The fragile feelings and unconvincing campaign promises of politicians are under threat from … X’s Community Notes.
We know because something hilarious happened last week.
Our Dear Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, was deeply rattled by One Nation flipping the public outrage vibe from monoculture to superannuation.
Labor thought they had compulsory super bolted down since the Keating years. They assumed the $4 trillion super bubble, much of which is overseen by Union super funds, was secure.
Then Anthony Albanese unwisely referred to the ‘real potential to see these funds as a national asset that can be used more appropriately and get better returns as well, not just for individuals and for retirees, but for the nation’.
Social media quickly tapped the Prime Minister on the shoulder and reminded him that super is a private asset held in trust, largely against the wishes of the public who are increasingly discussing the possibility of scrapping the whole thing and taking their money back.
Preferably before there’s another tax reform.
Daniel Andrews, the former Premier of Danistan Victoria, made the situation worse by mulling over the possibility of using super to invest in ‘productivity challenges like housing, infrastructure, energy transition, water, or dare I say, pandemic preparedness’.
Anything, apparently, except trusting Australian workers with their own money.
Ah yes, Labor, the party of worker control.
Regardless of the outcome, the conversation around super has picked at the Treasurer’s weak point: economics. Pauline Hanson immediately doubled down.
Now, everyone online is having a conversation.
Not only are they discussing Hanson’s idea of allowing access to super for housing. They are wondering why their money is being taken in the first place. Many people will be dead before they see it, poorer Australians are pushed deeper into poverty losing out on genuine quality of life, some people lose everything when super funds collapse, most are forced to ‘trust’ a process they do not understand, and there have been no net savings to the taxpayer.
It has dawned on Australians that they lost part of their Aged Pension privileges, while the government took this pension saving and spent it on green energy, their own salaries, the NDIS, and who knows what – a PNG football team?
No one got a ‘thanks for taking care of yourself’ tax cut.
The government lectures Australians about responsible saving while plunging the country into a $1 trillion debt.
People should be much angrier about this insane level of hypocrisy.
Every cent of your salary is tightly monitored so the super calculations can be made while billions are walking out the door into the hands of shysters defrauding the NDIS. Super is not about the government caring about your future. They are not particularly interested in your wellbeing. Your retirement nest egg has become one of the most powerful investment tools at their disposal (and a potential tax revenue stream if the economy gets truly grim).
Anyway, as the roar of ‘What the f-k?’ started to rise across the digital landscape and spilled onto MSM, Jim Chalmers put up an X post, hoping to rally the troops.
Not only was the Treasurer ratioed (where comments exceed likes, suggesting disapproval), his posts have proposed Community Notes sitting underneath them. In this case, X users are pointing out that Chalmers is misrepresenting One Nation’s position on super.
In other words, Community Notes flag misinformation.
This situation was ‘funny’ because the Treasurer kept putting up a variation of the same tweet over and over only for it to get ratioed and Community Noted every single time.
This is why free speech and debate are so important. Imagine if social media didn’t exist and millions of Australians were not able to discuss this in an open forum, together, in real time, without the filter of MSM?
If social media was silenced, Labor would have been able to mislead the public about One Nation’s super policy.
Super is not the only thing Chalmers finds himself Community Noted for… Quite often he will make a bold statement about jobs, productivity, or taxation and find himself on the receiving end of a fact check.
The Prime Minister hasn’t been left out of this trend, either.
This is not to say Labor are the only politicians with awkward little ‘well actually…’ notes under their posts. Most politicians suffer this indignity from time to time.
For example, Pauline Hanson recently called for a video related to the Bondi terror attack to be released only for a note to be added about the reason it has (so far) been withheld. The existence of a Community Note does not always imply that a post is factually wrong, sometimes it adds ‘context’, however, in the case of Chalmers and super, the notes were seeking to correct the record.
Why does any of this matter?
An increasing majority of Australians receive all their political news from social media. Many follow politicians and parties directly, and consume their policies and press releases without the critical filter of the media. (Or ‘polishing’, as is sometimes the case.)
This makes Community Notes a sort of pub test applied policies, statements, and slogans.
Political PR departments can spend all day fussing around with the graphics and language of a policy release, only for an ugly grey correction to be posted underneath.
This is great. This is healthy. This is exactly what should be happening.
Yesterday, the new Premier of Victoria, Ben Carroll, found his ‘free dental’ plan for Victorian trodden all over by the reality of its nasty price tag.
Victorians know their state has the worst debt in the country.
Suddenly, the health-oriented ‘freebies’ that used to sweeten elections are turning sour.
Socialist policies have a price tag, and now it’s posted under the offer.
Screenshot, X
I was joking earlier that one day the eSafety Commissioner might try to ban Community Notes for political accounts to protect the feelings of fragile politicians.
Then I was reminded not to give the bureaucrats ideas.
Sure, Community Notes get it wrong sometimes. They’re a bit like Wikipedia except, less offensively Woke. Do they have a net positive effect on the truthfulness of politics?
You tell me.
Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
