ALP help to outlaw Mediscare messages

Labor has voted to pass laws that would criminalise the ‘Mediscare’ text message sent during the 2016 election campaign.

Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter. Picture: AAP

Labor has voted to pass laws that would criminalise the “Mediscare” text message sent out by the Queensland branch of the party during the 2016 federal election campaign.

The laws, dubbed the “Medi­scare bill” by the Coalition, make it a criminal offence to impersonate a federal entity company or service, such as a government agency or department.

In 2016 the Queensland branch of the ALP took responsibility for a text message sent to voters reading: “Mr Turnbull’s plans to privatise Medicare will take us down the road of no return. Time is running out to Save Medicare”.

The message was sent with the sender listed as “Medicare”.

“We all saw during the last election the deliberately deceptive ­behaviour where Labor sent text messages purporting to be from Medicare but which were actually direct political propaganda from Labor designed to deceive and scare voters over the future of Medicare,” the Attorney-General, Christian Porter, said.

“Under this legislation, it would be a criminal offence to undertake such deceptive activities, with those responsible facing penalties of up to five years imprisonment.’’

Mr Porter said that while it was already a criminal offence to impersonate a federal official, the new laws put beyond doubt the ability of prosecutors to deal ­appropriately with those pretending to act on behalf of a government body.

He said the bill contained a civil injunction power so that if something like the “Medi­scare” text message were sent, ­injunctive proceedings could be listed immediately.

“With that sort of injunctive power you could be knocking on the judge’s door at 2am if that were necessary and orders could be made, if it were appropriate to do so, very, very quickly,” he said.

“Of course later the substance of the acts would be investigated and if they constituted a criminal offence the people would be prosecuted, but the point is that we have to have the mechanisms in place to prevent Australians from being deceived.

“If you want a good dose of Labor Party hypocrisy, consider this: this bill went through with the Labor Party’s support.’’

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus’s office referred questions to the opposition spokesman on state and government ­affairs Don Farrell, whose office was yet to respond last night.