AAP has a story on disinformation bots on social media you may find interesting:

The culprit behind a disinformation campaign targeting coalition leaders could be someone local, one expert believes.

A sophisticated influence effort from an account on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, has been uncovered during the federal election via analysis conducted for AAP by online disinformation tracking company Cyabra.

The account has almost 30,000 followers including Australian politicians, journalists and political commentators.

Only publicly available data was analysed, meaning attribution is tricky without internet addresses being tracked.

But the behaviour of the account – the handle of which AAP knows but has opted not to publish – is suspicious.

A substantial volume of posts have spread negative content targeting Opposition Leader Peter Dutton while other fake accounts have amplified their reach.

Almost one in three of more than 2600 X profiles commenting on the posts, sampled by Cyabra between April 21 and 28, were identified as fake.

“The fake profiles flooded the comment sections with harmful remarks against Dutton and, at times, (Nationals Leader) David Littleproud, portraying them as untrustworthy and ridiculing their credibility,” Cyabra said in its report. 

The fake profiles also promote positive content about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “further reinforcing the account’s narrative strategy”, it added.

This was done by using co-ordinated posting schedules, fake accounts impersonating locals, emotionally charged attacks on politicians and inserting a flood of comments to make it look like there was community support.

These behaviours align with tactics historically observed in influence operations, especially those involving mid-sized bot networks used to sway political discourse during high-stakes moments.

Disinformation and misinformation had been “flowing thick and fast” during the 2025 federal election campaign, communications expert Andrew Hughes told AAP.

“It starts at the top of course with the leaders misrepresenting each other,” he said.

Disinformation and misinformation is used by both state actors and locals.

The example provided to AAP “strikes me as local political actors, people with strong opinions seeking to influence voters using misinformation and disinformation,” Dr Hughes said.

While democracies were being targeted by state actors, such as Russia seeking to “exacerbate divisions in society”, there was no evidence it was happening during Australia’s election, he said.

Mr Albanese on Thursday flagged another attempt at truth in political advertising laws, as independents vow to leverage power in a minority government to ban inaccurate or misleading ads during election campaigns.

Voters go to the polls on Saturday.

A hot topic this election campaign has been political parties sending postal vote applications.

The concern is that the parties harvest data from these applications before sending them on to the Electoral Commission, and that it’s confusing to have seemingly official voting materials attached to party political matter.

Yesterday, the NSW Labor Government committed to stop this practice in state elections:

Unfortunately, we’ve seen no equivalent commitment from the federal government. A multi-party parliamentary inquiry recommended cleaning up the postal vote application practice:

· Postal vote applications no longer allowed to be bundled with other materials (like party promotional materials)

· Postal vote applications to be sent straight to the AEC, not routed through a party HQ for data harvesting.

The Albanese Government neglected these reforms in favour of an unfair and rushed deal with the Liberal Party to change the laws around Australian elections. Hopefully they are revisited after this election.

Chart: The Australia Institute Get the data Created with Datawrapper

Over the course of an election campaign punctuated by about-faces and flip flops, one constant has been Peter Dutton’s use of “clear” and “very clear” in his press conferences.

Based just on the transcripts on his website, he says he’s been clear or very clear on average 3 times per day.

But on April 24 he knocked it out of the park with a score of 23 at a doorstop interview in New Town:

On electric vehicles: “there’s no change in the policy and no, we’ve been very clear.”…“We’ve been clear about that and we’ve been clear in relation to the policies on the EVs.”

On Trump: “We’ve been very clear about what this election is about and it’s about who has the strength of leadership to stand up for our interests.”

On AUKUS: “I think I made clear what I was saying about it.” When prompted further, he said “Well, we can clear it up later, but I’ve gone through it a few times.”

If you’re still not clear on the Coalition’s policies, it seems you’ve only got yourself to blame!

The Liberal Party’s break with its Howard-era policy of not doing preference deals with One Nation has revived interest in the right-wing minor party’s prospects at this Saturday’s election.

Even before the deal, polls were looking relatively good for One Nation at about 7 or 8% – up from 5% in 2022 and 3% in 2019. Some of that may be a result of Trumpet of Patriots not polling as well as its predecessor, the United Australia Party, did last time.

Liberal politicians have also softened their rhetoric about One Nation – with candidate Benson Saulo saying “One Nation is a centre-right party” like the Liberals. Former MP Tim Wilson, who in 2019 professed “a longstanding view that we should put One Nation and their despicable acolytes last”, has preferenced One Nation ahead of independent MP Zoe Daniel and the Greens candidate.

This realignment on the right of Australian politics could have long-term consequences for the country, regardless of the specific electoral outcomes on Saturday.

And while much commentary has focused on the House of Representatives, it is actually in the Senate (where One Nation already has two senators) where Liberal preferences could make the greatest difference one way or the other.

A weakness of the new Senate voting system is that many Australians stop preferencing after just 6 parties. That means that a share of the vote is exhausted before it decides the final senators elected in a state. Back in 2019, Richard Denniss wrote about the importance of numbering every box if you want your vote to count at full strength.

Senate

It is in the Senate where One Nation’s prospects are better, and where Liberal Party preferences could make the difference. Senator Malcolm Roberts is defending his seat in Queensland, and the party claims it could win in other states as well.

Ben Oquist (the Australia Institute’s former Executive Director) has conducted Senate analysis showing “One Nation is the story” with the party polling well enough to potentially win in NSW, WA and SA as well as Queensland – though he notes that the party often underperforms its polling.

Success in more than one state would increase One Nation’s relative numbers, and success in all four would represent a high point for One Nation in the Senate.

House of Representatives

For minor parties running in the House of Representatives, seat gains depend on how well they do in target seats, not how many votes they get nationally. Seats to look out for include Hunter and Paterson (Hunter Valley in northern NSW) and Flynn (around Gladstone in Queensland), all seats where One Nation did well in 2019.

One Nation is running the same candidate in Hunter this year as they did in 2019. At that election, One Nation won 22% of the primary vote, just behind the Nationals on 23%. Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon won 45% of the primary vote and ended up on 53% in two-party preferred terms (after preferences are distributed).

For One Nation to be competitive for the seat this time, they would have to stay in the count longer than the Nationals candidate – and then receive most of that candidate’s preferences. That most likely would require a higher primary vote than the Coalition candidate, which they’ve so far failed to

achieve in the seat. Even then, Labor’s Dan Repacholi would have to do a fair bit worse than the party did in 2019 for the seat to fall (he won 54% of the two-party preferred in 2022).

Do Coalition voters tend to preference One Nation or Labor higher? Unfortunately, the data is patchy. The limited data we could find suggests more Coalition voters preference One Nation than Labor, but it’s not consistent between elections or seats. That’s because political parties are free to recommend preferences via how-to-vote cards, but each voter decides how they allocate their preferences.

Sally Sara then asks one of the crucial missing questions this campaign – why has there been nothing on raising welfare and addressing poverty and growing inequality?

Katy Gallagher says:

Well, we’ve made it clear that every budget, we look at the pensions and payments to see what can be done there. (And then they decide it is not a priority. Because there is always money for priorities) And of course, we’ve seen significant increases including in the unemployment payment through our time in government. We’ve seen increases to the single parenting payment. We’ve seen increases to rent assistance. But you also have to look at other ways to help people. And that’s why our programs in housing that the Opposition announced yesterday they would cut, all of those other investments in Medicare and cheaper medicines, in Urgent Care Clinics. All of those are about helping people, particularly those on fixed and low incomes.
 

Q: But even your own advisory committee prior to the election as it’s required to do, advised and recommended that there should be increases in those income support payments. Why ignore those please?
 
Gallagher:

Well, we don’t ignore them. We look at those reports seriously, and we look at payments every and each budget and budget update. And I think if you go back and have a look at what we’ve done in three years compared to what the former government did in ten years, you’ll see that we have, where we’ve been able to afford it, been able to invest in those payments and pensions. But more importantly, we are also building in and investing in all of those other services that people on fixed and low incomes rely on, including in housing, including in health, which are very, very important to people on those payments.

Except Labor DOES ignore them. It has not lifted people out of poverty. And doing better than the terrible guys only makes you slightly less terrible. And that doesn’t make you good.

Katy Gallagher continues:

We accept that more needs to be done in compliance and definitely that is why we have put that money into the Budget. But from a public health point of view, I think it would be a dreadful outcome to say, we are going to put the white flag up on vapes and it’s going to be a free for all and we’ll deal with the problems down the track. I mean, that is not the country we want and it’s not what we want for our children. I mean, there is a real contrast here between trying to get kids off vapes, keep them away from vapes and the Opposition who wants to raise revenue of it to balance their — well, to try and balance their budget to pay for nuclear. I mean, it’s ridiculous.

As we pointed out yesterday, the Coalition’s plans to raise more tax from vapes means that they would scrape Labor’s policy of having vapes available only with a doctor’s prescription, and put them back for sale in shops.

They say that the rise in organised crime in selling tobacco and vape products prove that the government’s policy has failed and something else needs to be done.

Katy Gallagher told ABC radio RN Breakfast Labor’s policy was based in health research and was aimed at protecting kids from Big Tobacco:

We’ve been very strong on this. We want kids off vapes and Peter Dutton wants to make money off them, off kids using vapes. I mean, that’s what we saw yesterday with that part of their costings. It sounds like they’ve put the white flag up. We’ve had a generation of dealing with the problems of tobacco addiction, and it sounds like Peter Dutton doesn’t want to worry about another generation being addicted to vapes. Yes, there’s issues around enforcement and compliance, which is why we put extra money in the budget. And there’s also opportunity for people who do want to come off tobacco to go through the chemists, the pharmacy, to get access to vaping products. But it should not ever go back to just this free-for-all of these companies targeting young people to get them addicted to nicotine and other chemicals.

Would Peter Dutton try and stay on as leader if he loses tomorrow?

Dutton:

I look much older. I’m only 54, so I feel okay. And I’ve got a lot of fire in my belly and I want to, I want to win this election because I really care deeply for our country. I’m a patriotic person. I love this country, and I really believe it’s under bad management at the moment. 

And it can be a better future for our country. And that’s what this is about. This vote is about making sure we can manage the economy well and keep our country safe. And that’s what I pledge to do.

Not sure that is up to him though.

Peter Dutton is really holding on to that hope for a 2019 ‘miracle’, which is something his colleagues do not share.

And it’s a misplace analogy. Because 2019 was a status quo result. Scott Morrison was expected to lose, but voters pretty much repeated their vote from 2016, which meant he maintained government. And while the polls were wrong on the two-party preferred measure, they were RIGHT on the primary vote and that was (mistakenly) ignored by most. And the polls were RIGHT on the unpopularity/popularity of the two leaders. Since then, a lot of work has been done by polling companies to ensure a better preference flow.

So for Peter Dutton to be right and everyone else to be wrong, everything about the polling has to be wrong – the primary, the trend, the 2PP, the preferences, the popularity/unpopularity and the track polling all has to be wrong. And that’s just not statistically possible.

But still. It’s what Dutton is clinging to and he tells the Nine Network:

I think this is really got the echoes of 2019 where the published polling was very different than what we’ve seen in the marginal seats. The response that we’ve had at pre-poll has been pretty remarkable. And that, frankly, is across the board with our marginal seat members. We’ve got incredibly hard working local members who have knocked on doors. They’ve got higher name ID than their Labor candidates. (He has made this point repeatedly and its also something you can say about the independent challengers in some Coalition seats) And the point that I make is that I think there are some really big surprises that you’ll see on Saturday night and seats that probably haven’t been in play for a while, that I think we have a real chance of picking up. So 

I’ve got a very different view of how I think Saturday night’s going to turn out, but ultimately it’s a decision for Australians about, you know, who is best able to manage our economy.

Anthony Albanese held a press conference a short time ago (when the blitz is on, it’s on) where he presented a jovial front to the press pack in Brisbane.

He is a man who knows he has won – he just doesn’t quite know if he has won in his own right just yet (a Labor led minority still seems like the most likely option, but we’ll know soon enough)

He stopped at an Urgent Care Clinic in Longman (which Labor have on their win back list, but it won’t be this election) where he had a dig at Peter Dutton’s “hate media” comments.

I’m always me. I’m not the commentator. That’s a discussion maybe for the bus trip to the airport for you to all have with each other, and you can assess the nature of media coverage and commentary and all of that.

…You know, I love the media.

I think there is no hate media in this country. I engage with people. I’m just who I am.

Not sure that there is NO hate media in this country, but it’s certainly not the ABC or the Guardian.