From fake news to fake parliamentary inquiries – it may not seem a huge leap, but the Coalition’s readiness to treat a standing committee of the House of Representatives as a campaign tool is deeply troubling. It is one thing for the treasurer to ask the Standing Committee on Economics to inquire into the implications of Labor’s plan to abolish refundable franking credits, though this is itself unusual, because parliamentary inquiries usually investigate government policies and their impacts, not those of the Opposition. It is quite another thing to launch an associated and blatantly partisan website, stoptheretirementtax.com, authorised under the Commonwealth coat of arms by Tim Wilson MP “Chair of Standing Committee on Economics”, which generates pre-written submissions to the inquiry he is chairing (and, presumably, data useful to the Liberal Party). We knew all that already. Today is the last straw.

The revelation in the Nine newspapers that not only did Wilson fail to disclose in committee hearings that he has invested in funds managed by distant relative Geoff Wilson, who is campaigning against Labor’s policy, but that hearings of the committee were scheduled to coincide with his relative’s roadshow against the policy. A photo tweeted by The Guardian’s Nick Evershed shows Geoff Wilson handing out placards at a shareholder meeting. If this is not contempt, it is an insult to the parliament, and therefore to the people of Australia.

The deputy chair of the economics committee, Labor member for Kingsford Smith Matt Thistlethwaite, has today called on Wilson to resign as chair, a call Thistlethwaite has made previously, and shadow treasurer Chris Bowen has added that if Wilson won’t resign, the prime minister should sack him. Labor branded the inquiry “unethical” today, and Bowen went further, attacking “collusion in a taxpayer-funded roadshow for partisan purposes dressed up as a House of Representatives committee … This is a clear and fundamental breach of convention, of understanding, and frankly of standing orders.” In response, Wilson tweeted: “What’s unethical is you & @BillShorten trying to rig the law to smash retirees and steal their overpaid tax unless they join a Labor-linked union super fund stacked with your mates. At every point Labor has been doing the bidding of their mates against the Australian people.” Wilson told the ABC that no rules have been broken, but that will be up to the parliament to determine.

Thistlethwaite told me today that so far Labor had not referred its doubts over the inquiry to speaker Tony Smith, but was now seeking legal advice on any potential breach of standing orders. “Obviously when we sit next week the issue will come up … having a Liberal MP [member for Fisher Andrew Wallace] rock up to the committee hearings, give evidence, tell people in the room to join the Liberal National Party, then hand out membership forms, is a new low. I’ve never seen that happen before. Then you’ve got this website Tim Wilson has set up … Tim won’t disclose whether or not this is being funded by the taxpayer. The whole thing’s an abuse of the processes of the economics committee, and the reason it was established.”

And then there’s the $157 million the federal government spent promoting its programs last year. A staggering sum, and a shocking waste, but at least people know an ad when they see it. Blurring the lines of what constitutes a committee hearing, what constitutes a submission, and what will constitute a final report when the time comes – all the while generating free media coverage – is far more dangerous. Not only is the committee tainted, but so too the media coverage of its work. Did readers understand, when Nine ran Geoff Wilson’s op-ed slamming Labor yesterday, that the author was in cahoots with the Liberal chair of the inquiry? Likewise, when The Australian yesterday ran a story featuring self-funded retiree Jon Gaul, who attended a hearing on the NSW South Coast to complain about Labor’s policy, it was only after Guardian political editor Katharine Murphy tweeted that Gaul was a long time Liberal party operative (and a lovely bloke) that the story was updated [$].

Wilson should stand down but, equally importantly, his fake inquiry should serve as a warning. There is going to be a lot of misinformation this election, the first in this country in which political parties will be up to their necks in data mining and social media manipulation – dodgy websites, suspect authorisations. All of this will be less secure and more hackable than ever, as the Greens digital rights spokesperson, Jordan Steele-John, pointed out today. He described Australia as “wildly unprepared for election interference … We’ve literally just passed legislation that will make it easier for devices in Australia to be hacked just months before a Federal election; it’s astonishingly reckless.”