Australia: Preparing for the 2022 Federal Election

As you prepare for the 2022 Australia Federal Election, it's important to know how you can effectively reach and engage your supporters and potential voters throughout all stages of your campaign, keep your accounts secure, and adhere to our policies. In preparation for the election, we've put together some important considerations to keep top-of-mind.

Account security

Facebook requires you to use your authentic Facebook account to manage Pages. To help protect your information and keep your accounts and the Pages you manage secure, we recommend that you:

• Enable two-factor authentication
• Take the Facebook Security Check Up
• Take the Facebook Privacy Check Up
• Update your contact and account recovery information
• Ensure all accounts which have access to your Pages or Business Manager are secure

Learn more about how to keep your account secure in our how-to guide.

Ads authorization

Since the 2019 Australian Federal Election, we have increased transparency and controls around ads about social issues, elections or politics on both Facebook and Instagram. Advertisers are now required to get authorized to run ads about social issues, elections or politics, which involves turning on two-factor authentication, confirming your identity and location, and placing "Paid for by" disclaimers on your ads. The disclaimer will appear at the top of any ads you run and includes information on the entity that paid for the ad. Please note that each part of this process is subject to strict review and lead times.

Once approved and when creating campaigns, you must self-declare that your ads are about social issues, elections or politics before you submit them. The turnaround time for reviewing these ads is up to 72 hours.

If you fail to complete any of these steps, your ads about social issues, elections, or politics will not be approved.

These ads are then entered into our public, searchable Ad Library for seven years. Any social issue, electoral or political ad on Facebook and Instagram that do not have the correct authorization or disclaimers will be removed from the platform and archived in the public Ad Library for seven years, as well.

Ad policy compliance

In addition to undergoing the ad authorization process, when you create an ad you must verify that it complies with Meta's Advertising Policies and Community Standards. Make sure you familiarize yourself with these, as we will remove any ads that do not comply with our policies.

Moderation assist

As part of our efforts to make Facebook a safe and supportive platform, we have been rolling out a new tool, Moderation Assist, that will allow Page admins who have transitioned to the New Pages Experience to easily set moderation criteria for all posts on your Page, reducing time spent on comment moderation. You can select from a list of criteria to automatically hide certain types of incoming comments on your posts such as comments with links, from profiles with no profile photo, profiles with no friends or followers, and more.

Third-party fact checking

Our Australian third party fact checking partners are RMITFactLab, Agence France Presse and Australian Associated Press. These publications will review and rate the accuracy of content in the lead up to the 2022 Australian Federal Election. When a piece of content is rated false, Meta significantly reduces its distribution so that fewer people see it. We also notify people who try to share content rated as false, and add a warning label with a link to a debunking article. We will also remove ads that have been rated as false by third party fact-checkers.

While we don't fact check speech from politicians or political parties, we do reject ads that contain links to articles, videos or photos that have previously been fact checked and debunked on Facebook.

Fact checking partners will review public reports of misinformation. If you identify a piece of content on our platform that you believe should be fact checked, you can refer it directly to Agence France Presse, Australian Associated Press or RMIT FactLab. It is at the discretion of the fact checkers which content they choose to review and rate.

If you're a Page manager or group admin, you can appeal a misinformation violation about content the Page or group shared, if you corrected the content or if you think a fact check got something wrong. Learn more about appealing a misinformation violation here.

Payment options for Australian political parties and candidates

Australian political parties or candidates running for office have the option to pay for their advertising via Business Prepaid Funds or credit card and co-branded debit cards (American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa).

Business Prepaid Funds allows you to prepay for ads by making a bank transfer. Prepayments can only be made via bank transfer and thus may occasionally have a longer lead time.

It can take up to 2-3 business days to send you a pro forma invoice and another 2-3 business days before seeing that prepayment via bank transfer is posted to the account.

Goods and service tax (GST)

Australian GST of 10% will be applied on your advertising spend in the tax invoice issued. The advertising spend amount with GST will be deducted against your prepaid balance. We recommend ensuring there is sufficient balance in your prepaid balance to take into account the final payment amount.

For example, a political party or candidate made A$1,000 bank transfer to Meta.

Your advertising spend will include Australian GST of 10% therefore, we recommend to limit your advertising spend to to account for the Australian GST of 10% amount that will be added to your final invoice

For additional resources, view our candidate for office best practice page and e-learning content. For additional information about finance and payments, view our how-to guide. If you have any questions, you can reach out to our team here.