Have you heard the one about the new car and ute tax? What about $600m of funding cuts weakening Australia’s borders?
If you did, then the joke is on our political system – because these are the latest two opposition lines of attack, completely untethered from reality, infecting the discourse.
The first is Peter Dutton’s claim that fuel efficiency standards amount to a tax on less efficient cars.
While it’s true that carmakers could be penalised if they exceed a yearly cap on the emissions output for new cars sold in Australia, this isn’t a tax. Claims of cars costing thousands more are based on an assumption of no change in behaviour.
The Federal Chamber of Automative Industries has contradicted the basis of the fear campaign in its own briefing paper, projecting that cars will get greener even without the new standards. When standards are improved the result is using less petrol and consumer savings.
The second claim, about Operation Sovereign Borders, has been comprehensively debunked: funding is up relative to the Coalition’s last budget, not down, and the $600m cut is an illusion conjured by comparing projected funding with one expensive reference year.
A reduction in surveillance flights is due to issues with the contractor, crew shortages and aircraft maintenance, not decisions of government.
The Albanese government is getting better at calling out lies.
This was difficult in the referendum campaign because Dutton sowed doubt before settling on outright opposition, and Labor wanted to preserve bipartisanship as best it could.
But this week the home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, warned that matters of fact such as border force funding “should not be the subject of any further conjecture by politicians or journalists around this country”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, was similarly sharp – arguing that Dutton was encouraging boats, and on Thursday that the fear and negativity were designed to distract from tax cut defeat.
We and several other outlets ran factchecks on the border cut claim but others settled in for the usual round of he-said-she-said that rewards wreckers who don’t care if facts are not on their side.
Relentless negativity and even outright porkies are nothing new in politics.
Remember claims about a $100 roast due to carbon pricing? Or that time is running out to save Medicare from privatisation? Or Labor’s plans to introduce a death tax?
But the potency of such campaigns is growing in a world where people get more news from social media, and alienation and political polarisation mean they’re encouraged to respond emotionally rather than seek common ground with others, or at least common facts.
The electoral matters committee wants truth in political advertising laws to tackle the problem, giving a tick to an idea also backed by the special minister of state, Don Farrell.
It’s better than nothing, but we shouldn’t get our hopes up too far.
The South Australian truth in political advertising laws – on which a federal law is likely to be based – doesn’t apply to statements of opinion. In previous rulings, claims a political opponent is “soft on crime” have been given the green light. So Labor is “weak on borders”-type rhetoric would probably still be fine.
Advance Australia is advertising in the Dunkley byelection, warning the Albanese government “let loose 149 criminals” and “paid for lawyers to argue for their release”.
It’s un-nuanced, ignoring the fact the former was done to comply with the high court’s order in the NZYQ case, and the latter was an intervention by the independent Australian Human Rights Commission, not the commonwealth’s position. But it would be allowable even under a tougher regime.
I’m not sure statements about the future would be caught either. Was it possible to say, at the time the claim was made, that the $100 roast, privatised Medicare and a death tax would not come to pass?
Any regime that attempted to block those as lies might also have done the same with warnings before the 2022 election that Labor would not implement the stage three tax cuts.
After all, the tax cuts were legislated and Labor had committed not to repeal or reform them – what more evidence could be needed to disprove a claim about the future?
Except the Albanese government did eventually change its position and change the tax cuts. Surely political opponents should have the freedom to warn about that possibility in advance.
Nevertheless, truth in political advertising laws would still be worthwhile – to try to weed out absolute howlers, and to try to set a norm.
But better discourse will take more than a souped up Australian Electoral Commission truth unit seeking court orders to remove false political ads.
It requires a media ethic to move past superficial, horse-race journalism towards seeking truth, or else we will be complicit in serving up misleading nonsense like the mythical $100 roast.
