Jill, Paul and friends talk about truth at the Sunday lunch table

This is a topic that comes up in most of our kitchen table conversations:

In Australia, truth in political advertising has somehow been hijacked, with misinformation, distorted “facts” and deception becoming the norm. It’s aided by the fact that there is no legislation in place to address this – yep, it’s perfectly legal to lie and mislead when pitching to the public about democracy!

We witnessed it during the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, with advertising focusing on the “fear” factor and the assertion that The Voice was divisive and would give special recognition to First Nations peoples. It hit a new low during the recent by-election held in Dunkley, with the Advance Australia group choosing to run a series of online and press ads as well as moving billboards that were deliberately misleading … tactics straight from the US political playbook of a certain recent one term President; actions that certainly don’t resonate with many Aussies. Within many social circles, and indeed in most of our KTCs, this advertising anomaly has been actively lamented, discussed and identified as needing reform.

The Australia Institute, one of our country’s most influential public policy think tanks, conducted research which resulted in a massive 90% of participants agreeing that truth in political advertising laws should be in place “before” the next federal election campaign. They have also commissioned a petition “Stop Lies in Political Ads which you can find here: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/real-time-disclosures-should-replace-yearly-political-donation-data-dump/

Zali Steggall, Independent for Warringah, introduced her private Members Bill, The Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Voter Protections in Political Advertising) Bill 2023, to Parliament on 13/11/23 which is currently before the House of Representatives. According to several news outlets in the last couple of days, this matter will be supported via ”a Labor push for tough new penalties to weed out political lies”.
It's great to see that the Voices of our independent Federal politicians are being heard and that slowly, democracy is finding its way again as we speak truth to power.