The surging tide of censorship in the ACT

I think it is brilliant. Imagine an election where politicians can’t talk. 🤔

Go the milk

They’ll be stuffed as well.

Never thought of the need for truthful facts as totalitarian?

very truthful signs however

We should be striving for MORE engagement in politics, not less. If treating political advertising like the ACCC treats regular advertising leads to better political engagement then that is a good thing.

“a curtailment on political speech in which pubic servants become tools of political parties”

Too late!

There are a lot of people of all ages who have lost interest in politics due to obvious politician self interest in all the leadership changes. They tune out so completely that come election time they can’t distinguish lies and propaganda from the real policies. My husband’s secretary was one. She said she didn’t vote Labor because they were bringing in death taxes! That’s the reality now while lies are permitted in campaigns.

But what can you classify as untruths in an election campaign? Andrew Leigh, Labor’s shadow Assistant Treasurer wrote papers supporting the death tax (death duties). If Labor had won death duties would have come in. Crispin Hull from the Canberra Times wrote articles supporting death duties and the Greens formulate their policies on what that newspaper says. As far as outlawing bus ads for “sexist public comments”, how will that be enforced? There is no such thing as “sexism”, the word was invented by a feminist in the US during International Women’s Year (1975). How can you stop the promotion of something that doesn’t even exist and was the invention of some airheaded bimbo across the Pacific almost 50 years ago?

This article is confusing. Advertising for Alan Jones’has nothing to do with election campaigns.

And lying about another party’s election policies is also very different to making broad and pretty vague statements like the ACT having “the best health system in Australia” or expressing a commitment to climate change action.

I would’ve liked to have seen the death tax advertising cracked down on because it was a straight out lie about Labor’s actual policies. I would’ve said the same about the Mediscare campaign too. I think it wouldn’t be hard to see where the line is at all.

No David. When politicians are allowed to tell outright lies in order to convince an uneducated voter to vote for them, it is not preferable to using the public service to do the dirty work for them.

It’s a sad time when lying has become so ubiquitous in the political discourse, and even sadder that politicians and our political system are held in such low regard that lying is now expected.

We all deserve so much better than this.

Truth in politics should be mandatory. Based on facts. Promises should be kept. And voters be respected.

Creating an independent, apolitical body to fact check claims made by politicians – particularly during an election campaign – should and can be introduced. Unfortunately, there is not much of an appetite to do this by either of the major political parties, as both sides would have to vastly change their campaigning methodologies.

Just because you are personally in favour of the free speech argument does not mean that free speech should allow politicians to blatantly lie.

And I’m not sure what your Alan Jones argument has to do with truth in advertising.

My read from your piece here is that you sit on the right, and wish for more tolerance and acceptance of the negative, conservative discourse that has permeated across many parts of the country…except for Canberra. The reason why the Liberal party have not won an election in, oh, I don’t know how long, is that we are clever, tolerant people who don’t buy into the fear-mongering tactics that has been so successful for the Liberal Party in many parts of Australia.

It’s good that the RiotACT provides a platform for both sides of the political argument. But I know that many people, both in Canberra and across Australia, would welcome truth in advertising. We are smart people in Canberra. And we DESERVE to be treated with more respect.

So telling the truth in political advertising is a bad thing…?

That’s weird.

That will make it hard for the greens.