Report – Monash University, 17 December 2024
Truth in political advertising laws: design, operation, effectiveness and recommendations for reform
Truth in political advertising (TiPA) laws seek to protect the integrity of the electoral process from the growing threat of disinformation. This report argues in favour of expanding TiPA laws, finding they are effective and especially appropriate in the Australian context of compulsory voting.
South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory have enacted TiPA laws to prohibit false or misleading political advertising, such as campaign advertisements.
This final report is based on 34 interviews with various stakeholders such as current and former premiers, ministers, MPs, Electoral Commissioners, political party directors/secretaries, and civil society groups from South Australia, the ACT (which had TiPA laws in place for the first time at its recent election), NSW and Victoria.
The final report makes a number of key findings and 25 recommendations about the design, operation and effectiveness of TiPA laws as well as other mechanisms to support better quality information in electoral campaigns and political communication.
Key findings
- Where TiPA laws are in place, they have a positive impact on the accuracy of political advertising.
- The narrow scope of existing TiPA laws limits their effectiveness.
- The rise of social media and AI-generated content presents significant challenges to the enforcement of TiPA laws.
- Concerns exist regarding the potential for misuse of TiPA laws for political purposes.
Key recommendations
- Expand the scope of TiPA laws to encompass all forms of political advertising, including online media, AI-generated content and material distributed by third-party campaigners.
- Increase the penalties for breaches of TiPA laws.
- Expand the temporal coverage of TiPA laws beyond the election period.
- Implement measures to address the spread of disinformation on social media platforms.
- Invest in public education initiatives to enhance media literacy and empower citizens to identify and critically evaluate political information.
- Empower the TiPA regulator to dismiss vexatious complaints.
Read the full report here: https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2024-12/apo-nid329295.pdf
Simon Warriner
December 26, 2024 at 16:44
That’s great as far as it goes, but the root causes of the problem are the cash flows that enable the wall-to-wall cacophony that comes from major party political advertising. There needs to be a change to the way election advertising is funded in order to remove the advantages of incumbency.
Perhaps banning all advertising and forcing the publication of a manifesto by each candidate which is distributed to the voters in each electorate, accompanied by compulsory attendance at properly moderated public forums in the period prior, and with all of this funded from the public purse, would eradicate the problems.