Right-wing politicians and parties have spent the dying days of the election spruiking a scare campaign that Australia is set to hand over its sovereignty as part of a World Health Organization (WHO) treaty.
Since the start of May, international conspiracy theorists have spread misinformation that a plan to update WHO international health regulations would allow it to unilaterally declare global lockdowns. Multiple experts told AAP FactCheck that this is false.
This conspiracy theory has been localised here by political parties hoping to revitalise anti-vaccine sentiment and fears of lockdowns in the community. After spending months banking on vaccine mandates and safety as its ticket to electoral success, Clive Palmer and Craig Kelly’s United Australia Party has pivoted hard to this scare campaign.
Guardian Australia first reported that the billionaire mining magnate’s party had splashed on full-page ads claiming that the major parties want to transfer “all our health assets and hospitals to the Chinese-controlled WHO”.
Facebook’s political ad database also shows the party spent $20,000-25,000 this week on promoting a Facebook ad to a million people with the same message, targeting people in NSW and Victoria. People also took to social media to say they’d been receiving SMS messages with the same content.
Other politicians and parties have propagated this on Facebook, too. One Nation has been the loudest voice on this, with multiple posts from Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts and George Christensen this week promoting the conspiracy theory with thousands of engagements.
Earlier this week, Coalition Senator Alex Antic published a letter he wrote calling on Foreign Minister Marise Payne to vote against the proposed amendments. This was also shared by Senator Gerard Rennick, who has continued to promote vaccine injury content on his Facebook.
Other candidates for parties associated with the freedom and anti-vaccine movements have also promoted this, including the Informed Medical Options Party, the Australian Federation Party and various conspiratorial independents.
There’s some evidence to suggest there’s growing interest in this conspiracy theory. Of the 107,000 engagements on Facebook in Australia mentioning “pandemic treaty”, 85,000 came since the start of the week, according to social media analytics tool CrowdTangle. Search traffic for the World Health Organization is at a 90-day high. Searches for “pandemic treaty” outstrip “costings” today.
