‘Masses of misinformation’: Turnbull on how the AEC as ‘postbox’ worked last time

In September 1999, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) began the largest single print job in Australian history, followed by the largest single mail-out.

Nine high-speed web presses in Sydney, Melbourne and Dubbo spewed out paper around the clock for 10 days straight, producing 12.9 million 38-page pamphlets setting out the arguments for and against changes to Australia’s constitution that would sever ties with the British Crown and turn the country into a republic.

It won’t be quite such a big job this time: the pamphlet setting out arguments for and against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament will be thinner than the 1999 edition, and the AEC is no longer required by the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act to deliver the pamphlet to every elector. Now it has to go to every household, dropping the number to 12.5 million.

But there’s one thing the two pamphlets will have in common: the AEC won’t have to check the accuracy of a single word.

“The AEC’s role under the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act with the Yes/No case pamphlet is to effectively act as a post box,” an AEC spokesperson tells Crikey. “The AEC prints and delivers the pamphlet but has no involvement whatsoever with the formation of Yes and No cases, nor with fact-checking claims within those cases.”

The AEC has dedicated a section of its website to misinformation about the process, but this is solely regarding the mechanisms of the vote.

Crikey picked up the phone to a key figure at the heart of the debate last time the nation voted on a referendum — former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who led the unsuccessful campaign to make Australia a republic.

“There’s never been a provision for fact-checking in a referendum,” Turnbull tells Crikey. “It’s simply that there is a pamphlet produced by the majority of MPs who voted for or against the proposal. All the commissioner does is send it out.”

If 1999 is anything to go by, the parties won’t necessarily follow the honour system when it comes to truthfulness.

“There were masses of misinformation around in 1999,” Turnbull says. “There were two central planks of the No campaign. One was ‘if you don’t know, vote no’, which sounds familiar, and then there was the argument that it would be legally risky to make this change. So the reality is with any constitutional change, the No campaign is always going to run arguments of that sort.”

Another No argument that rings a lot of bells is the contention the proposed changes are “elitist and undemocratic”, and that the republic proposal was “dividing us as a nation”.

Turnbull argues that even if it were legally required to do so, it would be very difficult for the AEC to settle every individual claim of misinformation. And there are bigger problems facing any advocate for constitutional change.

“Like most Australians I’m a big supporter of compulsory voting, but there is a downside,” he says. “You drag everyone along, including people who, for a variety of reasons, might be less informed or engaged, and say, ‘Here is a proposal for change.’

“Those people are much more likely to vote No. I think compulsory voting is what knocks over a lot of referendums.”