Page 5372 - Week 14 - Thursday, 30 November 2017
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on this subject. Thank you, of course, to the committee secretary, Andrew Snedden, and to Josephine Brown. And thank you very much to the 35 people and organisations or thereabouts who submitted to our inquiry.
First off I thought I might talk about my proposal for a fact-checking unit, because that is probably the most unique proposal that I have suggested. Unfortunately, as we all know, trust in our political system is at an all-time low. We have concepts of fake news, alternative facts and fact-free zones, things which, 20 years ago, 10 years ago or even five years ago, we did not talk about. They are legitimate political concerns; they are not satire anymore.
I think that politics in the community and democracy as a whole needs to lift its game with respect to trying to base our policies on evidence, on facts. I note that, from a federal point of view, this is happening to a small extent. This concern about facts has led the ABC to collaborate with the RMIT to create the RMIT ABC fact-checking unit. This is partly funded by the commonwealth government through the ABC, and the ABC notes on its website that the ABC is a publicly funded, independent media organisation; therefore the RMIT ABC fact check is accountable to the Australian parliament.
The Conversation, which I am sure all members would know about, is a collaboration of a large number of Australian universities. It also runs a fact-checking unit. It says that fact-checking units can improve public debate and support additional educational outcomes, as well as providing an additional resource to journalists and members of the public.
I think it would be great if either of those bodies were interested in fact checking some of the facts in ACT elections and in broader ACT political discourse. However, I fear that, with the things that we regard as incredibly important, they may not always regard them as important enough to check. Therefore I have made an additional recommendation: that the ACT government investigate establishing an ACT-specific fact-checking unit in conjunction with an ACT university to support informed public debate.
Mrs Dunne interjecting—
MS LE COUTEUR: I know there may be some scepticism, Mrs Dunne, but I think it would be a great step forward. I will briefly comment on the one part of the main report which I dissented from. In recommendation 13 the committee recommends that the ACT Electoral Act be amended to allow electoral material displayed on private property inside the defined polling area to remain throughout the polling period. I cannot see any reason for this. Why should private property be elevated above non-private or public property? There is no reason for this.
I will talk about some matters on which I made additional comments. Some of them relate to things that are in the main report and some do not. One of them, which unfortunately did not quite make it into the main report, was about closing the electoral roll. These days, with an electronic electoral roll, there is no reason why this
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