Teal MP has ‘no opinion’ on influencers paid to post political content

Monique Ryan, who has campaigned on transparency and integrity on politics, says she hasn’t thought about politicians paying influencers for positive coverage.

Monique Ryan during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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Teal independent Monique Ryan has repeatedly said she does not “know” whether she thinks politicians should declare when they pay social media influencers for favourable coverage.

Fellow teal MP Allegra Spender last week said she paid an agency to commission content with influencers, whose videos said they were made in “collaboration” with Climate200.

Dr Ryan was asked whether she thought voters should be able to know whether content they were viewing had been paid for by a politician.

“Look, I don’t really have an opinion on it,” she told the ABC’s Insiders program.

Dr Ryan, who campaigned on transparency and integrity in politics, was challenged on the issue.

“Really? You don’t think voters deserve to know that if someone they’re watching is saying great things about a politician, whether they’re being paid by that politician?” she was asked.

“I’ll have to give it some thought,” she said. “It’s not something I’ve given great thought to myself. Obviously I haven’t engaged in anything like that myself.”

She was asked again: “you’d have to give that some thought?”

“Well, ah … I would think that it would be clear … I don’t know,” Dr Ryan said, and then paused.

“I think it … I’d have to give that some thought.”

Dr Ryan was challenged again on whether she would be “all right with politicians paying for content that voters have no idea money is changing hands”.

She suggested it had “potentially been happening for a long time”.

Dr Ryan earlier in the interview suggested that “much of what is put into the press and the right wing press in particular has been fed to it by my political opponents”.

Dr Ryan has previously campaigned on truth in political advertising, saying it was “extraordinary that it’s legal to lie in political advertising in this country”.

“Some politicians are deliberately choosing to mislead voters,” her website reads. “Legislation for truth in political advertising should be an immediate focus of the next parliament.”

Coalition campaign spokesman James Paterson lashed Dr Ryan.

“The so-called ‘independents’ campaigned on integrity – now they’re handing out cash to influencers in secret and dodging questions when caught out,” he said.

“Is this what Teal politicians mean by doing politics differently? It’s a preview of minority Labor government with the Greens and Teals: chaos, cover-ups, no accountability.

“Australia deserves better. Only the Coalition can deliver strong, stable and transparent government.”

The Australian Electoral Commission last week published additional guidance about authorisation statements required for social media content as political coverage has increasingly entered the social media realm in this election cycle.

It said that communication not done by parties did not require authorisation unless that material was “paid advertising”, “payment is involved to produce/distribute the material”, gifts were provided conditional on that content, or that material was “communicated by or on behalf of a political entity”.