Now there’s an idea.

The “Truth in political advertising” bit stood out to me.

Just like there’s a consumer protection agency, there should be a voter protection agency.

Get caught materially misleading voters? No more going on the ballot for you. Get caught pretending to be running ads for a candidate when you’re not part of their official campaign team? Go to jail for fraud. Be blocked from doing official political business in the future.

We have protections around other critical government positions; we should have them around political candidates as well.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, has announced plans to ban political donations from state elections, paving the way for nation-leading electoral reforms.

Malinauskas said his bill would put South Australia on the “cusp of becoming a world leader in ending the nexus between money and political power”.

The Albanese government pledged to introduce spending and donation caps, and truth in political advertising laws, as revealed by Guardian Australia after the 2022 federal election and confirmed by a parliamentary inquiry that reported last July.

Lower house independents, including Kate Chaney, Zali Steggall, the Greens, David Pocock, Lidia Thorpe and the Jacqui Lambie Network, joined forces to introduce a bill for fair and transparent elections in March.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, suggested truth-in-political advertising laws would be “probably welcome” in March, raising expectations that a major party deal might be possible.

The Coalition’s members strongly opposed the government-chaired inquiry’s recommendations, saying any increase in the territories’ Senate representation would make the value of state votes more disproportionate.

The original article contains 627 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!