“It was a real ‘what the fuck’ moment,” Giordano Nanni says about his company, The Juice Media, being told to censor an image of Tasmanian premier Jeremy Rockliff or face heavy penalties.
The Juice Media is well known for its satirical “honest government” series, which takes potshots at all sides of politics in videos that resemble government-funded propaganda.
Its latest offering, in the lead-up to this weekend’s state election, refers to Tasmania as the “land of wilderness and home to countless vanishing wonders – affordable rents, year 12 completions, the swift parrot, and of course, Liberal governments”.
“We’ve left no corner of this island unfucked,” the video says, attacking poverty, literacy and homelessness levels as well as issues in the health system, abuse in the youth justice system, salmon farming, logging, the decision to build an AFL stadium and more. Labor is “almost as good as us at selling out Tassie”, the video says.
But it was not the liberal use of expletives, the pointed barbs or the political commentary that the Tasmanian Electoral Commission took issue with. It was the brief appearance of an image of Rockliff used without the premier’s permission.
The commission said it had received a complaint about the video, and that under section 196 of the Tasmanian Electoral Act it was “an offence to publish on the internet an advertisement that contains the photograph or likeness of a candidate at an election without their written consent”.
The penalty for publishing a candidate’s picture after the electoral writs are issued is a fine of up to 300 penalty units ($58,500) or up to a year in prison, or both.
“The electoral commissioner is of the view that this video is likely an advertisement and therefore requests either Mr Rockliff’s photo is removed from it, or that the video is taken [down] as soon as possible, to ensure compliance with the legislation,” the notice said.
The Juice Media decided to blur out Rockliff’s face when it appears for approximately one second in the video.
“Seriously? We’re very surprised that Tasmania has such a crazy law … that can be weaponised to silence critics,” Nanni said.
“There’s no exemption for satire. [And] it shits all over our implied freedom of political commentary. Is it even constitutional?
“I’ve got nothing against the commission, but it is a shitty law. Hopefully this draws attention to that and it gets amended or dealt with so it can’t be used [this way].”
Nanni said the law obviously served an important purpose, to stop people deceiving voters, but that it was antiquated and shouldn’t apply to satire.
Under the Hare-Clarke system, Tasmanians do not get how-to-vote cards from parties directing their preferences. Richard Herr, the former parliamentary practice and procedure course director at the University of Tasmania’s Law School, said the system is not a party representational system, it’s individual candidates against each other.
“That means the party can’t order the ticket the way it would like, the voters do that … The legislation reinforces the notion that it’s the voter’s preference, not the party’s,” he said.
Publishing someone’s image without their permission could then effectively be seen as directing someone towards or away from voting for them.
The Juice Media describes itself as “98.9% ‘genuine satire’: Covering government shitfuckery and the most pressing issues of our time”. It is “absolutely independent” and funded via subscribers on Patreon, Nanni said.
Tasmania’s electoral commissioner, Andrew Hawkey, conceded the legislation was “quite old” and that it related to Tasmania’s unique Hare-Clarke system. “It’s obviously got broadened out in the internet, and these sections were written well before social media and [the] internet were actually created so it’s a much more complicated environment in the social media area,” he told ABC Radio Hobart.
There had been a “plethora” of ads that breached the law, that had all been taken down when requested, Hawkey said.
