Political parties have been blatantly misrepresenting the views of their opponents for a very long time.

But as Katharine Murphy and Christopher Knaus show in today’s investigation of the “fake news” spread about Labor’s “death tax” during the 2019 election campaign, the way lies are disseminated is changing in deeply worrying ways.

The change becomes starkly obvious when comparing the “death tax” lie with a lie from the distant past – an incident in 2007 when then Liberal MP Jackie Kelly’s husband and others were caught distributing leaflets falsely claiming a link between Labor and radical Islam.

For one thing, in 2007, it was possible to catch them. Labor officials had a tip off, hid behind bushes in the dark and took pictures. Some were eventually convicted of the offence of distributing unauthorised material.

The 2019 equivalent of these fake leaflets are spread in the pitch black of the internet, via technology platforms with no real interest in finding their source. There are no bushes to hide behind and no way of pinning down all those paying to disseminate the falsehoods. We don’t even know the extent to which they are being spread because the only people who see the paid posts – ads – are the people being targeted.

Deliberate disinformation poses a real threat to our system of government. And we have not figured out what to do about it

In 2019, Labor was eventually forced to spend money to spread its rebuttal of the death tax scare, propelling us towards the full post-truth electoral arms race, where one side pays to promote lies and the other side pays to promote its rebuttal.

The other thing that has changed in the past 10 years is that, back then, promulgating outright lies constituted a scandal. The leaflet letterboxers were forced to quit the Liberal party and the issue dominated the final days of the 2007 campaign. The then prime minister John Howard was dogged by questions about it in his last appearance at the press club. “I’ve condemned it, I’ve dissociated myself from it, I think it is stupid, it’s offensive, it’s wrong,” he said when pressed.

But gradually, over the past decade, we seem to have become desensitised to lying.

We’ve started to lose hold of the truth as the guardrail for democratic debate, in part because untruth can be spread so effectively, in part because this wave of disinformation is breaking when the media is weakened and its fourth estate role is under pressure, and in part because some politicians have deliberately abandoned truth as the framework for political debate because it suits them to weaponise lies.

Since the election some Liberals have openly defended the death tax claim on the basis that even though they knew it was not Labor policy, some people in Labor had at some time in the past had thoughts about it. By that logic the political landscape could get very crowded with claims that someone had at some time or other considered.

The death tax lie may not have been particularly influential in the Australian campaign, it certainly was not the only example of false and misleading advertising, and by international standards it’s pretty small beer. But we know where this story goes, and it’s to a place that is dangerous for democracy.

Last year the Guardian was among the publications to break the Cambridge Analytica scandal, revealing that more than 50 million people had their Facebook data harvested and shared, without their knowledge, by a conservative polling company, Cambridge Analytica. It used the data to target users with false, divisive messages to attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 Brexit referendum and the US presidential election.

When he was asked about this operating model during a sting operation by Channel 4, the then chief executive of Cambridge Analytica said: “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true, as long as they’re believed.”

Democratic debate is supposed to take place in the open, where ideas can be scrutinised in the public square, but increasingly it is being subverted in secret, beyond the reach of monitoring and accountability, and beyond the reach of our electoral laws. We are living in a time when deliberate disinformation poses a real threat to our system of government. And we have not figured out what to do about it.

The Australian Electoral Commission is powerless to act against misleading ads, even those that are properly authorised. The high court has ruled it has no remit to stop content that misleads a voter about who to vote for. It can only act on “conduct which affects the process of casting a vote”.

One remedy could be truth in advertising laws. The idea raises valid concerns, most obviously about freedom of speech. Such laws would have to target only the most egregious mistruths and not, for example, prevent politicians from making predictions about the future impact of policies. And they would have to find a way to cover advertisements being spread widely on Facebook, otherwise they would be solving yesterday’s problem.

But we manage to impose a legal obligation on companies to be truthful. Businesses, in trade and commerce, must avoid “misleading or deceptive conduct” and can be subject to civil sanctions. And South Australia’s Electoral Act prohibits ads that “contain a statement purporting to be a statement of fact that is inaccurate and misleading to a material extent”.

Lawmakers here will also soon consider recommendations from the ACCC’s digital platforms inquiry to implement new laws to protect our digital privacy, and to give people more information about the data they are giving up and how it might be used to target them.

Political debate is always messy and passionate and contentious. But when it happens in the dark, beyond accountability and scrutiny, it can very easily jump the parameters of facts and truth.





