The end of the blogs?

The short answer …

The following comments appeared in the Chronicle last week in relation to blogs commenting on the Toowoomba City Council's controversial recycled sewage project:

"A spokeswoman for Local Government Minister Desley Boyle said because Toowoomba’s poll would be run under the provisions of the Local Government Act, all election material would be subject to it. That included advertisements, pamphlets, handbills and information published on the Internet, which legally would have to provide contact details authorising them.

“If these sites remained online within the election period and contained opinions designed to influence the outcome of the poll, they would be considered election materials and would need to include a contact name and address,” the spokeswoman said.

The accuracy of these comments is questionable.

Each blog will need to form its own view on any legal restrictions but here's one view:

While there is an internet authorisation requirement for elections under the Qld Electoral Act, there is no equivalent provision for a referendum under the Qld Referendums Act nor is one set out in the provisions of the Qld Local Government Act which are deemed to apply to a referendum.

The fact that, in 2002, the State government amended section 74 of the Referendums Act to extend the misleading material provision to include material on the internet but did not amend the authorisation requirement under section 72 of the Referendums Act indicates that they never intended the internet authorisation provision to apply to a referendum. Or they just stuffed it up.

Even if the internet provisions applied under the Local Government Act or the Referendums Act, it is questionable whether commentary on a blog would fall within the meaning of “election matter”.

In 2005, a Federal Parliamentary Inquiry Committee recommended that the Australian Electoral Commission devise authorisation requirements for electoral advertisements, as distinct from general commentary, on the internet. The Committee acknowledged that regulation of internet communications presents a number of practical problems, making the application of authorisation requirements to the internet cumbersome and perhaps unenforceable.

As part of any demand that blogs follow internet authorisation requirements during the referendum period, the Qld Local Government Department should also request that newspapers publish the name and street address details of their letter writers and that talkback radio hosts state the name and street address of their callers following each call.

The Local Government Department should also trawl through the comments in the myriad chatrooms to ensure that anyone commenting on the Toowoomba Water Futures project during the referendum period states their name and address details as part of any comment. Newspapers which publish readers’ SMS comments should also publish the readers’ names and street addresses.

The failure to apply a common approach to all forms of media would indicate an attempt by State government officials to harass particular blogs in an attempt to stifle political debate.

The Toowoomba City Council and the Qld Local Government Department now risk the debate over recycled sewage for drinking purposes in Toowoomba taking a sharp turn into the areas of constitutional law and civil liberties ...