Will "Hate Speech" Be Illegal In The "Plebiscite"?

Things are moving fast in the Government's attempt to conduct a national voluntary postal vote on same-sex marriage.  Although we won't get to the High Court challenge against the "survey" until September 5-6 - meaning we might be a month away from knowing if the thing is on at all - a lot of questions are being raised and in cases answered about how exactly the plebiscite will be conducted, if it does proceed.  A major problem with the exercise has been that since it is not an Australian Electoral Commission process authorised by an act of Parliament, normal election requirements (authorisation, fraud and vote-buying protections and challenges) do not exist unless separately provided for.  In Thursday's instalment (Electoral Process, But Not As We Know It: Postal Plebiscite V2) I mentioned that at least regulation would be needed to get around these problems.  However the regulations available under legislation concerning the ABS are very limited concerning penalties.

In a welcome move, acting Special Minister of State Mathias Cormann has flagged the stronger possibility of special legislation to impose AEC-election-like conditions for the, er, whatever it's called.  This would create the really strange situation of the Senate approving laws governing a postal vote that the Senate had itself not approved and would have blocked if asked to approve it.  Such laws might themselves be subject to challenge.  The most important aspect of this debate for me, though, is the incorrect impressions of the impact of such possible laws that we are seeing in the media.  The SMH and ABC have referred to them as "ground rules for a fair and respectful debate on same-sex marriage", rules that would "stop hateful advertising material being distributed" and as protections against "malicious publications".  It isn't so.

Do The Greens Display "Real Liberal Values"?

Of all the advertising in the Tasmanian election so far, the piece that has most interested me has been the Greens' claim to represent "real liberal values", as seen in a leaflet distributed in parts of the state and on this website.  So far as I know the claim has been largely ignored by opponents, but I thought it was something that deserved proper critical scrutiny.

The campaign is part of an increasingly confident and positive attempt by the Greens to take advantage of Labor's apparent death spiral in order to make a play for Opposition or at least co-Opposition status to the incoming Liberal government.  A part of this is an ambitious attempt to snare an elusive second seat in Denison.  The Greens have had their eyes on this prize for a long time but have never quite got there.  Past elections under both the seven-seat and five-seat systems have now and then seen polling samples that implied this result was possible, but it has never happened.