Source : the age
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declared his opposition to the spam texts deluging Australian voters ahead of the federal election this weekend, but will not commit to changing the law to outlaw the practice.
Mining magnate Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots party has been sending large volumes of texts but the mainstream parties also have a history of using unsolicited messages to reach voters.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won’t commit to do anything to stop the text messages.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Albanese said on Melbourne ABC radio on Wednesday that he was against the texts. “I wish that were the case [that the texts were banned,” Albanese said. But he added: “I’m not sure that that fits with our democracy and the capacity of people have to campaign.”
“I certainly think that would be a reasonable thing to do, to ban the texts. I’d be happy with that, but I’m not sure that it would fit in with other legal requirements about people having access.”
Australian law exempts political parties from many of the privacy and anti-spam rules that govern companies.
Voters received a text message on election day in 2022 from the Liberal Party saying that an asylum seeker boat had been intercepted by Border Force and urging people to vote for the then-Morrison government.
In 2016, a text blast to voters in marginal seats falsely claimed that Malcolm Turnbull was trying to privatise Medicare, infuriating the then-prime minister. He called it an “extraordinary act of dishonesty.”
Tegan Cohen, a research fellow at the Queensland University of Technology, wrote in the Conversation that political parties likely got Australians’ numbers from the electoral roll, information brokers, or by blasting out the messages at random.
More to come.
