Craig Kelly, Man Who Won’t Stop Texting Us, Wants To Ban Unsolicited Political Texts

United Australia Party member Craig Kelly, the man who famously spam texts us all on the reg, is backing a new bill to stop *checks notes* spam texts.

Kelly and the United Australia Party will back the Unsolicited Political Communications Legislation Amendment Bill 2021, which was re-introduced to Parliament by Federal Independent MP Rebekha Sharkie on Monday.

“ACMA is completely powerless to act on the thousands of complaints because political messages are exempt from the laws that prohibit unsolicited communications. Instead political parties… are free to harass Australians with a bombardment of unwanted message,” said Sharkie.

“This bill gives the power back to Australians…with the express purpose to give consumers more control over what they receive from political parties and individual politicians,” she added.

Under the bill, Australians would be able to unsubscribe from unwanted texts and calls from political parties — which have long been excluded from spam text and call legislation.

Interestingly, Kelly — who famously sent unsolicited texts to most Australians earlier this year — supports the notion.

“I think it’s a good idea, all the United Australia Party has called for is a level playing field, that’s all we want,” he said.

“We want to make sure whatever the rules are that both the major political parties we get to compete with them under the same rules.”

However, it’s also worth nothing that Kelly believes his text message saga was blown out of proportion.

“To be honest it is a microsecond swipe of the finger that deletes the text message so there is a lot of beat-up about this and you know everyone gets countless spam emails across their computer I know how they do become annoying but again you wipe them out it takes you a microsecond to wipe the things out if you don’t want to read them,” he said, while noting he would continue to use “every advertising manner that we have that is lawful” in the lead up to the next federal election.

The news comes after the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) received more than 4,000 complaints about unsolicited political texts in 2021 so far.

The reintroduced bill mirrors a similar piece of proposed legislation that was ultimately rejected last year. However, this new bill noticeably excludes charity calls from the list of unsolicited parties.