Abstract
With election season now over, and the carnival moved on, what tricks, old and new, were wheeled out by the troupes on all sides? And what lessons might we learn for the law of politics?
Election 2019 was surely the blokiest in memory. Prime Minister Morrison’s successful re-election trope was classic conservatism: ‘Be afraid of change and hew to the status quo, we will protect you’. Power and fantasies of loss of power (petrol cars, energy bills) predominated, although climate concerns featured as well, with the Greens increasing their vote.
The campaign started long before the Governor-General issued the writs summonsing Australia’s 46th House (and 47th Senate) election. The coalition’s campaign began months earlier, with relentless waves of government advertising. Puff slogans, with monikers like ‘Better Tax’, ‘Quality Schools’ and ‘Powering Forward’, masqueraded as public service information.
The government’s positive campaign thus ran before the campaign proper, and at taxpayer expense. Its negative campaign, excoriating Labor on economic and tax issues, then dominated the formal electioneering period. It steamrolled the political landscape with, it transpires, the desired effect of dampening Labor’s vote and eliciting an unexpected and small but decisive swing to the coalition.
This, however, paled beside the bombardment by bumptious billionaire Clive Palmer. Starting a year in advance, billboards showing a barrel-chested Clive (images nearly as old as the heritage of the name of his revamped United Australia Party) appeared above major roads nationwide. His $55m plus saturation spend failed to buy electoral success for him or his party. In fact, in several Senate races it was outpolled by the penniless HEMP Party. But Palmer’s policy-thin yet advert-rich brand of smiling populism did generate significant leverage, through preference recommendations in favour of the coalition parties.
At the constituency level, things were more intricate. After the MP disqualification saga of 2017–2018 elevated the unfortunate section 44 of the Constitution to prominence, there were fears that the media would fixate on allegations of fifth columnists with unknown dual citizenships. After all, new rules mandating candidates publicly declare their lineages offered plenty of raw material. Minor party candidates in particular proved often unaware of the intricacies of decades-old overseas citizenship laws.
Instead, attention focused on different ‘gotcha’ moments, as candidates’ social media records were trawled or leaked in the hope of stoking outrage over comments, whether appalling or throwaway. In the ensuing frenzy, well over 30 candidates either withdrew before nominating or were disowned by their party after nominations closed.
The lowlight of the campaign was the proliferation of unauthorised or misleading electronic material. In a sense, this is not new: the anonymous political ‘shit sheet’ is as old as printing itself. What is new is the sheer deluge of online miscommunication. To their credit, parts of the old media performed heroically in the name of transparency and fact-checking. But even that amounted to fingers in a porous dam wall.
Not all the offending material was virtual. Signs mimicking the electoral commission’s colours appeared at polling stations in Sino-Australian parts of Melbourne. In Mandarin, they declared ‘THE CORRECT WAY TO VOTE: Place a 1 beside the Liberals and then number the other candidates in ascending order’. You will never guess which party’s miniature authorisation appeared at the bottom.
Enough trawling through the bins of electoral detritus. What, if anything, can be done about any of this? Or is electoral licence inevitable and the quest for fair and vaguely deliberative electioneering a hoax? First, parliament could ration government advertising campaigns, to ensure spending on them does not spike in election years. Second, we are long overdue limits on electioneering expenditure, a la NSW, Canada and the UK.
Third, how-to-vote material must be registered well before polling day. Long part of Queensland law, this simple measure allows dodgy material to be challenged in advance. Fourth, it is time for some sort of ‘truth-in-political-advertising’ law to inhibit campaigns based on provably misleading premises. Yes, it is at best a partial fig-leaf. But South Australia has it and speech is not chilled there. Finally, what of electoral politics and the internet? Alas, there are no easy fixes there, let alone any explicable in a single page. To adapt a bit of legal Latin, the bottom-line seems to be caveat elector.