CheckMate is a weekly newsletter from RMIT FactLab that draws on the work of its sister organisation, RMIT ABC Fact Check, to recap the latest in the world of fact checking and misinformation.
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CheckMate February 10, 2023
This week, CheckMate tackles a claim that the government is allowing COVID-19 vaccines to be sprayed across the skies.
We also look at the falsehoods spread following Monday's deadly earthquake in Türkiye and Syria and round up the week in fact checks.
Claim about vaccines administered 'via air' is recycled nonsense
A decade-old conspiracy theory alleging that the Australian government had approved the use of "chemtrails" to vaccinate the population forcibly has resurfaced with a fresh COVID-19 twist.
In dozens of posts across social media, a link to a webpage belonging to the Department of Health's Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) has been shared alongside claims that vaccines spread "via air" have been approved for use.
The link leads to a list of licence applications for "dealings involving an intentional release … into the environment" of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
"NEXT LEVEL AUSTRALIA!!! WE KNEW IT WAS COMING … BUT VACCINATION VIA AIR IS HERE!" a post accompanying the link reads.
"Australia Have Approved the License Application From Big Pharma Company PaxVax That Will Allow Them To Intentionally Release a GMO Vaxxine Consisting of Live Bacteria Into Queensland Skies, via the GEO-ENGINEERING program aka = Chemtrails."
Some variations of the claim also feature a video in which an unnamed man singles out a licence on the OGTR webpage relating to a COVID-19 vaccine.
"They have been spraying a vaccine into the air for COVID-19," the man says.
But those suggestions are fundamentally flawed.
A spokesman for the Department of Health confirmed to CheckMate that "the Gene Technology Regulator has never approved, or been asked to approve, aerial distribution of any GMOs".
As made clear elsewhere on the OGTR's website, an "intentional release" of a GMO into the environment does not mean substances are being "sprayed" into the air.
Most licences issued by the regulator allow people to work with GMOs for scientific research in "laboratories, greenhouses, insectaries and other specialised facilities".
"Licences for all other work with GMOs are called a 'dealing involving intentional release into the environment' (DIR)," the regulator's website explains. "The GMOs are not contained within a facility."
"Dealings" is the legal name for the list of approved activities with a GMO, the website states.
Included under the DIR category are genetically modified crops grown in a field, genetically modified medicines and vaccines tested in a clinical trial and genetically modified medicines and vaccines for sale in a pharmacy or chemist.
The website further explains that "an intentional release into the environment of a GM vaccine means that a patient or trial participant is given a vaccine in a hospital or clinic rather than in a research laboratory. It may also mean they can purchase a GM vaccine at a pharmacy or chemist and bring it to their GP for administration".
In the case of the PaxVax vaccine highlighted on social media, the inoculation (which contained a modified cholera bacterium) was administered as an oral dose to trial participants at a clinical trial site in Queensland.
"Following the research phase, a commercial cholera vaccine product was licensed in 2021 under [licence number] DIR-174," the Department of Health spokesman said.
"This was again an oral dose to fully informed individuals who are travelling to cholera endemic countries."
Misinformation about the PaxVax vaccine has been circulating since at least 2013, according to a 2018 fact check published by Snopes. Similar claims were also debunked by AAP Fact Check last year.
As for the COVID-19 vaccine supposedly being administered by air, a Questions and Answers document available on the OGTR website makes clear the licence relates to the "intranasal administration" (that is, administration via a nasal spray) of a COVID-19 vaccine at clinical trial sites.
Earthquake brings wave of wild claims
As devastating earthquakes rocked Türkiye and Syria this week, social media users seized the opportunity to spread misinformation about the unfolding crisis.
If their claims are to be believed, Türkiye was hit by at least one tsunami in the quake aftermath and its sole nuclear power plant exploded. Some users even blamed the earthquake on the US military.
But when it came to the claimed nuclear plant explosion, fact checkers with Associated Press found that footage being circulated of the supposed blast was from 2020.
In fact, the clip showed a huge explosion in Beirut, caused by fire in a facility storing ammonium nitrate at the Lebanese port.
According to Reuters and Turkish fact checking unit Teyip, the company building Türkiye's first reactor, which is not yet operational, said the nuclear facility was not damaged by the earthquake.
As for the country being slammed by tsunamis, Associated Press found that the evidence for many such claims again relied on misappropriated footage — for example, from Japan in 2011, South Africa in 2017 and Indonesia in 2018.
Türkiye's Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency confirmed that there was no tsunami danger on its eastern Mediterranean coast after the quake.
Meanwhile, Associated Press reported that some social media posts purporting to show clips related to the current disaster had instead used old footage of a building collapse from Miami and a scaffolding accident in Tokyo.
Other posts, AFP reported, simply rehashed stock images.
Closer to home, FactLab's CrossCheck team identified baseless claims circulating in Australian Telegram channels that the earthquakes were the result of a "HAARP" attack.
HAARP — the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program — is a US scientific project that uses radio waves to study Earth's upper atmosphere (notably, not tectonic plates).
The program has previously been the target of false claims that it could affect "natural phenomena" such as earthquakes or the weather.
But while those claims have been debunked by fact checkers with Climate Feedback and AAP FactCheck, that didn't stop some people from linking HAARP to the current crisis in southern Türkiye, citing as evidence a bizarre-looking "lenticular cloud" seen more than two weeks earlier in the country's north.
And a prominent pro-Russian Telegram user in Australia went so far as to suggest the US military had something to do with the "attacks". This was based, it seems, on the navy's decision to suspend submarine repair work in late January.
According to an article on the website Defense News, however, that decision was made over concerns about the risk posed by future seismic activity at four dry docks near Seattle in Washington state, some 10,000 kilometres from the earthquake's epicentre.
Coalition MP brews discontent over beer tax
Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs Jason Wood has been caught out for claiming that Labor broke a key election promise by introducing a new tax on beer.
In a Facebook post that garnered more than 3,000 comments and nearly 2,000 shares, Mr Wood said beer drinkers were "the newest victims of Labor's sneaky taxes".
"The 3.7 per cent tax increase, which affects draught as well as packaged beer, comes on top of a 4 per cent increase in August," read his post, which also characterised the "new taxes" as "just another broken promise" by Labor.
A similar argument soon found its way into reporting by Daily Mail Australia, which published an article on "Anthony Albanese's beer tax hike".
But as RMIT ABC Fact Check found this week, Mr Wood's claim is misleading.
While beer taxes did increase by 3.7 per cent in February 2023, it was the result of regular, automatic indexation that occurs in line with inflation.
Under these rules, when living costs increase, beer taxes soon follow — regardless of which party is in government.
Alcohol taxes have existed in Australia since colonial times, and the current indexation arrangements for beer taxes have been in place for nearly 40 years.
The relevant legislation has not been changed since Labor was elected in May 2022.
Barnaby Joyce 'ill-informed' on Voice to Parliament referendum
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has claimed that Labor is yet to release the wording of the changes that would be made to the constitution should this year's Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum be successful.
In a tense exchange with Labor's Tanya Plibersek, Mr Joyce suggested the government had not told the Australian people "the words that are going to go into our nation's constitution".
"This is a case of the Labor Party saying, 'Look, you just sign the cheque and we'll fill in the numbers later on'," Mr Joyce said.
"And when you say to them, 'Well, actually, who's filling in the numbers?', they say, 'Well, the Labor Party and the Greens are going to fill in the numbers, we're going to actually tell you the words we're going to put in the constitution after you give us the right to change it'."
But RMIT ABC Fact Check last week found Mr Joyce to be ill-informed.
In July 2022, Prime Minister Albanese released the proposed wording for changes to the constitution in order to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Mr Albanese noted at the time that the words represented "draft provisions" and may not be the "final form of words".
Since then, the only change publicly proposed has been to add one line.
Additionally, constitutional law expert Anne Twomey explained that, despite Mr Joyce's suggestion, Labor and the Greens could not amend the words to be added to the constitution after the referendum had been held.
"The people vote to approve the constitutional change — the words — set out in the bill passed by parliament that triggers the referendum," she explained.
"The politicians cannot change the words later."
Edited by Ellen McCutchan and David Campbell with thanks to Esther Chan
