Some Sycophantic True Believers Will Believe Anything

UPDATE I:

UPDATE II:  I sent a complaint to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission:

The Australian Labor Party is publishing an advertisement online, and on Julia Gillard’s Facebook page, which is authorised by Sen. Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, which is deceptive and misleading in that it claims that “connecting to high-speed fibre broadband is free” under the “Gillard Labor Government”.  Even if the claim were designed to suggest only that the actual connection into a customer’s dwelling be free of additional cost, the advertisement is surely misleading; however, I submit that the advertisement seems to have been designed deliberately to give a false impression that the entire process of connecting to the broadband network might be free of any charge under the present government.

I shall, of course, publish any response. 

UPDATE III:  see Michael Smith’s “Stephen Conroy and the free connections, free handsets, free broadband – I’ve asked the ACCC for an opinion”. 

UPDATE IV (11 April):  see also Tim Blair’s “No Money Down”. (I posted details of Labor’s deceptive advertisement to Blair’s ’blog yesterday.)

UPDATE V (12 April):  see Andrew Bolt’s “Gillard pays for your NBN out of her own huge pocket”.  (I posted details of Labor’s deceptive advertisement to Bolt’s ’blog on Wednesday morning, but Bolt, like Blair, credits Michael Smith for spotting the ad.  Smith did reveal his source; he wrote, “I first saw this little promotional piece on a blog site – and frankly I thought it was a stitch-up”.)

UPDATE VI (9 May):  I received an e-mail today from Tim, the “Correspondence Officer” of the ACCC:

Thank you for your email of 10 April 2013 to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about an advertisement published by the Australian Labor Party.  Your reference number for this matter is 446797.

We will not be investigating your complaint because it is unlikely that the Australian Labour [sic] Party’s actions would be considered to be in ‘trade or commerce’.

Most Australian consumer protection laws apply only to people or businesses when they are engaged in ‘trade or commerce’.  This means that a person must be carrying on commercial activities for the law to apply.  If a person or business is contributing to a debate about government policy or issues of interest to the community, they are unlikely to be engaged in ‘trade or commerce’.

Please see our website for more information about the ACCC.

I hope the above information is helpful.

I replied:

I thank you for your helpful response.

I now realise that I can make a deliberately deceptive claim for any commercial enterprise or service—such as, say, a national broadband network—as long as I ensure that the advertisement is published by a political party.

If I understand your advice correctly, I may not claim that my expensive bottles of tap-water lead to wealth and sexual success and cure cancer but, if I publish a political advertisement saying that my party’s preferred brands of bottled water will indubitably lead to wealth and sexual success and cure cancer, that’s perfectly fine.

Excellent.

I shall make a point of telling shonky pharmaceutical companies how to get around the “trade or commerce” provisions.  All they need to do is register political parties and then make advertisements which merely contribute “to a debate about government policy or issues of interest to the community”.

UPDATE VII (4 August):  on alleged reform for the funding of schools, it seems that true believers like simple arithmetic:

UPDATE VIII (9 August):  hmmm, still running with the NBN as a reason to re-elect a criminally incompetent government: