Crikey is running for Parliament. Here’s why

Every election cycle, we report on the perks, privileges and loopholes afforded to aspiring political candidates. A lot of these are taken for granted by political operatives and insiders who’ve worked in the system for years. But to voters, they stink.

So, Crikey is running for Parliament. Well, technically, we’ve landed a name on the ballot for the Victorian Senate seat (“Crikey for PM” is our name on the campaign material). We’ve faxed our application, paid the electoral commission (AEC), and our official candidate was read out in a strange, quaint ceremony on Friday — that our own Charlie Lewis attended.

We’re not doing this to make a policy, political or partisan statement. And we don’t want votes. (Read our FAQ here.)

But we do have a campaign platform. Inspired by Clive Palmer’s ads, Labor’s Mediscare campaign and the Coalition’s boat arrivals spam, we’ll investigate how sitting politicians and people running for office take advantage of the electoral system.

Take the recent story by Cam Wilson on the major parties’ faux postal vote forms. This method of voter outreach is considered a legitimate, well-known practice among political wonks, but to voters it just looks like a scam. “Is it a surprise that Australians don’t trust politicians when the first piece of party communication they receive is a data harvesting form meant to deceive them?” Wilson wrote.

Or consider that in the lead-up to the July 2016 federal election, the Labor Party sent a flurry of texts to voters warning that then PM Malcolm Turnbull had “plans to privatise Medicare”. The claim featured no political authorisation. Many recipients had no idea how the party had gotten their private phone numbers. The claim in the text was, at best, highly dubious.

This message, which came to be known as “Mediscare” and was widely condemned, was a major factor in a better-than-expected Labor performance in the 2016 election. The ALP submitted to the Parliament committee charged with reviewing the election that it had not broken any rules. The party hadn’t. But most voters would argue that this didn’t make it right.

Mediscare is just one example. Look at Clive Palmer’s cash splash across the past two elections, with his signature yellow billboards and advertisements being accused of spreading misleading information. But as voters are reminded every election, it’s perfectly legal to tell fibs in federal political advertising. This is despite the push for legislative change, and case studies in states like South Australia where truth in political advertising laws have been in place since the 1980s. Bending the truth in federal campaign advertising is standard fare, no matter what kind of bullshit authorisation follows the message.

Then there’s your privacy. Political parties are exempt from the Privacy Actwhich means the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Greens and One Nation all have a file on you, which at the very least contains your name, where you live, your age and almost certainly a great deal more. It’s why some of you would have gotten the Mediscare text, or the Liberals’ last-ditch 2022 election-day text about an “illegal boat interception”, or any number of billionaire time-vacuum Clive Palmer’s missives over the years.

But here’s the kicker: you can’t know for sure what info they have, and you’re not allowed to see it. And because of special exemptions from the Spam Actthese figures can use whatever contact info they’ve collected to bombard you.

We also plan to follow the money. It’s harder than ever to engage in the political process without major party backing. Just recently the major parties banded together to institute “donation reform” — reform aimed less at increasing the clarity around a system that has allowed a billion dollars in “dark money” to flow to Australian parties since the turn of the century, and more at locking smaller players out and increasing the public money the majors receive from campaigning.

At the next election, independent candidates will have a campaign cap of $800,000, while federal political parties will be capped at $90 million, with the Greens accusing both Labor and the Coalition of “rigging the system to lock out their competitors”. As Labor’s Don Farrell put it, “That’s the fucking point”.

So it helps to be a billionaire. The Age will splash your questionable material if it’s worth a front-page banner ad.

Our Crikey for PM series will investigate not only the perks available to Australia’s political candidates, but also all the ways the rules are weighted against candidates without a major party’s machinery, or a billionaire’s money, behind them.

It’s also, if we’re going to be honest, a chance to really get up close and personal with the AEC, which we’re long-term fans of. They consistently restore our faith in the electoral system, despite candidates’ best efforts to take advantage.

We’re not making any campaign promises, and we’re not backing any side of politics. Our platform will be pushing for transparency and for highlighting hypocrisy.

Ahead of election day, our campaign manager Charlie Lewis will be exploring all these issues in depth. But for the first time, Crikey will be doing it from the inside.

Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.