Election 2025: Liberal Party member denies trying to get partisans to work for AEC

According to AEC rules, employees must ‘consider their engagement in activities, either publicly or privately, that could impact their actual or perceived political and issue neutrality’.

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson, former Liberal Chisholm MP Gladys Liu, and Liberal Party member David Chu. Picture: Instagram

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A Liberal Party member who once ran for a council seat in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs has denied he “encouraged” any partisans to register to work for the Australian Electoral Commission in the upcoming election.

According to AEC rules, employees must “consider their engagement in activities, either publicly or privately, that could impact their actual or perceived political and issue neutrality”.

David Chu, who told The Australian he was a Liberal Party member, previously ran for the Boroondara Council election in 2024 but was not successful. He has also been photographed campaigning for former Liberal member for Chisholm Gladys Liu.

Two weeks ago, a user named “Ben” messaged a WeChat group of 134 members named, in Chinese, “Aston federal electorate Chinese forum”, a link to an article that said the AEC was looking for polling booth workers.

Mr Chu responded, saying in Chinese: “Election commission staff must remain politically neutral; they are not ­allowed to publicly express political views or participate in campaign groups.”

The user named Ben responded saying people should go quietly to prevent Labor and the Greens from “cheating”, to which Mr Chu responded with a smiling emoji.

Mr Chu denied he was encouraging partisans to work for the AEC. “I mentioned working in AEC must be politically neutral,” he said. “I didn’t encourage any partisans to register to work for AEC.”

After Mr Chu was contacted, another user in the WeChat group said they would change the group chat to the “Aston Liberal Party campaign group” and remove group members they did not know, according to a screenshot shared with The Australian.

“If the Liberal Party cannot win, Labor … and the Greens party and independent members will form a minority government, Australia’s energy policy will become more extreme, prices will soar,” the message read. “Australia’s immigration policy will be hijacked by the Greens and the Muslim Vote movement, allowing Muslim refugees to flood in.”