BYV: For every Australian who suspects they’re not getting the full story
By Sue Barrett
Every election campaign is full of promises. Housing. Cost of living. Better hospitals. Safer streets. A stronger economy. You have heard all of them. You will hear them again.
Too many of them are not policies. They are slogans. And some are something more deliberate – propaganda. Statements designed not to inform you but to produce a feeling. To make you afraid, or angry, or reassured, without giving you anything specific enough to hold anyone to account.
New research from the University of Canberra confirms what many Australians already suspect: in the two weeks before the 2025 federal election, 60 per cent of adults came across election misinformation. Only 41 per cent felt confident they could tell whether online information was true. And when people saw something they suspected was false, 44 per cent ignored it rather than checked it – not because they didn’t care, but because they were overwhelmed and burned out.
This is not a personal failing. It is the intended effect. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most useful civic skills you can develop. Here is how.
What a policy actually is
A real policy commitment has five elements. It names a specific problem with evidence of its scale. It proposes a specific action to address it. It identifies who will do it and when. It explains what it will cost and how that cost will be met. And it falls within the actual powers of the level of government the candidate is seeking election to.
Not all five need to appear on a billboard. However, when you dig into what a candidate is actually proposing, all five should be findable. If they are not – if you cannot find a number, a timeline, a cost, or a named person responsible for delivery – you are not looking at a policy. You are looking at an intention dressed up as a promise.
The difference matters because intentions cannot be held to account. Specific commitments can. A candidate who promises to “invest in healthcare” has given you nothing to measure them against. A candidate who promises to rebuild a specific hospital by a specific date at a specific cost has given you a standard. Hold them to it.
That last element – does it fall within the actual powers of the level of government they are seeking – is where most political promises collapse entirely.
The Tim Wilson test
At the 2025 federal election, Tim Wilson ran in the Victorian seat of Goldstein on three themes: lower inflation, safer communities, and affordable homes. Real concerns. Every Australian who heard them probably nodded. Which was exactly the point.
Inflation is set by an independent Reserve Bank, not a federal MP. Policing and community safety are state responsibilities. Housing approvals are primarily state and local. Wilson was running for a federal seat. He knew what the job was. He was betting that voters did not.
His campaign was also turbocharged by $1.58 million in attack advertising full of lies against the then sitting MP Zoe Daniel – run through proxy groups who have still not officially declared who they are, where their money came from, or who directed the campaign. If you do not know who is funding the advertising trying to influence your vote – and you have no way of finding out – that is the problem right there.
As I told the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in November 2025: what happened in Goldstein 2025 was a warning. What happens next is a choice.
South Australia has truth in political advertising. Nowhere else does
South Australia is the only jurisdiction in Australia where it is illegal to publish a political advertisement containing a false or misleading statement of fact. Candidates can be investigated and ordered to retract. The law has teeth.
Everywhere else in Australia – at federal elections, in every other state, in every council election – you can say almost anything in a political advertisement. No legal requirement for it to be true. No penalty for a campaign built on deliberate falsehood.
Zali Steggall has introduced Truth in Political Advertising bills in the federal parliament across multiple terms. The major parties have refused to pass them every time. Ask yourself why – especially given that 83 per cent of Australians, according to the University of Canberra research, support truth in advertising laws at a national level. The public is not the problem. The parliament is.
Your vote is a decision. For that decision to be genuinely yours, the information shaping it needs to bear some relationship to reality. When campaigns are built on false claims, lies, and propaganda, and proxy groups funded by undisclosed interests, your vote is not being informed – it is being harvested. Every false claim that goes unchallenged, every misleading proxy ad that runs without disclosure, drowns out the real issues and the real voices of ordinary Australians trying to make an informed decision.
What propaganda looks like
A slogan is vague. Propaganda is vague and deliberate – designed to activate fear, grievance, or threat rather than describe a plan.
Watch for language that names an enemy without evidence. Claims about what will happen if the other side wins, with no source. Statistics without context – crime is up, but compared to what, measured how, in which area? Promises framed as protection from something terrible rather than a specific plan to do something good. And watch for advertising that does not clearly identify who paid for it.
The test is simple: does this give me anything I can verify? If the answer is no, you are looking at something designed to manipulate, not inform.
Before Nepean and Farrer
Two by-elections are coming. Nepean on 2 May – Victorian state parliament. Farrer on 9 May – federal. For every candidate, ask the same questions. Does this promise fall within what this level of government controls? Is there a specific commitment with a number, a timeline, a named project? Is it costed? What is their record on the things they are promising?
The map of what each level of government controls is on the Before You Vote website. Use it before you vote.
Research consistently shows most Australians want the same things – a decent life, a fair go, affordable housing, healthcare that works, a future our children can count on. What divides us is the noise deliberately manufactured to make us forget that. Algorithms reward outrage. Proxy groups fund disinformation. Political campaigns activate fear rather than inform judgement.
A policy gives you something to check. A slogan gives you something to feel. Propaganda gives you something to fear.
You are entitled to know the difference – and to demand that the people seeking your vote tell you the truth.
Everything you need to cut through the spin is at beforeyouvote.com.au. Free. Independent. For every Australian who suspects they’re not getting the full story.
Your Vote. Your Future.
You know what to do.
Onward we press
Sue Barrett is the founder of Democracy Watch AU and Before You Vote. Before You Vote publishes every Tuesday and Friday. If this was useful, send it to five people.
Before You Vote is now live at beforeyouvote.com.au — a free civic education resource for every Australian who wants to cut through the spin. Share it with five people who need it.
This article was originally published on Sue Barrett
Keep Independent Journalism Alive – Support The AIMN
Dear Reader,
Since 2013, The Australian Independent Media Network has been a fearless voice for truth, giving public interest journalists a platform to hold power to account. From expert analysis on national and global events to uncovering issues that matter to you, we’re here because of your support.
Running an independent site isn’t cheap, and rising costs mean we need you now more than ever. Your donation – big or small – keeps our servers humming, our writers digging, and our stories free for all.
Join our community of truth-seekers. Please consider donating now via:
PayPal or credit card – just click on the Donate button below
Direct bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
We’ve also set up a GoFundMe as a dedicated reserve fund to help secure the future of our site.
Your support will go directly toward covering essential costs like web hosting renewals and helping us bring new features to life. Every contribution, no matter the size, helps us keep improving and growing.
Thank you for standing with us – we truly couldn’t do this without you.
With gratitude, The AIMN Team
Posturing, egofixations, lying, propaganda, insincerity, delusions, fantasies, the Great Program of Tim Wilson, friend of the shirker and all donations welcome. Be un-Australian, unaware, uncaring and follow this clown. (It’s informative, clear.)
All very well, but first the broader electorate with most Australians following RW MSM and online ecosystem, are neither informed nor capable of formulating questions, to be informed; media and influencers gaming the middle aged+, regional and low info.
OS visitors complain or ask, ‘Why… are Australians on the edge of a narcissistic nervous breakdown, become angry, unable to ask questions, cannot focus for more than 7 secons or a dozen words and avoid open questions in preferring closed yes/no responses; outcome is an uninformed citizenry, like the US?
Two slogans cover all the base US fossil fueled output to influence the News led RW MSM and ecosystem to brainwash* the middle aged and older; Koch ‘anti net-zero’ and Tanton ‘net-zero migration’.
Ask any Australian about the latter two for a non response or blank look, or stream of far right agitprop and anger because they can only deal with glib slogans, as they never have to explain themselves.
*US Jan Senko has excellent doco on ‘The Brainwashing of My Dad’, retired former Democrat unionist went far right following Fox News, Sinclair and Malone mid westenr strategy, but they got him back; observed similar locally break down of or pressure family relations around ‘dads’ becoming irrational RWNJs.
Princess Timmy, like the rest of the LNP, can only survive on slogans and brain farts. A policy to them is a brand of toilet paper, one use then flush it and move on to the next policy.
I think most of us already know that Labor put forward policies, and the rest just put forward slogans.