Calls, texts and a spreadsheet: Tim Wilson’s campaign to stop Zoe Daniel signs

Liberal MP Tim Wilson personally and repeatedly pressed a local council to police political signs supporting his opponent, Zoe Daniel, in front gardens around his Goldstein electorate in Melbourne’s bayside south-east.

Text messages and emails released to this masthead and Daniel’s team under separate freedom of information requests reveal the extent of the incumbent’s intervention to stop his “teal” independent rival displaying signs before the federal election was called.

Liberal MP Tim Wilson attempted to stop Zoe Daniel supporters from displaying her signs.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer/Penny Stephens

Wilson’s office even created a spreadsheet with the date and addresses of dozens of properties displaying signs supporting Daniel and twice emailed it to the Bayside City Council in an effort to have them removed.

Council flipped between positions and eventually banned the signs. Daniel’s team successfully appealed the decision in the Supreme Court of Victoria, which said signs supporting an election candidate could be displayed for three months at a time.

After Daniel announced her candidacy in November, her team moved quickly to put up corflutes at homes and businesses in Goldstein, well before the election was called last month.

Wilson’s team was much slower to get signs up.

“We have been told by council that we are not allowed to erect signs until the election is called yet my opponent is doing it and the council isn’t doing anything,” Wilson said in a text message to an unnamed person from Bayside Council on February 13.

“Can you please advise – is council going to turn a blind eye and we all can do it? Or is it going to enforce the rules it sets?”

The sign saga centred on Victorian planning provisions requiring that signs publicising information about a candidate for an election “must not be displayed for longer than three months or 14 days after the event is held”.

In an internal council email from February 14, an unnamed figure said they had received a complaint from Wilson “that he has been told that electoral signage can’t be displayed until the election is called but Zoe Daniel has signs up everywhere and we don’t seem to be enforcing the rules. Can you please clarify what our position is on this[?]”

Days later, on February 18, Wilson’s office wrote to the council and raised the theoretical possibility that the election for the House of Representatives could be as late as September, well beyond the three-month limit.

On February 21, the council posted a statement on its website that said the signs would be allowed because, although the election had not been called, “we are within the [three-month] period in which an election must be held”.

But Wilson and his office pushed the council by text, phone calls and email, after which the statement was removed.

“Please be assured that our consideration of this matter is a priority,” a council worker or member told Wilson by text.

Within two hours of receiving a text message from Wilson, the council had contacted the Australian Electoral Commission through its website’s general inquiry form to seek advice about the timing of the election.

The AEC replied that May 21 was the last possible date of the election. “I just googled it,” the general inquiry officer said.

After further approaches from the council, the AEC advised that a September election was possible though “very unlikely”, and on February 25, the council backflipped and issued a ban on political signs in front gardens. Residents who displayed them were threatened with $909 fines.

Documents reveal that council staff anticipated controversy around the ban, providing residents only 48 hours to comply to minimise media scrutiny.

“Otherwise we will be in the political media storm longer,” a member of the council’s planning team, whose name was redacted, said in an internal email on February 25.

“The phone calls have already started!!!” a text message between staff said.

“What a morning,” another said. “Good times.”

“This was always going to be a fun one,” a council staff member wrote in an email to Maddocks law firm seeking advice on February 28.

Wilson first flagged the signs with Bayside mayor Alex del Porto and the council’s chief executive, Mick Cummins, at an Australia Day event in January.

Asked on Friday about his communications with the council, Wilson said: “We just wanted clarity because we kept being told ‘you put your signs up, [and] we’ll fine your supporters’.”

Daniel said she only wanted the Goldstein community to be able to engage in the election “openly and transparently”.

“My opponent, who claims to be an advocate for free speech, clearly and persistently tried to shut down the conversation when it suited him,” she said on Saturday.

On Sunday, del Porto said he had no personal involvement in the council’s handling of the signs and stressed it was an operational matter for council officers.

Asked whether Wilson had ever personally pressed him on the issue, del Porto said: “I don’t recall if or when Tim Wilson contacted me about it.”

Del Porto repeatedly mentioned how generous Wilson had been in securing government grants for Bayside.

The Supreme Court overturned the ban in March after a challenge by Daniel’s team, with Justice John Dixon ruling the signs could be displayed for any three-month period, irrespective of the date of the election or whether the date was known.

Bayside Council was ordered to pay Daniel’s court fees.

Ahead of the court hearing in March, Victorian Planning Minister Richard Wynne said it was clear the political signage was allowed, pointing out that the three-month limit was not linked to the timing of an election.

The state government said it was unaware of any other council banning corflutes in the decades-long history of the planning regulations.

Candidates in other electorates had posters in their communities before the election was called.

The election in the once-safe Liberal seat of Goldstein has been one of Victoria’s most bitter election campaigns, after Daniel mounted a challenge centred on climate action, integrity and gender equality.

She is one of the so-called “teal” candidates endorsed by the local Voices of Goldstein and backed by Climate 200, an activist group founded by Simon Holmes à Court.