The former Liberal MP Andrew Laming has been fined $20,000 for Facebook posts that did not declare his political links, after the federal court found he had breached the authorisation requirement of electoral law.
On Wednesday Justice Darryl Rangiah found that Laming had failed to put his name and city or town of residence to three Facebook posts containing electoral matter on a page titled “Redland Hospital: Let’s fight for fair funding”.
In one “particularly serious” contravention Laming deliberately disguised his identity, Rangiah found.
In April 2021 Guardian Australia revealed that the Australian Electoral Commission had launched an investigation into Laming, then the member for Bowman, for operating more than 30 Facebook pages under the guise of community and education groups.
In December 2021 the AEC launched a federal court case over Laming allegedly failing to disclose his political links on the Redland hospital Facebook page. Laming denied contravening the Electoral Act.
Political authorisation is required for “information that is a matter communicated, or intended to be communicated, for the dominant purpose of influencing the way electors vote in a federal election”, according to the AEC.
Laming defended the case by arguing the posts were intended to address the Queensland government’s reduction in funding of the Redland hospital, not to influence voting in a federal election.
Rangiah fined Laming:
$10,000 for a Facebook post of 24 December 2018 in which Laming referred to himself in the third person, stating that he had “boosted” funding of the Redland hospital by $77m.
$5,000 for a post on 7 February 2019 in which he posted an image, and wrote an accompanying caption, comparing the federal funding for “Metro South Health” provided under the LNP with that provided under the ALP.
$5,000 for a post on 5 May 2019 in which he urged readers to send Labor supporters a table setting out payments to Metro South Hospital and Health Service.
The judge said in relation to the first post that Laming “does not identify him as the writer and publisher” and in fact pretended it was posted by someone else.
Rangiah said this contravention was “particularly serious” as it was “a deliberate attempt to disguise the fact that he was its author”.
“Misleading conduct of that kind strikes at the core of the integrity of our electoral system,” he said.
Rangiah rejected Laming’s claim that no authorisation was required for the other two posts because they fit within the act’s exemption for news reporting.
“If every member of the public could fall within [the exemption] it would be very easy to avoid the disclosure of their identity by publishing what would otherwise be ‘electoral matter’ under the guise of ‘reporting news’ or ‘presenting current affairs’,” he said.
That “cannot have been intended by the legislature”, he said.
Rangiah sided with Laming over two posts, one stating that that Laming had “ripped Labor a new one” and another extract from hansard, which he found were not designed to sway voters in relation to the federal election.
