Integrity campaigners say falsehoods spread through campaign, particularly by United Australia party ads, are ‘intolerable’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Integrity experts say the patently false and “scandalous” claims spread during the election give renewed impetus for truth in political advertising laws, saying reform is now a “no-brainer”.

The election was littered with false and exaggerated claims, many of which were propagated by fringe groups on social media and amplified by major parties.

An invention claiming Labor planned to introduce a death tax, for example, appears to have begun on unsourced Facebook pages, spread to other users via direct messages and paid ads, before finally being amplified by Coalition politicians.

Guardian Australia’s project to monitor hidden campaigning on social media began to pick up claims about a Labor “death tax” in mid-April, when users received direct Facebook messages stating “Labor, the Greens and Unions have signed an agreement to introduce a 40% inheritance tax”.

A Facebook message spread by an anonymous third party, misleading voters about Labor’s plans for a death tax.

Other third-party Facebook groups, including an anti-Labor page named Rite-ON!, spread the death tax claim using paid Facebook ads, and it was amplified by Coalition figures, including the Liberal senator Jane Hume and the Queensland LNP MP George Christensen.

Christensen paid for three Facebook ads on Labor’s supposed death tax, one of which said “we know Labor have secret plans to bring in a death tax”.

An ad spread on Facebook by George Christensen, saying Labor planned to introduce a ‘death tax’. Photograph: Facebook

Social media was also used to spread falsehoods about Labor’s plan to introduce a car tax. The origins of this claim are more obvious. Guardian Australia tracked dozens of paid Liberal party ads spreading the car tax claim into the Facebook newsfeeds of targeted users.

“Bill Shorten and Labor plan to introduce a Car Tax which would increase the cost of nearly all of Australia’s new cars,” one ad, paid for by the Liberal WA branch, said.

Labor – which was itself guilty of spreading the Mediscare falsehood about the Liberals – held no policies to introduce a car or death tax.

Reform has routinely been described as unworkable and a potential restriction of free speech. Previous attempts to regulate advertising have failed dramatically. In the 1980s, parliament attempted to introduce such laws before quickly repealing them.

But this year’s campaign has renewed calls for reform from across the political divide, including Jason Falinksi for the Liberals, newly elected independent Zali Steggall and the Greens.

Griffith University integrity expert and Transparency International Australia board member Prof AJ Brown said reform was now increasingly needed, particularly due to the emergence of rogue groups on social media. Brown said the opportunities for manipulation were now too great not to act.

He said reforms could be based on current rules that prevent misleading and deceptive conduct in other, non-political advertising.

“Misleading and deceptive conduct is something that can be investigated and proven in a political context,” Brown said. “It will only ever be the most egregious types of misleading and deceptive conduct that would ever get prosecuted, but our courts are capable of doing it.

“We are moving down a road where clearly there are some egregious deceptions that people are perpetrating, not necessarily the major parties, but small players as well as the major parties potentially. It’s those rogue players that have a disproportionate impact.”

Integrity campaigner and former New South Wales supreme court justice Anthony Whealy said the lies spread through the campaign, particularly through United Australia party’s advertising, were “intolerable”.

“It’s a no-brainer, to use that cliche, that we really need to clean this up,” Whealy said. “You can still have very good campaigning and honest policy discussion, but you get rid of this just disgraceful deceptive behaviour. I think it’s imperative that we face up to that.”