CheckMate is a weekly newsletter from RMIT FactLab recapping the latest in the world of fact checking and misinformation. It draws on the work of FactLab's researchers and journalists, including its CrossCheck unit, and of its sister organisation, RMIT ABC Fact Check.
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CheckMate March 10, 2023
This week, CheckMate debunks claims that Indigenous Australians already have organisations that fulfil the same role as a Voice to Parliament, making it unnecessary.
We also bring you the latest analysis on how Elon Musk's Twitter takeover has affected content on the platform. Spoiler alert: the results aren't encouraging.
No, Indigenous Australians don't already have a Voice to Parliament
Campaigners for the "No" vote in the upcoming Voice to Parliament referendum have taken to social media to suggest Indigenous Australians already have such a voice in the form of the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA).
"FYI Aboriginal people already have a voice to parliament. [It's] called NIAA funded by the Australian government," reads one widely shared post, purportedly written by an Indigenous person.
"Everything their [sic] saying the voice will do this agency already does funded by the Australian government and overseen by the Indigenous Minister."
But it's incorrect to suggest the NIAA fulfils the same role that the proposed Voice to Parliament would play.
Created by an executive order made during Scott Morrison's prime ministership in 2019, the NIAA is an executive agency within the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio.
According to Dylan Lino of the University of Queensland's School of Law, the NIAA "has a range of functions, including leading and coordinating Commonwealth policy and service delivery concerning Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people".
The agency also advises "the Prime Minister and Minister for Indigenous Australians on government policy in Indigenous affairs" and is "a part of the Commonwealth executive government, which includes government ministers, departments and the public service".
Both Dr Lino and Asmi Wood, a professor of law at the Australian National University, told CheckMate that, by virtue of being part of the executive, the NIAA and its public servant employees were not independent in the way a Voice to Parliament would be.
"The NIAA and its employees are ultimately accountable to the executive government," Dr Lino said.
By contrast, the "Voice, as proposed, wouldn't be an internal agency of the executive government; it would sit outside both the executive and parliament".
Professor Wood noted that while public servants were "meant to give free and fearless advice", they were not, in a broad sense, "responsible for the decisions they make, because it's the minister, at the end of the day, who makes the final decision".
According to the NIAA's latest annual report, staff are "expected to adhere to the [Australian Public Service] Code of Conduct", which includes behaving "in a way that upholds the APS Values", one of which is impartiality.
As Dr Lino told CheckMate, the type of advice provided by the NIAA (which can only advise the executive) was generally "confidential" and "based on its policy expertise and consultations with various stakeholders".
"By contrast, the advice of the Voice [which would advise both the executive and parliament] would generally be public and potentially highly political," he said.
Another key difference, Dr Lino noted, was that while the Voice "would be composed of representatives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who would be appointed by and accountable to First Nations", the NIAA was not an entirely Indigenous organisation.
According to its latest annual report, 22 per cent of the agency's staff identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander.
Therefore, it "seems a bit disingenuous", Professor Wood said, for people to argue that the NIAA was truly an Indigenous voice.
As for the legal status of the two bodies, Dr Lino explained the NIAA could "be abolished tomorrow by another executive order", while the proposed Voice to Parliament "would have its existence guaranteed by being enshrined in the Constitution".
"All of these things add up to really major differences between the NIAA and the Voice in terms of their power, independence, representativeness and accountability," he concluded.
Elsewhere online, a similar argument has been shared in the form of a list of 51 entities (including the NIAA) supposedly already giving Indigenous Australians a voice.
Notably, like the NIAA, none of the listed entities represented a constitutionally enshrined body that could make representations to parliament.
Moreover, one entity on the list was a Canadian national advocacy organisation. Three others were now defunct, including the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, which was abolished in 1978.
Analysis suggests 'superspreaders' benefited from Musk's Twitter takeover
An analysis by fact checkers at ScienceFeedback has found that peddlers of misinformation have gained greater influence on Twitter since billionaire Elon Musk took control of the social media platform in October last year.
The researchers teamed up with six other fact-checking outfits to compile a list of nearly 500 "superspreader" accounts — or those known to have repeatedly shared misinformation in the past — analysing nearly 1.5 million tweets posted in a four-month period that straddled Musk's takeover of the platform.
"Immediately after the acquisition, total engagement with tweets posted by superspreaders spiked, almost doubling overnight and remaining at elevated levels ever since," the fact checkers concluded.
"Since the number of tweets from these accounts has remained roughly constant, this jump is only explained by an increase in the average engagement with these accounts' posts."
Notably, the study also tracked 130 accounts of established and credible media organisations, finding that they fared comparatively poorly.
"We find that while superspreaders' tweets gained on average 42.4 per cent more interactions after the acquisition, high-credibility accounts' tweets lost 6.3 per cent."
Of the accounts that saw the biggest traffic gains, four of the top five had received replies from Mr Musk's personal Twitter account on at least one of their most popular tweets.
"It is most likely that these tweets went viral because of Elon Musk's decision to reply and bring them to the attention of his 128 million followers, pointing to a direct responsibility of Twitter's new owner in the growth of misinformation superspreaders' popularity."
Meanwhile, BBC Monitoring this week revealed the findings of its own analysis of 1,100 previously banned Twitter accounts that had been reinstated since the ownership change, finding that more than a third had since published "problematic content" to the platform.
Of these accounts — each with more than 10,000 followers — the researchers found more than 270 had spread misinformation, mainly about elections and COVID-19 vaccinations. Around 190 accounts had promoted violence, "including depictions of rape as well as abuse directed at women and the LGBT community".
The CEO for the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, Imram Ahmed, told the BBC: "[W]hat [Musk] has done is essentially turn on the fire hose, allowing hate and disinformation to flood the platform."
Did the NSW government 'slash' the waiting list for social housing?
In the lead-up to this month's NSW state election, Treasurer Matt Kean has been caught out by fact checkers after claiming that his government had dramatically reduced the waiting list for people in need of social housing.
"What Labor's not telling you is the waitlist was higher under them," Mr Kean tweeted in response to a suggestion that the number of applicants waiting for housing had ticked upwards. "We've slashed that waitlist …"
But RMIT ABC Fact Check found that claim to be exaggerated.
Experts pointed to annual data published by the Productivity Commission showing that between June 2010 — the last available figure for Labor's time in power — and June 2022, the number of people on the waitlist fell by just 0.2 per cent (from 52,348 to 52,243).
Across the Coalition's 12-year tenure, the number of applicants waiting for social housing fluctuated between 45,429 (2021) and 59,031 (2016).
Importantly, experts cautioned that due to one-off administrative changes, such as the tightening of eligibility criteria or the reclassification of applicants, falls in the number of social housing applicants did not necessarily mean that demand for such housing was being met.
Edited by Ellen McCutchan and David Campbell with thanks to Esther Chan
