By Mitchell Clarke
A series of “fake” social media profiles and anonymous Facebook pages “trolling” Cardinia Shire Council candidates have been investigated by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), but no action will be taken.
Numerous accounts purporting to be real people and a number of “community pages” – each with differing political views and agendas – have all been active in the digital space over recent weeks.
Two particular pages – Cardinia Election Truths and Cardinia Candidates Fact Check – have been particularly vocal in questioning the motives of the Liberal-aligned Clean Up Cardinia candidates.
Another group, Cardinia Councillors Expenses – which was created in response to the expenses investigation surrounding Labor candidate Collin Ross – appears to have an agenda against Mr Ross.
The former councillor claims to have been the victim of a lengthy and targeted campaign.
Mr Ross said he has consistently been the subject of the page, with recent posts alleging his current campaign was full of “lies, lies and more lies”.
He said the person behind the page was a “gutless” troll who was hiding behind a page of anonymity.
The Gazette made numerous attempts to contact each administrator in an attempt to reveal their identity, however none of the pages responded.
The alleged online attacks prompted Federal La Trobe MP Jason Wood to take action.
He accused a number of the pages of making false claims and running political advertisements without disclaimers.
Mr Wood said people were “creating fake, so-called community groups and individual accounts where they simply troll”.
“As Prime Minister Morrison has previously said, they are the type of people who hides in their mother’s basement, behind a computer screen to troll others.”
Mr Wood’s office first reported the pages to Facebook after specific allegations were made and apparent links were drawn between the Liberal politician and the Cardinia Shire Council election.
“As Facebook has failed to act on some of these, we have reported the matter to the AFP to investigate as we wish to find the person or people involved in this slander,” he said.
“Fake accounts on social media can be reported to places such as Facebook, but some serious allegations or attacks should be reported to the police, like I have done so myself when serious allegations of corruption were falsely spread recently.
“Trolls are pathetic individuals who for most of their lives are bullies and get some weird satisfaction from lying and being deceitful.”
Clean Up Cardinia candidate and Liberal party member Andrew McNabb said the people were hiding behind accounts to “deceive voters and distract candidates”.
“I’m not going to let that happen,” he said. “I’m all for free speech, but people should stand by what they say. Anonymous Facebook posts are cowardly. If someone can’t put their real name to something, they’re not credible.
“Now that the AFP has been called in, we will soon know who is behind all this and those people can expect a visit by the police to their home or hall fairly soon.”
Mr McNabb’s own social media account has come under scrutiny for racist posts, amid claims that he had been hacked (see story page 5).
But the AFP has since confirmed to the Gazette their investigation into the pages had concluded.
A complaint was received by the authority on 1 October and was assessed in accordance with standard AFP protocols.
“This assessment process did not reveal sufficient evidence to suggest a Commonwealth offence had occurred,” a spokesperson said.
