Labor has sought to embarrass the government over the discovery that web domain names that include the term “Abbott lies” have been registered in the name of the Liberal party.

Web registry searches indicate abbottlies.com.au and abbottlies.net.au were registered by “Liberal Party of Australia” on 13 May, the date of the government’s first budget.

Anyone who visits those addresses is redirected to the official liberal.org.au site, which prompts people to sign up for updates and to “get the facts” on the budget. The Liberal website’s budget section includes material about “Labor’s budget deceit”.

Labor registered the slightly different abbottslies.com.au last week as part of its “lie a day” campaign against Tony Abbott.

Several Twitter users noticed the redirection last week and the Daily Telegraph reported on the apparent pre-emptive Liberal party tactic on Sunday.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, seized on the discovery as an “incredible irony” and evidence that the prime minister “knew Australians would be angry about his lies”.

“On the very night when Tony Abbott was breaking all his promises, the Liberal party was buying these websites,” Shorten said.

Shorten also ridiculed the rival websites on Twitter on Sunday: “No matter if you visit http://abbottlies.com.au or http://abbottslies.com.au, all you’ll get is @TonyAbbottMHR’s lies.”

But a Guardian Australia search of web domains reveals other sites targeting Labor over lies were also registered in the Liberal party’s name. These include laborlies.com and laborlies.com.au and gillardlies.com.au.

The laborlies.com domain was first created in 2008, according to domain name records, and still redirects to a dedicated part of the Liberal website seeking to counter a “highly targeted and personal campaign against our leader” ahead of the 2013 election.

There is no active website for anyone visiting gillardlies.com.au.

“Cybersquatting” on domain names is not a new phenomenon, with web users sometimes registering websites to try to later extract a profit from a company or personality that wants to secure the address. Political campaigners sometimes have to take preventive action by registering website addresses that may be unfavourable to their side.



In 2010, the New York Times reported on how Republican and Democratic politicians had been targeted by opponents who snapped up website addresses in their names to spread the alternative points of view.

The official Liberal website cites the opposition’s declaration of the need to “save Medicare” as an example of “Labor deceit”. The site says the government is “asking everyone to make a modest contribution to ensure that Medicare is sustainable for the long term”.

The former Liberal treasurer Peter Costello told Ten’s Bolt Report on Sunday the government should abandon the $7 GP co-payment because it could not pass the Senate.