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If the federal government discovers that someone is interfering in our federal election — like Russia did during the 2016 US election — whose job is it to tell the public?

It’s not clear, according to answers given by government officials given during a Senate committee hearing on Friday.

The Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media heard from representatives from tech companies Facebook, Google and Twitter about how their platforms deal with overseas threats to Australia.

Across the board, the companies testified that they have seen few or no instances of foreign states, groups or individuals using their tools to try to interfere with Australian politics, and claimed they were well prepared to deal with it if they did discover a campaign.

Australia’s response to foreign interference during our election seems less prepared. 

The committee’s chair, Labor Senator Jenny McAllister, repeatedly questioned representatives from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), Prime Minister & Cabinet (PM&C), Home Affairs and the Attorney-General’s departments about which government entity or individual would head up a response. 

If a foreign actor was spreading disinformation about how elections are run — for example, a campaign telling people that election day had been moved — AEC commissioner Tom Rogers said it was their job to act.

But if it was a disinformation campaign about the substance of an election, such as a policy or candidate, Rogers said that it wasn’t their responsibility to debunk messages or even inform the public.

“We’re legislatively not the arbiters of truth,” Rogers said. 

Rogers added that they do run preventative “stop and consider” campaigns that encourage information literacy during election campaigns. 

However, Peter Rush of the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet said that a disinformation campaign like this could be brought up in the Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce, which exists to support the AEC.

This task contains senior officials from the AEC, Finance, PM&C, Home Affairs, Attorney-General’s, Australian Federal Police, and the Australian Cyber Security Centre. In this case, PM&C representatives agreed they thought the decision to tell the public is up to the electoral commission as chair.

“It’s entirely the matter of the commissioner about how a statement would be made,” Rush said. 

Home Affairs’ Acting First Assistant Secretary, Counter Foreign Interference Coordination Centre Patrick Hallinan also suggested that it would be the AEC’s responsibility, hosing down Rogers’ suggestions that it wasn’t their place. 

“I’m not sure I would accept the characterisation that it is inconceivable that the electoral commissioner would make a comment,” he said. 

Officials also declined to say that the opposition would need to be told about foreign interference efforts if they occurred during an election, leaving it up to the federal government to potentially decide whether to go public or not. 

While Home Affairs representatives said that they hadn’t seen a specific disinformation campaign around COVID-19, it’s not inconceivable that a foreign actor would use this or other subject matters to try and subvert an Australian election.

Robert Mueller published a report in 2019 documenting Russia’s efforts to sow discord by influencing the 2016 US election in favour of Donald Trump. Weeks before the 2020 election day, US national security officials warned that Iran and Russia were attempting to interfere in the election. 

McAllister told Crikey that it’s concerning that government departments and agencies still can’t agree on who is responsible for responding to a foreign interference threat.

“If the Morrison government doesn’t take foreign interference seriously now, officials may have to make rushed decisions during the heat of an election campaign later,” she said. “This is a recipe for bad decisions, with potentially significant consequences for our democracy.”