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By Daniela Pizzirani
Topic:Political Parties and Movements
Spam texts from Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots have struck a nerve with voters across Australia. (AAP: Lukas Coch)
In the week of the federal election, voters have raised questions around how political parties are allowed to send spam texts without opt-out options.
Millions of Australians have been receiving multiple text messages from Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots party, setting off a firestorm of debate on social media around the legalities of campaigning.
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Aimee Edwards, a journalist with B&T— an online publication for the media, marketing and advertising industries — said the first reports of the "invasive messaging" from Mr Palmer's party started on Thursday.
"Everyone you speak to seems to have seen one," she told ABC radio.
"Everyone online is feeling very harassed.
"Regardless of your political persuasion, everyone is just kind of annoyed.
"They [Trumpet of Patriots] do just seem to be sort of spraying and praying to everyone that they possibly can."
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Texts seen by the ABC outline the party's policies. Here is one example:
Another example of a message appearing to come from Trumpet of Patriots. (Photo/Supplied)
One reader, Neil, who chimed into the ABC federal election live blog, said they had received "4 SMS messages" from the party, and asked if politicians had access to the electoral roll.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) said it had "no insight" into how political parties collected mobile phone numbers, except to confirm that the data was not provided by the commission.
"Political parties are exempt from the Spam Act and the Privacy Act and are able to send unsolicited text messages without an opt-out option," an AEC spokesperson said.
Australia's electoral commissioner has urged voters to "carefully consider" who they give their personal information to as the election campaign gets underway.
"Any changes to these laws would be a matter for the parliament to consider."
ABC chief election analyst Antony Green said he presumed Trumpet of Patriots had bought telephone number lists from data harvesters.
"The electoral roll is not a useful source of phone numbers," he said.
"Generally these days political parties narrow-cast their message based on any information they have collected about voters, or by aiming at specific social media channels.
ABC election analyst Antony Green said politicians usually target texts to people in a specific seat.  (AAP: Chris Crerar)
Mr Green said a traditional party would always want to target phone messages to people in a particular seat, not to everyone across the country.
Unlike telemarketing companies, political parties are exempt from spam and marketing laws during election periods or "periods of debate", the Australian Communications and Media Authority (AMCA) says.
"The Spam Act 2003 only applies to commercial electronic messages, including SMS and email," an ACMA spokesperson said in a statement to the ABC.
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"If a political electronic message also contains commercial content (e.g. advertising or promoting goods or services), it may be covered under spam rules."
This means the messages are not considered commercial as politicians are asking for a vote, not a purchase.
This also means they do not need to legally send an opt-out option or disclose where they get voters' phone numbers from as long as they identify who the message is from.
The AEC said as long as political parties do not mislead people about the act of casting a vote, then they can say what they like.
"There is freedom of political communication and it is up to voters (as it has always been) to stop and consider what they're reading," an AEC spokesperson told the ABC.
The ABC has reached out to Trumpet of Patriots for comment.
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