Comment on Deliberately misleading party name approved for Victorian election
pulsewidth@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Mate it’s not even illegal according to the AEC to mimic AEC livery and ‘how to vote’ forms and placards to trick Chinese immigrants into voting for the LNP.
Nor is it illegal to hand out “How to vote for Greens / LNP / Labour” cards at polling stations as a member of an opposition party, and deceptively place all preferences for the opposite intentions.
Nor is it illegal to mimic the AEC and puport to simply be a government representative enabling your application to a postal vote, while actually being from Liberal or Labor party and taking any submitted information as your own, to do whatever you like with.
So there’s zero chance they’ll care about a party misrepresenting their political goals.
Australians have very little freedom of speech enshrined in law, but what little there is aims to protect politicians only.
I think the AEC (and related State bodies) has codes it must enforce under its legislation, anything outside those codes it cannot enforce and would be going beyond it’s remit to attempt to. The agency won’t have the latitude that the judiciary have, nor should they.
Although these cases all build on the reality that the AEC’s rules may be inadequate for the multitude of bad faith partisans infecting Australian democracy.
Seagoon_@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Two can play that game.