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Council candidate claims under the scrutiny
Fact checker for council elections
By Greg Brown
Retired Disctrict Court judge John Robertson
Have you heard of the ICEO? Not many people have.
The legion of would-be politicians jousting for election honours at the March 28 local government elections had better beware.
Their comments could be monitored and checked for untruthful and/or misleading statements.
The Independent Council Election Observer (ICEO) is a self-proclaimed Australia-first initiative with the aim to promote truth and accuracy in the current local government elections.
According to the ICEO, Queensland’s 2016 local government elections were remarkable for the number, nature and extent of attacks on individuals and councils, with social media such as Facebook and Twitter providing, for the first time, multiple platforms on which all sorts of allegations against individuals and councils were made. Many went unchallenged with the undesirable result that many voters may have been misled about candidates’ suitability for office and policies.
This concerned the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ) so greatly that in 2017 it began the process of establishing an independent fact checking unit.
While the ICEO is funded by the LGAQ it operates independently from it.
Headed up by respected retired District Court judge John Robertson, the ICEO investigates written requests from candidates about allegations made on social media and elsewhere.
The ICEO charter sets out that it will assess the allegations by making its own inquiries and using information from all involved - the complainant as well as the subject of the complaint - and aims to publish its response on its website and on social media within two working days of the request being received.
Where necessary the ICEO will quickly refer matters of concern to the appropriate statutory agency to be formally dealt with.
Since starting operations on December 2, 2019, the ICEO has already investigated and made rulings on almost a dozen cases, including one complaint made by Noosa Mayor Tony Wellington about comments made by another candidate.
