Truth & Power
Truth is a responsibility, so why aren't the powerful responsible?
Democracy doesn’t fail loudly. It fails quietly, one donation at a time, one press release mistaken for journalism, one law that protects the powerful from scrutiny while prosecuting the people who expose them.
Australia is not a dictatorship. It doesn’t need to be. When media is concentrated enough, when donations are large enough, when spin is sophisticated enough, the appearance of democracy can be maintained while its substance quietly hollows out.
Truth and Power is about the gap between what democracy is supposed to be and what it actually is. And what it takes to close that gap.
What 'Truth and Power' Actually Means
Power without accountability is not governance. It is the management of information, of perception, of what the public is allowed to know and when.
In a functioning democracy, truth is the check on power. A free press exposes what power wants hidden. An independent electoral system ensures power can actually be transferred. Strong corruption watchdogs ensure power cannot simply buy its own continuation. And citizens who understand their rights can exercise them.
In Australia right now, each of those mechanisms is under strain. Not broken, strained. And strain, left unaddressed, becomes a fracture.
The good news is that none of this is inevitable. These are policy failures. And policy failures can be fixed.
When truth loses its power, everything else loses its foundation.
The erosion of truth in public life doesn’t show up as a line item in the budget. It shows up everywhere else.
70% — Proportion of Australian print and online news media controlled by just two companies: News Corp and Nine Entertainment.
Two companies. Most of what most Australians read about politics, economics, and public life. When two organisations shape the information diet of an entire nation, the question of whose interests are served is not academic. It is urgent.
Australia has among the most concentrated media ownership of any comparable democracy. The United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand all have stronger media diversity protections. We do not, because the people who would change the rules benefit from the rules staying the same.
13% — Proportion of Australians who trust the federal government to do the right thing. A record low. Source: Mapping Social Cohesion Report, Scanlon Foundation 2024
Trust in institutions is not a soft metric. It is the load-bearing wall of democracy. When people stop believing that government serves their interests, they stop participating, or they turn toward those who offer simple answers to complex problems.
Australia’s institutional trust crisis did not happen overnight. It is the accumulated result of robodebt, sports rorts, the sports rorts, the car park rorts, the daily revelation that the rules applied to everyone else somehow don’t apply to those who make them. Every scandal that goes unaccountable makes the next one easier to ignore.
$1.2 Billion — Amount donated to Australian political parties in the decade to 2022. Most of it from corporations and vested interests. Source: Australian Electoral Commission
Political donations are not gifts. They are investments. And like all investments, donors expect a return.
Australia has some of the weakest political donation laws in the developed world. There is no cap on how much can be donated. Disclosure thresholds mean millions can change hands before the public ever knows. And the parties that benefit from the current system are the same parties that would have to change it.
The People’s Covenant policy addresses this directly, because you cannot have honest government while the people governing you are financially beholden to the people they’re supposed to regulate.
85% — Australians who encountered misinformation or disinformation online in the past year. Source: ACMA Australian Attitudes to Misinformation 2023
We have built the most powerful information distribution system in human history, and we have handed its curation to algorithms designed to maximise engagement, not accuracy. Outrage travels faster than correction. Lies travel faster than truth. And the platforms profiting from that dynamic have faced almost no meaningful accountability.
Digital rights and platform accountability are not abstract technology policy questions. They are democracy questions. When the information environment is polluted enough, informed consent, the foundation of democratic participation, becomes impossible.
6 — The number of journalists and whistleblowers prosecuted or investigated by Australian federal authorities in the decade to 2023 for exposing government wrongdoing.
In each case the wrongdoing exposed was real. In each case the person who exposed it faced legal consequences. In none of the cases did the people whose wrongdoing was exposed face equivalent scrutiny.
Australia has no meaningful whistleblower protection for people who expose federal government misconduct. The message sent to every public servant, every journalist, every person who knows something the powerful would prefer stayed hidden is clear: the truth will cost you. And power will be protected.
This is not what a healthy democracy looks like.
Electoral Reform
Australians have no Constitutional Rights
Truth in Media & Politics
It's Legal to Lie in Election Campaigns
Digital Rights
Every click is someone else's income
Press Freedom
No Constitutional Press Freedom
The Argument We Are Making
Truth and Power is not about cynicism. It is about standards.
We are not arguing that every politician is corrupt, every journalist is compromised, or every institution is beyond repair. We are arguing that the systems designed to keep power honest are weaker than they should be and that the people who benefit from that weakness are rarely the ones calling for reform.
A Bill of Rights. A federal integrity commission with real power. Truth in political advertising. Media diversity laws. Whistleblower protections. Platform accountability. These are not radical demands. They are the baseline expectations of a functioning democracy that takes itself seriously.
The question is not whether Australia can afford these reforms.
The question is whether we can afford to keep pretending we don’t need them.
Evidence informing this pillar draws on research from the Australian Electoral Commission, the Scanlon Foundation, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Reporters Without Borders, and the Australian Human Rights Commission. Check out the rest of our policies at WeRise.