Senator Andrew Bartlett
Saturday, March 19, 2005
 
Changes to the Electoral Act for political websites - an attack on free speech or simple consistency?
A report during the week in the Sydney Morning Herald said the Government was planning to change the Electoral Act to require websites containing electoral material to identify a person authorising its content.

This new move is seen as being directed at anonymous political sites such as johnhowardlies.com. A few sites like this sprung up around the last election. I must say, when I first read of the planned change, it seemed a fair enough move to me. It seems reasonable that the rules that apply to printed electoral material should also apply if you put the same thing up on a website. Not surprisingly, it has caused a lot of debate amongst Australian blogs, with many fearing it will stifle political debate on the web, particularly if it also applies to people who want to leave comments – as you can do on this site.

I hadn’t thought of this aspect and I must say there are some valid arguments. Newspapers no longer have to give the name and address of letter writers during election campaigns and talkback radio do not have to identify callers, so people leaving comments on blogs or websites should also be exempt.

If you want to see some of the debate on this topic on other sites, you could try Troppo Armadillo, Catallaxy, Barista, John Quiggin, or Weezil.

The Electoral Act has long had a requirement that printed and electronic electoral material must contain a name and street address of somebody authorising the material. The Electoral Commission says this is to “ensure that anonymity does not become a protective shield for irresponsible or defamatory statements.” As this part of the Act has been around for a while, it has never been clear whether or not this applies to the internet, although most political parties and candidates have an authorisation just in case. For example, at the bottom of pages on the Democrats' site is the name of the party's National Secretary, Jason Wood, along with the address of the party’s main office. I’ve had my name authorising heaps of stuff in the past when I had a Campaign Director role. This is a fairly minor part of the law, but not having an authorisation can mean the Electoral Commission will require the material to be withdrawn (or have an authorisation added)

A change like this will need to pass the Parliament. Until now, the Senate was a safety net against bad laws. However, from July 1st the Democrats will no longer be able to fill that protective role, as the Government gets control of the Senate. This means more work has to be put into raising public awareness (including awareness amongst all MPs) about any possible negative consequences.

The Parliamentary Electoral Matters Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into the electoral laws, as it does after every election. If you have views or concerns on this proposed change (or anything else to do with our electoral laws), I’d encourage you to put in a submission. Most MPs are not particularly internet-savvy (myself included) and will often simply not be aware of some of the consequences, unless somebody tells them - it may as well be you. Anonymous or confidential submissions can be made too, although they don’t have as much value.

I’ve served on this Committee in the past, and despite the Government having a majority, it usually works in a fairly constructive and non-partisan way (apart from a brief period under the Chairmanship of Chris Pyne, but that was an aberration).

For extra reading on the topic, try this backgrounder into electoral advertising put out by the Electoral Commission. For an even more comprehensive analysis, this research brief from the Parliamentary Library is very good (see page 4 onwards for the current rules around political advertising).

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, March 19, 2005 Permalink
|


<< Home