It is not uncommon for political parties to send blanket messages or phone calls with pre-recorded messages,particularly around election time. In addition to the Spam Act exemption,political parties do not have to comply with the Do Not Call Register and the obligations in the Privacy Act 1988 in how they collect,use,disclose or store personal information. The federal government is reviewing the Privacy Act,including whether the exemption for political parties should be maintained.
Mr Palmer has repeatedly used unsolicited text messages as a campaigning tool,most recently ahead of the 2020 Queensland election when his company Mineralogy spammed people all over the country with messages accusing Labor of having a “death tax” and linking to a how-to-vote card. The federal Labor Party also came under fire for the practice in the 2016 election with the so-called “Mediscare” text campaign,which purported to be from the government agency and claimed then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull had plans to privatise it.
Mr Kelly said the UAP messaging campaign had been successful in recruiting members “by the thousands” and claimed “the way we’re headed we’ll have more members than” the Labor or Liberal parties. When asked how many members UAP had,Mr Kelly said:“I haven’t got the numbers today”.
On the issue of spam political phone calls and messages,the Australian Electoral Commission says it does not disclose the telephone numbers of electors,and it has “no knowledge of where or how a registered political party obtains telephone numbers of electors”.
Meanwhile,Federal Parliamentpassed a raft of changes last week to minor party registration requirements and electoral processes ahead of the upcoming election. The changes,backed by Labor,include a requirement for minor parties to have at least 1500 members to be registered and new parties will be prevented from registering names too similar to those already in use. The pre-poll timeframe,which allows people to cast votes before polling day,was also reduced to 12 days.
The Greens were among the minor parties to decry the changes to the registration rules,with Senator Larissa Waters calling it a “blatant and utterly shameless attempt[by the major parties] to shore up their power”.
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