Electoral authorities say they are powerless to take further action over a lack of transparency on pro-coal Facebook advertisements linked to a secret Glencore-funded campaign.
Last week, the Guardian revealed that Glencore, the multinational mining giant, had funded a vast, covert campaign to bolster support for coal, run by political operatives at the C|T Group.
One source with knowledge of the project – codenamed Project Caesar – said it was linked to an astroturfing group calling itself Energy in Australia, which spread pro-coal, anti-renewables video, graphics and memes across social media.
Nowhere on Energy in Australia’s website or Facebook page is any link to Glencore disclosed. The pages are authorised to a former Queensland Liberal National Party MP, Matt McEachan.
The Energy in Australia website and page were removed following questions to Glencore and the C|T Group about their links to Project Caesar.
The Australian Electoral Commission is the principal body charged with ensuring the origins of political ads – including paid Facebook political advertising – are properly disclosed.
The AEC received a complaint about the Energy in Australia site in October last year, but said it could find nothing wrong, because the Facebook page, associated advertising and the website contained an authorisation.
“This complied with the authorisation requirements in the Electoral Act,” a spokesman said.
The website at the time was authorised to McEachan. When contacted by the Guardian, McEachan could not say who was producing content for the site – aside from himself and volunteers – and could not confirm or deny whether the C|T Group was involved.
The AEC said it could only take more action if “evidence of unauthorised paid electoral advertising” emerged.
“Otherwise the AEC has no power to take any action, and we note that the material in question has now been removed.”
Political advertisements on Facebook can be a potent tool in digital campaigns. They can be targeted at an audience and pushed into the feeds of users, regardless of whether users are following the publisher.
The Energy in Australia Facebook page, for example, had more than 20,000 followers and spread posts to more still using paid advertising.
But regulating social media political ads has proven difficult.
Facebook policy mandates that political ads include disclaimers that “accurately represent the name of the entity or person responsible for the ad”. It also requires the publishers of political ads to confirm their identity. But those identification requirements do not yet apply in Australia.
The AEC has responsibility for enforcing electoral disclosure requirements. But it relies almost entirely on public complaints about particular ads before taking action.
The University of Queensland electoral law expert Graeme Orr said electoral commissions face hurdles in regulating social media political advertising. One of those is the inability to exercise powers over content hosted or generated offshore.
He said the authorisation by McEachan on the Energy in Australia site likely satisfied the AEC’s requirements.
“If the AEC says the content was authorised by Mr McEachan, ie he was willing to take responsibility for it, that is the end of that part of the matter,” Orr said.
“If Glencore were a party or candidate, the authorisation rules would dig deeper.”
The AEC this year established a new transparency register designed to capture groups spending large sums on political campaigning, forcing them to periodically disclose their funding.
The register is designed to show political campaigners who spend more than $100,000 on campaigning, if that amount is at least two-thirds of the group’s revenue.
It is currently unclear whether the new requirement would apply to the Energy in Australia campaign.
