{"id":"BILL-s1461","name":"Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Communications) Bill 2025 (No. 2)","slug":"electoral-legislation-amendment-electoral-communications-bill-2025-no-2","collection":"bill","jurisdiction":"commonwealth","status":"in_force","isInForce":true,"actNumber":null,"makingDate":null,"administeringDepartment":null,"currentVersion":{"id":445976,"registerId":"commonwealth-BILL-s1461-current","compilationNumber":null,"startDate":"2026-05-05","status":"introduced","reasons":null,"registeredAt":null},"sections":[],"analysis":{"flash_summary":{"complexity_score":7,"scope_assessment":{"changed":true,"description":"This Bill expands the regulatory scope beyond traditional electoral administration (timing, disclosure, and sponsorship identification) into policing the substantive accuracy and the digital provenance of campaign communications. It moves the law into content-level regulation (prohibiting material inaccuracy and requiring labelling of digitally-created/modified material) and creates a new oversight body to enforce those standards. That is a material broadening from the conventional focus on procedural election rules and publication disclosure toward substantive control over political messaging and digital production techniques."},"complexity_factors":["Amendments to multiple principal Acts (Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984, Broadcasting Services Act 1992, Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991) requiring cross-Act coherence","Creation of a new administrative body (Electoral Communications Panel) with yet-to-be-specified procedural and enforcement rules","Introduction of subjective legal standards (e.g. \"inaccurate and misleading to a material extent\") that require fact-specific, case-by-case determinations","Broad, potentially ambiguous terms (e.g. \"created or modified using digital technology\", \"including AI\") that expand regulated scope and invite definitional disputes","Interplay with existing bodies of law (defamation, consumer protection, broadcasting regulation, platform moderation) increasing cross-referencing and compliance complexity","Potential need for implementing regulations and guidance to operationalise labelling requirements and enforcement (implied secondary rulemaking)","Enforcement and evidentiary questions (who bears burden of proof, timeframes for removal or correction, penalties) likely to be specified across multiple instruments or delegated rules","Behavioural and market complexity from removal of the media blackout (timing of advertising spend, last-minute ads, targeted digital advertising)","Unspecified exceptions or carve-outs in summary (risk of nested exceptions once full text/regulations appear)"],"plain_english_summary":"**What this Bill changes (mechanically)\n\n- Amends four existing laws: the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984 to regulate the content of electoral and referendum communications; and the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and the Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991 to remove the current ban on advertising during the last three days of voting. It also establishes a new body called an Electoral Communications Panel.\n\n- Creates a prohibition on authorising electoral or referendum material that is \"inaccurate and misleading to a material extent.\" The prohibition explicitly covers material that has been created or altered using digital technology (for example, video modified by software, including so-called \"deepfakes\").\n\n- Requires that any electoral or referendum material that has been created or modified using digital technology (including AI) carry a statement that it was created or modified using such technology (a labelling requirement).\n\n- Removes the existing \"media blackout\" that currently prevents electoral or referendum advertising in the final three days of voting.\n\nWho is affected\n\n- Political actors: candidates, parties, referendum campaigners and their agents who authorise or pay for electoral communications. They must not authorise materially inaccurate or misleading content and must label digitally created or altered material.\n\n- Media and platforms: broadcasters, publishers, digital platforms and intermediaries that carry electoral communications. Broadcasters will be able to carry advertising in the last three days of voting that was previously prohibited. Platforms and publishers may face new verification, removal or disclosure obligations in practice.\n\n- Content creators and technology users: anyone producing or modifying political advertising or material using digital tools (including AI tools) will need to label that fact and may need to change production practices to avoid creating materially misleading content.\n\n- New regulator/oversight body: the Electoral Communications Panel (a new body to be established by the Bill) which will have a role in decisions or complaints about electoral communications (the Bill sets up the Panel but details of its powers and procedures will determine how it operates).\n\nWhy it matters (purpose and practical effects)\n\n- The Bill aims to reduce the spread of materially misleading electoral communications and to increase transparency where digital tools have been used to create or modify material. That is the stated purpose: to address misinformation and digitally altered content in the electoral context.\n\n- Practically, the Bill shifts regulatory focus from timing and disclosure (traditional electoral rules) toward the substantive truthfulness and provenance of campaign messages. It therefore affects what messages campaigns will choose to produce and how platforms and broadcasters manage content during the election period.\n\nCosts, incentives and trade-offs (implementation and compliance)\n\n- Who pays: Campaigns and advocacy groups bear compliance costs (labelling, legal review to avoid the accuracy prohibition, content modification or removal). Media outlets and digital platforms may incur moderation, monitoring, and verification costs, and potentially face commercial effects from the ability to sell last‑minute advertising.\n\n- Who decides: The Bill creates decision-making power for administrative actors — the Electoral Communications Panel and electoral authorities — to interpret and enforce the new accuracy and labelling rules. That produces discretion about what counts as \"materially\" misleading and what digital modifications require labelling.\n\n- Incentives and behaviour change: Campaigns are likely to avoid using ambiguous or borderline material that could be ruled materially misleading, and to add labelling to content produced or altered by digital tools. Platforms may increase takedown or flagging activity around electoral materials. Removing the blackout could shift advertising spending toward later in the campaign and increase last-minute, targeted digital ads.\n\n- Opportunity costs and substitution effects: If certain digital techniques become risky to use (for fear of being found misleading), campaigns may revert to traditional media or more basic video/text formats. Conversely, advertisers may shift more budget into paid, targeted digital channels in the final three days now that the blackout is removed.\n\n- Compliance burden and uncertainty: The key terms (for example, what counts as \"created or modified using digital technology\" and what is \"inaccurate and misleading to a material extent\") are potentially broad. That creates legal uncertainty and could increase demand for legal advice, pre-publication review, and technology audits. Small campaigns and grassroots groups will face relatively higher compliance costs per dollar spent than larger organisations.\n\n- Bureaucratic discretion and enforcement risk: The Panel and electoral authorities will need to interpret subjective standards (materiality, misleadingness, degree of modification). How they use enforcement powers, complaint processes, timeframes and penalties is critical but not fully described in the summary. That creates implementation risk and potential for contested decisions or litigation.\n\n- Market effects: Removing the last‑3‑day blackout changes the commercial environment for broadcasters and platforms (additional advertising inventory and revenue in the final days). It also changes competitive dynamics between well-funded campaigns that can purchase late advertising and smaller actors who cannot.\n\nAreas of uncertainty or implementation detail to watch\n\n- How the Bill defines and proves the threshold \"materially\" inaccurate or misleading in practice, and what evidentiary standards apply.\n\n- The exact powers, decision-making procedures, and appeal mechanisms for the Electoral Communications Panel.\n\n- How the labelling requirement applies to mixed content, international content, and content that passes through multiple editing steps.\n\n- Interaction with other laws such as defamation, consumer law (misleading or deceptive conduct), broadcasting rules and social media platform policies.\n\nNet mechanical effect (one-sentence summary)\n\n- The Bill makes it unlawful to authorise materially inaccurate or misleading electoral or referendum communications (including digitally modified material), requires labelling of digitally created/modified material, establishes an Electoral Communications Panel to oversee communications, and removes the three‑day pre-voting advertising blackout for broadcasters and SBS."},"summary":{"status_summary":"The bill has been introduced in the Senate with the second reading moved on 30 July 2025.","complexity_score":4,"likely_questions":["What types of material are prohibited under the new rules?","What changes are made to the media blackout period?"],"complexity_factors":["Amendments to multiple acts","Establishment of new panel"],"plain_english_summary":"The Bill tightens rules on electoral and referendum communications by banning the authorisation of materially inaccurate or misleading material — including digitally altered content and deepfakes — and requiring disclosures when material is created or modified using digital technology or AI. It creates an Electoral Communications Panel to oversee these rules and removes the three-day media blackout on election and referendum advertising. It chiefly affects those who authorise such material and the broadcasters or platforms that transmit it."}},"importantCases":[],"_links":{"self":"/api/acts/electoral-legislation-amendment-electoral-communications-bill-2025-no-2","history":"/api/acts/electoral-legislation-amendment-electoral-communications-bill-2025-no-2/history","analysis":"/api/acts/electoral-legislation-amendment-electoral-communications-bill-2025-no-2/analysis","conflicts":"/api/acts/electoral-legislation-amendment-electoral-communications-bill-2025-no-2/conflicts","importantCases":"/api/acts/electoral-legislation-amendment-electoral-communications-bill-2025-no-2/important-cases","documents":"/api/acts/electoral-legislation-amendment-electoral-communications-bill-2025-no-2/documents"}}