While achieving truth in political advertising may be a virtue, there are real risks that the imposition of law to determine and enforce truth will actually make things worse.
This video looks at the practical problems with such laws in Australia. They cannot effectively deal with promises, opinions, predictions or even unverifiable assertions of fact. They can be easily avoided by formulating misleading or false material in a different way or publicising it by different means.
The laws themselves can be used as a means of giving greater and free publicity to misleading or false statements and they can be manipulated for political purposes, by a form of 'lawfare' that seeks to tie up one's opponent's resources and finances in dealing with legal challenges during an election campaign. A challenge to misleading advertisements, if it fails (eg because it contains opinions and predictions, rather than statements of fact), would no doubt be trumpeted as a finding that the misleading statements were true, adding to the original problem.
There is also a problem about who is the arbiter of truth, how it is decided and the timeliness of such decisions during an election campaign. Making such sensitive political judgments may undermine public confidence in the integrity and independence of the Electoral Commission and the courts.
Finally, there is the issue of the compatibility of such laws with the constitutionally implied freedom of political communication. All these problems suggest that a hard-headed assessment of such proposals needs to be made.
Apologies for the sound of squawking cockatoos around the end of the video. I have a very small window of time between when the builders next door stop jack-hammering and drilling and the birds start shrieking. Surprisingly, the cockatoos seem to be louder than most industrial machinery!
1 окт 2024
