Messages to voters including robocalls and texts should state who authorised them, a parliamentary committee has said, in a bid to prevent a repeat of Labor’s Medicare text fiasco at the 2016 election.
An interim report on Friday by the joint standing committee on electoral matters (JSCEM) warned that electoral laws needed updating as some new media had no authorisation requirements.
It said the Electoral Act “has not kept pace with the rapid technological changes in methods of communication resulting in the emergence of loopholes”.
The act does not currently require authorisation of electoral advertising by telephone, text messaging or social media.
The committee said that the law should be amended to “specifically and explicitly address the matter of authorisation” to ensure parties are accountable for their political statements, those who authorise materials are “identifiable and traceable” and there is consistency in the application of rules.
The committee said that “overwhelming evidence” supported an amendment to help the law “evolve to deal with new, digital forms of communication”
“Robocalls and text messaging play an integral role in political campaigns and should be addressed in the electoral laws.”
The report noted concerns that at the 2016 election text messages were sent that were “alleged to be or [gave] the impression that they were” from Medicare.
The text messages, sent by the Queensland branch of the Labor party, said: “Mr Turnbull’s plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return. Time is running out to save Medicare.”
In his election night speech, Malcolm Turnbull described Labor’s campaign on Medicare as “some of the most systematic, well-funded lies ever peddled in Australia”. At the National Press Club, federal Liberal director Tony Nutt labelled the campaign a “coldblooded lie” that targeted vulnerable people.
Uniform, format-neutral authorisation rules won general support, including from the Labor party, in the JSCEM review.
The “Mediscare” messages were referred to police but they decided not to prosecute, in part because there is no law against impersonating a commonwealth entity, only a commonwealth officer.
The report said that anonymous election material may suggest “someone who is unprepared to back their views”, weakening its message, but impersonating a commonwealth entity was a different problem.
“In the Medicare example ... the association with a commonwealth entity arguably strengthened the authority and legitimacy of the message.”
JSCEM said it would consider creation of such an offence in early 2017.
The committee also said that “unauthorised use of commonwealth logos and symbols should not occur in an election campaign”, and it will revisit the issue in 2017.
It follows a legal threat from the Department of Human Services to a campaigner for the public health system accusing him of “misleading or deceptive” use of the Medicare logo and name on his savemedicare.org website.
The Queensland Labor party has maintained the Medicare text message “was not intended to indicate that it was a message from Medicare, rather to identify the subject of the text”.
“The message was consistent with Labor’s message throughout the campaign. There should be no surprise that this was not a government message,” a spokesman said when the matter was referred to police in July.
