Might be time to introduce that “no lying on election material” piece that we’ve been missing.
How do you enforce that? At best you have an inquiry that reports days/weeks/months later and the damage has been done and is considered old news. In any case, you’ll have the pollies inserting a grain of truth into their lies and rules lawyering the rest. It may harm truth-telling because a government/political party has a lot more means to shut down a conversation that an individual or even a community group.
A better solution would be more transparent political finance reporting laws, but even that is likely to be a temporary measure. Political parties will always find the loopholes. To misquote Keating, never get between a politician and a bag of money. It’s still worth pursuing.
Through the AEC and the courts. Zali Steggall had a bill ready to go: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/brains/pages/936/attachments/original/1669687880/Commonwealth_Electoral_Amendment_(Stop_the_Lies)_FAQs.pdf?1669687880
Personally I don’t think the consequences are hard enough (don’t publish further, might have to require a correction, might have to pay a fine).
Absolutely agree campaign financing also needs to be looked at though.
Political parties will wear a $10k fine. A good lie is worth millions to them especially if they win govt.
Political speech is way too nuanced to be restricted by legislation of this kind. Was The Voice proposal racist? It depends. Yes says no. No says yes. Both sides can be right and wrong. Is TUSotH one page or eighteen? Were we voting on just the Voice or Voice, Truth, and Treaty? Depending on who/where you ask you’ll get different answers. There are very few absolute right and absolute wrongs in politics. Even the ‘fact checkers’ got it wrong on occasion during the campaign. The referendum would be an even bigger shitshow, with finger pointing and accusations flying, if political speech was deemed wrong and penalised.
I live in a country where similar laws already exist and the govt uses it to shut down speech it finds (rightly or wrongly) objectionable. It often does this by finding a minutia of perceived incorrectness and forcing the publishers to retract and apologise under the penalty of fines and publishing bans. It’s chilling.
