OPINION
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"Alistair Coe is intent on pursuing land release at all costs, sacrificing green space and bulldozing the natural areas that make Canberra a great place to live".
Or so Labor's planning and environment minister Mick Gentleman would have you believe.
"ACT forests and green space under threat from Canberra Liberals," bellowed Mr Gentleman's press release late on Thursday afternoon.
What was the basis for such an alarming and incendiary claim? Have the Liberals publicly pledged to concrete more of the bush capital if they win this year ACT election?
Did Mr Gentleman spot Mr Coe firing up the chainsaw in Kowen Forest, or opposition planning spokeman Mark Parton sizing up a parcel of the territory's green urban fringes for the next Canberra suburb?
Not quite.
The Liberals' charge is that they didn't support a Labor motion in the ACT Legislative Assembly, which sought a commitment to protect the Tuggeranong grasslands west of the Murrumbidgee river from urban development.
The motion also demanded - and this part wasn't referenced in Mr Gentleman's release - that the Liberals recognise the many and wonderful things Labor has been doing to support renters, stimulate construction activity and plan for Canberra's future housing needs.
Mr Coe and his team were never going to support it. No opposition would knowingly heap such lavish praise on their adversaries, not least in the final months before an election.
But their stance left the door ajar to political attack. Labor jumped straight in. It seldom wastes such an opportunity.
Asked on Thursday to confirm the party's position on the future of Kowen Forest and the grasslands, the Canberra Liberals would only say that they would "protect land that is ecologically significant".
Mr Gentleman, and indeed all ACT voters, are well within their rights to push the Liberals on how and where they intend to release more land for housing - as they have promised - if they sweep to power.
The Liberals' position on the Tuggeranong grasslands and Kowen Forest is not crystal clear. There are questions to be asked - as there are of Labor and the Greens' policies.
The Liberals could yet announce plans to build in both areas and prove Mr Gentleman's warnings to be prophetic.
But on the facts as they stand, is it fair and reasonable - is it entirely true - for Labor to publicly declare with such authority that the Liberals are "determined to bulldoze the areas"? Is it, again on the facts, correct to say that "wilderness around the ACT that Canberrans enjoy walking and riding through will be lost under the Liberals' plan for environmental destruction and urban sprawl".
No quite.
Labor is of course not alone in playing such games. The Liberals do it. The scary thing about party-led scare campaigns is how effective they can be.
An exhaustive list of modern-day examples would fill this column. But some spring to mind more readily than others. The "Mediscare" campaign at the 2016 federal election, for example, or Tony Abbott's war on Labor's "carbon tax".
The ACT Electoral Commission put the broader issue on the agenda early last week, launching a campaign which seeks to heighten voter awareness about misinformation and fake news ahead of the territory election on October 17.
The "Check the source" campaign encourages voters to do just that - check the source of material to determine if can be trusted as authentic, reliable and current. Electoral Commissioner Damian Cantwell wants to "get ahead" of the anonymous attacks which have plagued elections here and abroad, including the recent Eden-Monaro byelection.
He didn't explicitly mention the "death tax" campaign which targeted Labor at last year's federal election, but it's just the kind of material he hopes doesn't rear its head prior to October 17.
The premise underpinning the commission's campaign is that material authorised by parties or candidates is inherently more trustworthy.
But in the absence of laws regulating truth in political advertising in the ACT (the Greens are pushing for them), Canberrans need to have their collective antennas up to potential mistruths pushed by the politicians themselves.
Indeed, political mischief-making, rather than anonymous lies and outright misinformation, might pose the greater risk to this year's ACT election.