Printing Industries has called for greater transparency and accountability in electoral material in a submission to a federal parliamentary committee.
Speaking to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters last Thursday, Mary Jo Fisher, Membership Services Director PIAA, recommended maintaining current requirements for 'authorised by' and 'printed by' labelling on all printed electoral material, as well as extending similar requirements to other forms of media.
"At the moment, most printed material is required to have on it 'authorised by' and 'printed by' with name and address of the authoriser and printer, but even those requirements are inconsistent and difficult to understand among printed material, and don’t extend to other election media," Fisher told Print21.
She cited the so-called 'Mediscare' campaign employed by Labor at the most recent federal election as a reason for these requirements to be extended. "Our submission is to strengthen the requirements in relation to printed material, make them consistent, and extend them to all other forms of election media: online, SMS, and so on. If people don’t know where material comes from, they can’t assess it in context, and so digital material should have the same accountability as printed material," she said.
She further warned that, should these requirements not be strengthened, printing industry jobs could be at risk. "If you get rid of the 'printed by' requirements as they exist, which some are proposing, jobs will go off-shore. Secondly, if these requirements are not extended, people who don’t want accountability will be attracted to digital media, where they can say what they like," she said.
The committee will be receiving submissions on matters related to the 2016 federal election until December 2.