By Ethan Schultz
Recently, the ‘ANU Mining Society’ in conjunction with the ‘ANU for Environmental Action’ have released Facebook and Instagram ads targeting ANU students as a smear campaign against the ‘Power in Community’ ANUSA ticket.
Observer understands the campaign was launched on Monday, when students in ANU Schmidtposting claimed they had received the ad in their Facebook feed.
While the ‘ANU Mining Society’ Facebook page which posted the ads against the ‘Power in Community’ ticket has existed since 20 October 2021, it only became active on 24 September of this year; two days before Observer is aware of the first ad being posted. At the time of publishing, the page has 1 follower.
The ‘ANU Mining Society’ features a Latin phrase in their profile picture, “fodienda bona est”, which translates to ‘Mining is Good’.
A mobile number was provided by the ‘ANU Mining Society’ in line with Facebook’s transparency policy. When Observer contacted the number it was received by a business landline unrelated to the society.
‘ANU for Environmental Action’ who paid for the ads, does not have a Facebook page. A website made entirely on Squarespace assets was linked on the Facebook transparency page. This website features a reused photo from Synectics of the Gorgon Project in Western Australia – one of the world’s largest LNG mines. It still has links to a Facebook page, an Instagram page, and a Twitter account for Squarespace’s social media.
The first ad against the ‘Power in Community’ ticket implies that a factor in Yates’ previous electoral win was unfair levels of spending. The second ad from the Mining Society champions the environmental platform of conservative-aligned ticket ‘Voices for ANUSA’, while disparaging ‘Power in Community’.
At the time of publishing, these ads have reached at least 7K people over the past three days. The ad’s view metrics suggest that they are targeting people in the ACT between the ages of 18-24. 60% of ad recipients are men. Based on Meta Ads pay schemes, each of these ads cost an estimated $30.
The daily cost of an ad is based on the estimated number of views with Meta ads.
When ANU students began seeing these ads in their feeds, the cryptic bipartisan collaboration of a mining society and an environmental group sparked conjecture about the source of the smear campaign.
Initially, the smear campaign by ‘ANU Mining Society’ and ‘ANU for Environmental Action’ only expressed detractions against Ben Yates, the ‘Power in Community’ presidential candidate. However, the second ad expressed a positive preference for the conservative ‘Voices for ANUSA’ ticket.
‘Voices for ANUSA’ has been the subject of controversy during this election. Despite nearly half of their candidates being current members of the executive body in the ACT Young Liberals, the ticket has insisted on their independence from any political party. Their candidate for ANUSA President, Connor Andreatidis, is the current sitting president of the ACT Young Liberals.
A recent Woroni article which claimed ‘Voices for ANUSA’ is “liberal-aligned”, was met with a public condemnation of the student news organisation using the phrase “big fake news student media”. This statement included a graphic stating “Beware Woroni Lies”. This post was run as an ad on 28 September, paid for by Connor Andreatidis.
A Woroni article was the only source used to provide evidence for their accusation against Ben Yates.
‘Voices for ANUSA’ claims that they are in no way connected to the ‘ANU Mining Society’, telling Observer that they neither created, nor authorised the ‘ANU Mining Society’ to produce these advertisements.
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