations like Advance Australia secretly funded by vested interests and wealthy individuals with a financial interest in influencing policy, running smear campaigns.

These organisations are clearly politically linked, with the former member for Warringah, Mr Abbott, a director of Advance Australia.

Our democracy and electoral processes are precious and must be protected. For all those complaining about this type of protection, I say what are you afraid of?

Are your claims not valid? Can you not back your claims up or prove them? Just like any manufacturer or business cannot scam consumers, you should not be able to scam voters.

This bill:

This has been done for many years in relation to consumer advertising. There is no reason why it cannot be done for political advertising.

The bill implements safeguards in respect to print, radio, television, telephone or internet.

It also deals with the modern threat of deep fakes.

Deep fakes are audio and video clips of candidates manipulated by artificial intelligence to make it appear they are saying something they did not.

The threat from deep fakes is growing and we need to get ahead of this new form of misinformation. This bill can help do that.

It prohibits advertising from deceptively impersonating, or falsely attributing material to, a person, candidate, campaigner, party or entity—for example, electoral matter that purports to have been published by the campaign of a candidate in an election but was in fact published by someone else.

The bill is modelled on South Australia's truth-in-political-advertising provision, which has successfully operated since 1985 and survived constitutional scrutiny.

The government says it is considering similar legislation but all too often we see major parties keep open loopholes for their own benefit.

This is an opportunity to be clear, to have legislation that is not partisan coming from just one side of politics, but coming from the crossbench, to raise the standards of our political debate.

So I urge the members in this place to debate, vote and think about the standards you are prepared to accept and endorse. Will you protect Australian voters and give their democratic rights the same protections we give their consumer rights? It's time to raise the bar.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second this bill introduced by the member for Warringah and commend her for the hard work she's done in this area over several years. We've seen a steady decline over 20 years in voter satisfaction with democracy, trust in government and political efficacy. Liberal democracies around the world face significant challenges as lies in political advertising have become more shameless and their delivery more sophisticated. We saw this in the referendum debate but we've seen scare campaigns before from both sides of politics, such as those involving Medicare and death taxes.

Until now, we've been willing to mandate strong protections for consumers against lies and deception in business but not in political communications. Voters deserve protection from lies in politics, too. Banning lies in political ads has broad support. An exit poll on referendum day shows an overwhelming majority of Australians support truth in political advertising laws, regardless of their referendum vote or their political affiliation. Voters don't want to be lied to. It's obvious.

In his submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, Professor George Williams argued:

Truth is fundamental to democracy. When citizens cannot tell fact from fiction, and leaders spread falsehoods for political advantage, society as a whole is damaged.

The Australia Institute said:

… voters should go to the polls armed with the facts. It is perfectly legal to lie in a political ad & it shouldn't be.

Stopping lies in political communications was supported by the ALP in its submission to the JSCEM inquiry, the Australian Greens and many on the crossbench. So, who is against this? Who is openly arguing against the idea of banning lies? Advance Australia is currently running a scare campaign claiming the regulation of lies and political advertising will 'hit solid citizens with unfair criminal convictions'. They say, ' Faceless bureaucrats and big tech will decide what's true and what isn't'. This position is backed by the Liberals and Nationals who are increasingly occupying the space at the Trumpy end of the political spectrum. But making findings of fact is not a new concept; our judicial system does it every day. Giving up on the ability to make determinations of fact would seriously erode trust in our system of government.

We must balance freedom of speech against a democratic right to be informed by focusing our regulation on purported statements of fact rather than opinions or ideas in contested areas. The best response to the objection that it's all too hard is that this has been operating successfully in South Australia since 1985. It makes politicians think twice about what they say. The government now has a choice: progress reforms like this with the support of the crossbench or accept Advance Australia's premise, backed by the opposition, that protecting the right to tell lies is more important than protecting Australian voters and their democratic right to be informed. I will continue to work constructively in the interests of protecting and improving our democracy through reforms like this one.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.