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Time to ban election posters: Georganas

Mar 11, 2014

After hundreds of hours of putting them up, former federal Labor MP Steve Georganas says it’s time to ban election posters from public places.

Georganas, who lost his seat of Hindmarsh at the 2013 Federal Election, says putting the signs up are a waste of an MP’s time – time that could be better spent talking to voters.

“They should be banned. If people want to put them up, they can put them up on their front fence,” Georganas told InDaily this morning.

“It’s a visual pollution. It takes up so much energy from candidates who should really be out there selling their message not their face.”

Parties put the signs up in the belief that facial recognition – being able to match a name on a ballot paper to a face – is important when voters go to cast their vote.

But that could be achieved by having supporters erect signs in their front yards, which would also act as a tacit symbol of endorsement, Georganas argues.

Plus, banning the signs would get rid of arguments over election advertising rules.

“You also eliminate all the argy-bargy that goes on with the council and others around the place, where they’re meant to be up or they’re not meant to be up, they get taken down, [there are] accusations of having them stolen, vandalised,” Georganas said.

Over the weekend Nick Xenophon’s X-Team asked the Electoral Commission to rule on whether ALP campaign posters which attacked Xenophon’s position on penalty rates was misleading.

The commission ruled the adverts weren’t misleading, but an apparent typo in the letter sent to Xenophon led him to believe the opposite ruling had been made – leaving both parties to call on each other to apologise.

 

 

 

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