Zali Steggall, the independent facing off against Tony Abbott in Warringah at the federal election, has vowed to push for reform of political advertising laws after a rightwing group falsely linked her to Labor’s franking credits policy.

Advance Australia, the group billed as a rightwing version of GetUp, has been pushing professionally produced, paid video ads into the feeds of Facebook users aiming to undermine Steggall’s campaign to take Warringah from the Liberals.

The ad claims Steggall supports Labor’s proposed franking credit policy, and warns she is “too risky for Warringah”.

“You worked hard and saved for your retirement but now, Bill Shorten and Zali Steggall want to pass a new seniors tax, taking your money and making your life harder,” the ad claims.

The claim is false. Steggall is opposed to Labor’s policy and has never made any claim otherwise. In fact, during Friday’s debate with Abbott, she described Labor’s policy as “absolutely appalling”.

A screenshot of the video ad from Advance Australia, which falsely claims Zali Steggall supports Labor’s franking credits policy. Photograph: Facebook

Steggall is advocating for minimum standards for truth in political advertising to prevent blatantly false claims. Her first major policy announcement will be a suite of integrity reforms, including a strong and well-resourced federal integrity commission.

Currently, the electoral law only prohibits misleading or deceiving a voter on how to mark their ballot paper. There is no requirement for political advertising to be factual.

“The standard is so low. We have advice from the AEC, [that the Advance Australia ads] don’t quite step over the line,” Steggall told Guardian Australia. “Same from a defamation point of view, they’re close, but not quite there.”

“They openly infer that I am proposing a retirement tax or higher taxes, when I don’t have any such thing in my platform.”

Polls have shown truth in advertising is widely supported among Australian voters. A ReachTEL poll commissioned by the Australia Institute in 2016 showed 87.7% of Australians were supportive of such a change, while just 5% were against.

The AEC commissioner Tom Rogers addressed the truth-in-advertising issue at a pre-election briefing on 1 March.

“Elections by their very nature are a contest of ideas between the competing parties,” Rogers told reporters. “What one person’s truth is may not be another person’s truth.”

Rogers blamed high court rulings on the implied freedom of political communication for the AEC’s neutrality.

“We have no role – I know this sounds odd – no role with truth in advertising. That is not something that the AEC does.”

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The closing days of the 2016 campaign were dominated by Labor’s highly contentious claim that the Coalition would privatise Medicare, labelled a “cold-blooded lie” by Liberal campaign director Tony Nutt.

The claim, disseminated by a text claiming to be from Medicare, led to legislation criminalising the impersonation of a commonwealth body.

As well as pushing for an integrity commission, Steggall has proposed establishing an office to fact-check the utterances of politicians, as recorded in Hansard, and publicise the results. Steggall said the office would exist to “confirm or expose false facts in Hansard”, and would be similar in size and structure to the parliamentary budget office.

Steggall has proposed introducing fixed four-year terms to encourage stability of government and a stronger focus on policy and long-term reform.

“If you’re currently in government you’ve really got that opportunity to cut short or extend, you’ve got that control,” she said.

“I think the attention goes away from governing and more on winning and brinkmanship. So from my point of view, I think the Australian people would be better served with a fixed term, so there is a very definite period of time where all the parties and all the politicians can concentrate on the job they’re there to do.”

Steggall also wants to give public servants a greater ability to give frank and fearless advice to ministers, without fear of reprisal, and for ministers to take greater responsibility for failings in their portfolio areas.

Advance Australia was approached for comment.