CheckMate is a weekly RMIT FactLab newsletter that summarizes the latest developments in the world of fact-checking and misinformation, based on the work of FactLab and its sister organization, RMIT ABC Fact Check.
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CheckMate June 3, 2022
This week, CheckMate delves into some of the predictable and incorrect allegations of election fraud shared after the federal poll.
We also reveal which tweets were the most popular in the campaign, and look at two changes to Victorian laws that sparked a wave of viral misinformation.
Electoral misinformation at “very low levels,” says AEC
The Australian Electoral Commission says the level of misinformation and misleading information shared in relation to the recent federal election continues to decline two weeks after the poll saw Labor return to power after nearly 10 years.
An AEC spokeswoman told CheckMate that the number of misinformation stories had been “very minimal”, according to a May 27 press release in which Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers noted that the week immediately after the vote he had presented “very low levels of electoral misinformation”. “.
“While a very small number of individuals have chosen to be involved in promoting predictable and disappointing conspiracy theories, I am very pleased to report that the vast majority of Australians choose not to engage in such things,” he said. Rogers.
When erroneous electoral information has been shared, the AEC – and the fact-checkers – have been quickly overturned.
Online, the ACS has refuted dozens of claims about voter turnout, the counting process, and the use of the Great Seal of the Commonwealth in official election writings.
A suggestion, for example, that more than 4 million eligible voters (around a quarter of those registered to vote in Australia) did not run in the election was rejected by the Commission.
According to the United Australia Party, which made the claim in an email sent to members the week after the election, the figure represented the “highest number of people who have not attended voting since 1922”.
The AEC, however, called the suggestion “absolutely false”.
“The number quoted here is an extremely premature number of ballots counted by the AEC just under a week after the count,” the Commission’s electoral misinformation record states.
“It is not an accurate measure of voter turnout and should not be compared with turnout figures from previous elections, which came after receiving and counting all the ballots.”
With regard to the counting process, the Commission denied any allegations that the count had been subcontracted and explained that a photo that appeared to show a disorganized and chaotic counting process in a polling station, on the other hand, showed workers. of the AEC using a limited space to sort and unfold the ballots before. vote count.
Count: After a concerned voter posted this photo on Twitter to suggest that the election could be manipulated, the AEC responded that sometimes “additional space is needed” for ballot classification. (Provided by: Twitter)
Meanwhile, on Facebook, some users suggested that the AEC “stuck” the election by “ignoring” voter preferences and distributing votes to only the two main parties.
However, these statements were a bad characterization of Australia’s voting system and the Commission’s counting process.
As explained by FactLab, the AEC conducts an initial count of two favorite candidates on election night in an effort to give an early indication of which party will form a government, with subsequent ballot counts and then distributing preferences according to priorities. of voters.
Finally, when it came to claiming that the election writings issued by the Attorney General were invalid because they did not have the Great Seal, the AEC patiently pointed out that the seal was not a legal requirement for the writings.
How the ‘teals’ overthrew their rivals
As part of its Mosaic election monitoring project, RMIT FactLab looked at how two high-profile “green greens” independents outnumbered and overthrew their political opponents with the help of effective social media campaigns.
In Melbourne’s Goldstein electorate, outgoing Liberal MP Tim Wilson and former ABC journalist Zoe Daniel took completely different online approaches, with the latter amplifying local voices and targeting young voters.
Zoe Daniel amplified local voices and addressed young voters in her campaign to win the Goldstein seat in Melbourne. (Provided by: Facebook)
FactLab’s analysis found that Mr. Wilson had high confidence in the Liberal Party’s points of discussion and regularly attacked the credibility of his rival and his supporters, while Ms. Wilson’s message. Daniel remained largely positive, but focused on voter dissatisfaction with the perception of government inaction on climate change, gender equality, and political integrity.
In addition to posting dozens of posts a day, Ms. Daniel and her team spent at least six times as much as Mr. Wilson on advertising on social media.
However, their costs were considerably lower than those of other successful independent candidates, at least in part due to their effective use of video.
Meanwhile, in Kooyong’s nearby electorate, where the advertising spending of the two main candidates was 31 times higher than that of Goldstein’s rivals, FactLab found that Dr. Monique Ryan’s use of TikTok could have helped win voters at the oldest demographic age of the seat: young. people aged 18 to 34.
Nearly 60 TikTok videos created by Dr. Ryan and a volunteer-run account called “Youth4Mon” attracted more than 730,000 combined views.
Although one of only two TikToks posted by opponent Josh Frydenberg garnered more than 175,000 views, this may have been due to a cameo by popular AFL star Bailey Smith (who appeared to be making the light of day of Mr. Frydenberg’s hair in the video).
FactLab also concluded that Dr. Ryan’s message, similar to that of Mrs. Daniel, was overwhelmingly positive compared to Mr. Frydenberg’s advertisement, which he seldom mentioned by Dr. Ryan’s name, but often questioned his independence.
Reach the core of the falsity of fruits and vegetables
Recently, social media has collapsed with claims that Victorians would be banned from growing fruits and vegetables, with American podcaster Joe Rogan among those who fall in love with the lie.
“Prime Minister Dan Andrews is passing a bill banning people from growing their own food,” read a viral post shared on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, while another post claimed that the new rules would “apply “.[d] with drones “.
But, as RMIT FactLab found, these claims have a high fertilizer content.
Victorians can still grow their own tomatoes, despite what Joe Rogan said. (612 ABC Brisbane: Jessica Hinchliffe)
The Victorian government’s 2022 amendment to the 2022 Agricultural Legislation Act seeks to amend several existing laws related to commercial agricultural and food production.
One of the main focuses of the bill is to protect the state’s biosafety, for example, by increasing the government’s inspection and enforcement powers “to better regulate the risk of the introduction or spread of harmful weeds and pest animals.” .
Other changes are aimed at preventing plant pests and diseases from entering Victoria or limiting the use of pesticides and other chemicals.
A Victoria Agriculture spokesman told FactLab that the bill does not refer to home gardens and that “no one will be prevented from growing their own food as part of these changes, which are designed to support agricultural sector “.
Professor Paul Martin, director of the Australian Center for Agriculture and Law, said the idea that Victorians could not grow their own food was “wrong” and that these interpretations of the bill were “wrong”.
Meanwhile, the Victorian Farmers Federation industry group has denounced the misinformation, saying it “misrepresents and misinterprets the amendments set out in the bill.”
CoronaCheck: Health officials granted legal immunity, but no “cover-up”
Protesters on the steps of the Victorian Parliament in November last year. (AAP: Joel Carrett)
Still in Victoria, the state government has been attacked for protecting its health bureaucrats from being sued for public health decisions, with a widely shared tweet calling the measure “the most shocking political cover-up in history.” Australia “.
With a video of an independent state MP denouncing legislative amendments to Victoria’s health laws, as well as blockages and vaccine warrants, the tweet stated that the changes “would give the director of health total immunity over the past two years”.
So what does the law really say?
The provision in question, section 227AA of the Public Health and Welfare Act of 2008, effectively grants legal immunity to the director of health and other officials “for anything that is done or omitted in good faith” under the under the auspices of the Act or its regulations. (including anything done with the reasonable belief that the law permitted or required it).
Deakin University law professor Matthew Groves told CheckMate that the change “codifies and clarifies” the immunity that “in practice” already existed, and explained that the new provision transfers any personal responsibility to the government. state.
On April 7, Labor MP Tien Kieu told Parliament that the amendment “will not affect the proceedings currently under way in the courts or in the legal system”.
Professor Groves said that although the law did not say whether the new provision would be applied retrospectively, “for cases that have not been initiated, the presumption is that this immunity will be applied almost certainly.” .
It is important to note that these legal protections for civil servants were not “exceptional”, he said, highlighting almost identical clauses contained in the Ambulance Services Act of 1986 (s22) and the Assisted Reproduction Treatment Act of 2008 (ss 94 , 110), among other laws.
Patrick Emerton, Associate Professor of Law at …