Time to ban election posters, say retired Adelaide MPs Kate Ellis and Christopher Pyne

Election posters should be banned in campaigns to stop annoying voters, wasting resources and distracting from the real issues, outgoing Adelaide MP Kate Ellis says. PODCAST.

The retired member for Adelaide, Kate Ellis. Ellis says it’s time election posters were banned. Photo: Kelly Barnes

Election posters, or ‘corflutes’, should be banned in campaigns to stop annoying voters, wasting resources and distracting from policy discussion, says outgoing Adelaide MP and former Labor minister Kate Ellis.

In the first episode of The Advertiser’s weekly federal election podcast, featuring Defence Minister Christopher Pyne and Ms Ellis, Ms Ellis said the posters were more trouble than they were worth and were ultimately a distraction from the issues.

“It is a massive amount of resources, the public don’t particularly like them and it’s a huge distraction for the first week of the campaign,” Ms Ellis said.

PODCAST: ELLIS AND PYNE: EPISODE 1

“Your office gets inundated with calls about ‘you’ve got too many posters here, or you don’t have enough posters there’.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we had an election campaign where we were talking about the issues that were going to be determined and how that would impact on our community?”

Ms Ellis said the rules around the use of campaign posters in SA should mirror other states.

“There are too many of these signs, they don’t really serve much purpose and we have this debate every couple of years; the rest of the country does not do this the way that we do.

“You can travel to the rest of the country and they can put them up on fences of supporters but they’re not on every electricity pole.

“Get rid of them, I say.”

POLL: HAVE YOUR SAY

While he joked that the posters were “fun”, Mr Pyne said he wouldn’t be sorry to see the practice go — but until then the parties were locked in an “arms race” to get them up.

“If we banned posters, I’d be just as happy as Kate (Ellis).

“But the reality is you can put up a poster so the problem is if you don’t them up, then your own supporters say ‘oh no, such and such has got more, Shaun Osborn’s got more posters than you have up, Steve (Georganas, the Labor candidate in Adelaide), or whatever, so you’ve just got to keep putting them up.”

Both Ms Ellis and Mr Pyne said the posters could be useful for new candidates who had little to no profile in their electorates or candidates running low-budget campaigns who wanted to appear active in their communities.

“If you have a very low budget campaign, say you’re not a target seat, then posters and doorknocking are about the cheapest campaign you can run while still being seen to have a campaign,” Mr Pyne said.

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Originally published as Time to ban election posters, say retired Adelaide MPs Kate Ellis and Christopher Pyne