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 17, 2023
This week, CheckMate debunks a claim by One Nation that independent senator Lidia Thorpe has proposed a new tax on non-Indigenous Australians.
We also tackle suggestions that "15-minute cities" are akin to open-air prisons, and explain how journalists uncovered a major electoral disinformation unit.
Fact checking Pauline Hanson's claim about a 'race-based rent tax'
With the referendum on an Indigenous Voice to Parliament drawing nearer, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has called on her supporters to sign a petition to the Senate opposing a "race-based rent tax" aimed at benefiting Indigenous Australians, labelling it as the "worst type of discrimination".
Across social media and on One Nation's website, Senator Hanson and her party claim that the "rent tax scheme", known as Pay the Rent, would "see Australian property owners pay a weekly 'rent' tax to Indigenous groups based on their ancestral claim to the land".
As a consequence, "millions of Australians" would be "thrown further into poverty as their rents balloon or families pay more on top of their ever-increasing mortgages".
The online petition states that the "tax on property owners as suggested by former Greens Indigenous affairs spokesperson Senator Lidia Thorpe" is "a form of discrimination that penalises property owners simply because of their race".
But the claims, also shared to Facebook, are incorrect.
There is no proposal for a race-based rent tax. Pay the Rent is an Indigenous-led scheme, first put into practice in the 1970s, which is not, and has never been, administered by a government. Donations to the scheme are voluntary and are used to support Indigenous people and projects.
While Senator Thorpe, who now sits as an independent, is understood to be a supporter of the longstanding initiative, neither she nor her former political party has suggested that it be made government policy.
According to an article published in the New Economy Journal — a non-peer reviewed monthly journal from the New Economy Network Australia (NENA) — Pay the Rent is, "in essence, a private reparations system".
"The idea is that, without a treaty, non-Indigenous people continue to live and meet on stolen land, and, in recognition of this, we ought to pay our rent," states the article, written by NENA managing director and PhD candidate Duncan Wallace.
"The money goes to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander organisation or cause, and preferably to the traditional owner group whose land we live or work on."
A history of Pay the Rent, compiled by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS) with the help of Gunnai/Mara elder Robbie Thorpe, notes that the concept originated in 1837 when a Quaker settler paid interest on one-fifth of his land value as "yearly rent".
It was later developed as a policy of the National Aboriginal and Islander Health Organisation in the 1970s, with the money funding Aboriginal-controlled health and other services.
Importantly, the AJDS notes that Pay the Rent was developed not only as a way to provide monetary compensation, but as "a forum for which non-Indigenous people could commit themselves to redressing colonisation through non-monetary actions as well".
The Pay the Rent Grassroots Collective, which organises a Melbourne-based Pay the Rent scheme, explicitly states the initiative is not a tax, as suggested by Senator Hanson, but "one element of restorative justice".
"Governments have a responsibility to use taxation to meet the welfare needs of all people living in Australia, including First Nations peoples," the organisation states.
"But rent is different to tax: it is paid directly to traditional custodians of the land, both as an acknowledgement of their sovereignty, and in recognition of the continued occupation of their lands without treaty."
While Senator Thorpe does support Pay the Rent, as evidenced by a testimonial on the website belonging to the Melbourne-based scheme, she does not appear to have ever endorsed making the initiative a government-led "tax".
In fact, the quote attributed to Senator Thorpe states: "Pay the Rent is from grassroots for grassroots. No strings attached to government agenda. It assists Sovereign grassroots fight the many campaigns and struggles we face everyday."
Similarly, CheckMate could find no reference to a Pay the Rent policy on the federal Greens' website.
No, '15-minute cities' aren't suburban prisons
A local planning decision in the UK has sparked a backlash against so-called "15-minute cities", with online pundits falsely claiming that such plans would trap people in their neighbourhoods.
Warning that Australians needed to decide the "limit of [their] obedience", one YouTuber claimed that recent developments in the British city of Oxford meant residents would soon only be able to leave their neighbourhood twice a week and "no longer be able to keep the job [they] have" if it falls outside their area.
Meanwhile, a far-right UK commentator equated the decision to enforcing "climate lockdowns", suggesting that "you won't simply be able to cross over into other sections of your city anymore".
"That is schooling you to prepare for 15-minute cities where you don't get to go outside your 15-minute zone," she said.
Some social media users took this further to suggest a 15-minute city is "not convenience, it's prison".
So, what's actually happening?
In November, Oxford's county council approved a trial of new traffic restrictions in a bid to "reduce unnecessary journeys by private cars and make walking, cycling, public and shared transport the natural first choice".
To do this, "traffic filters" — or driving restrictions — will operate during peak times at six locations on the city's major roads, through which residents will be limited to 100 trips (per car) each year. The trial will begin in 2024 and run for at least six months.
But while the rules will be enforced via cameras and fines, crucially, they only apply to private cars.
"All other vehicles including taxis, buses, coaches, all vans, mopeds, motorbikes and [trucks] can still pass through these traffic filters at all times," the council website explains, adding that drivers are still free to use alternative roads to travel across town.
"The traffic filters cover very short lengths of road (just a few metres). Any vehicle can use the road outside the filter at any time without a permit."
The council has explicitly rejected the claim that residents would be "confined to their local area", and similar claims have been debunked by fact checkers with AFP, RMIT FactLab and Reuters.
As for the "15-minute city", this label simply refers to an eco-friendly planning concept that suggests residents should be able to access everything they need for daily living within a short walk or bike ride.
Jago Dodson, director of RMIT's Centre for Urban Research, told CheckMate via email that it was "a load of nonsense" to suggest the concept — or its siblings such as the "20-minute neighbourhood" — had anything to do with lockdowns.
"[The 15-minute city] is an encapsulation of a long run of ideas in urban planning aimed at reducing the need to travel long distances to access services," Professor Dodson said.
"Practically, such schemes may involve limiting street space for automobile travel, through reallocation to other purposes and modes, and in some cases via tolling (like a congestion charge).
"But that is not a feature of the concept per se, certainly not in Australia."
Notably, Melbourne had already conducted several trials of 20-minute neighbourhoods prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, none of which featured travel restrictions.
The idea of 15-minute cities has been embraced by the C40, a network of mayors from 100 cities around the world.
It has also been promoted (and at times criticised) in articles posted on the website of the World Economic Forum, leading some social media users to suggest any such trials are part of a grand globalist conspiracy.
International journalism network unmasks powerful election disinformation unit
An explosive investigation by a consortium of journalists from more than 30 news outlets around the world has uncovered a sophisticated online disinformation scheme headed by a former Israeli special forces operative.
The report, coordinated by French non-profit outlet Forbidden Stories and published by the Guardian, found that Tal Hanan and his disinformation unit appeared to have been working under the radar in elections in a number of countries for more than two decades.
Using the codename "Team Jorge", the unit "runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace", the Guardian reported this week.
"Hanan told … undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as 'black ops', were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion," the Guardian report states.
"He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe."
According to the report, one of the unit's key services was a "sophisticated software package" that controlled a "vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube".
"Some avatars even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts."
The full investigation can be read on the Guardian's website.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to better reflect that no reference to an official Pay the Rent policy could be found by CheckMate on the federal Greens’ website.
Edited by Ellen McCutchan and David Campbell, with thanks to Frank Algra-Maschio
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