WA independent Kate Chaney says Liberals are dropping “misleading” materials to her constituents

WA independent Kate Chaney says the material is ‘misleading’ and made to look like official materials from the AEC.

WA independent Kate Chaney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Teal independents are raising concern over postal vote applications for the referendum sent by the Liberal Party that are being made to look like official Australian Electoral Commission documents and asking residents for personal information including names, emails and mobile numbers.

Curtin MP Kate Chaney blasted the tactic on Wednesday, which she said was intentionally “misleading” and designed to harvest information to be later used for donation drives and advertisements from the No campaign.

The postal vote applications being letterboxed across Western Australian suburbs and seen by The Australian are accompanied with return envelopes addressed to a local PO Box delivery address.

“The addressee and the PO Box are not the Australian Electoral Commission. The same PO Box delivery address was used for Postal Vote Applications distributed by the Liberal Party before the 2022 Federal election,” Ms Chaney said.

“Addressing the Reply Paid envelope to ‘Processing Centre’ is designed to trick voters into believing their application form is going to the AEC, rather than to a political party for data harvesting first. Political parties should not be able to mislead voters like this.”

Fellow Independents Kylea Tink and Zali Steggall also raised issue with postal vote applications being used by political parties as a means of collecting information that could then be used during the campaign ahead of the referendum.

Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers said while the practice wasn’t breaking any rules, he “didn’t know” what political parties did with the information in the application for postal votes.

“We’ve made public statement that … we’d prefer citizens come to us to apply for postal votes. We are subject to the privacy act and political parties are not necessarily so,” he said.

A spokesman for WA Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash said “all material sent out by the Liberal Party adheres to the rules set out by the Australian Electoral Commission”.

The criticism from the teals comes as the Yes and No camps ramp up their campaigns ahead of the country heading to the ballot box on October 14, with key voice opponent Warren Mundine revealing to The Australian on Tuesday his side were running a “low-key” ground campaign that was “not as flash” as the Yes camp.

Other documents distributed by WA Liberals in the past week tell constituents Labor “refuses to provide basic details before the vote” and point to the State’s botched Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act as a demonstration of “what can happen when governments get details wrong”.

The materials list ten reasons why constituents should vote No at the referendum, including that no issue will be beyond the scope of the advisory body, that it will be costly and that it will “open the door for activists”.