Liberals dismiss Oliver Yates’ challenge over Chinese language signs

The Liberals have returned serve at Oliver Yates’ claims, adamant no rules were broken.

Oliver Yates is set to challenge the use of Liberal Party signs on election day in Josh Frydenberg's seat of Kooyong. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

The Victorian Liberal Party has hit back at a potential High Court challenge over Josh Frydenberg’s election victory, saying Chinese-language signs were within the rules.

Failed independent candidate Oliver Yates wants to take the Liberals to the Court of Disputed Returns because Chinese-language paraphernalia telling voters to put Liberal “1” on their ballots looked similar to Australian Electoral Commission material.

Victorian Liberal state director Simon Frost told The Australian today that no rules had been broken.

“All election material displayed or distributed on May 18 was properly authorised as required by the Commonwealth Electoral Act,” he said.

Sources close to the Liberals dismissed the challenge yesterday, saying Mr Yates would have to prove 5000 voters in the Treasurer’s seat of Kooyong decided their vote based on the purple signs.

Mr Yates only won 8.98 per cent of the primary vote in Kooyong, compared to the Treasurer’s 49 per cent.

“These signs were intended to appear as a directive from the AEC to Mandarin speakers, notwithstanding the tiny Liberal party authorisation at the bottom, quite perversely only in English,” Mr Yates told Guardian Australia.

“They were clearly designed to deceive voters in how to mark their ballot papers or in other words, how to cast their votes.

“If these signs and the people that approved them are not considered misleading and deceptive, then basically there is no limit on deceptive and misleading conduct at all.”

Labor and others have criticised the signs, saying they looked too much like official AEC material.

However Labor is not expected to challenge the signs used in Chisholm, won by Liberal MP Gladys Liu by just 1090 votes.

Mr Yates’s push did receive backing from Independent MP for Warringah Zali Steggall.

Anyone frustrated with the major parties and other groups misleading and openly lying to voters in advertising, get behind @_Oliver_Yates. I raised it with @ScottMorrisonMP in question time. This is important. https://t.co/TMVw6Jp36d

— 💧Zali Steggall MP (@zalisteggall) July 25, 2019