‘Sea of corflutes’ intimidates voters running the gauntlet of party volunteers: AEC

The acting election commissioner has warned that the sea of corflutes and overwhelming number of people campaigning outside polling booths at the May election was intimidating to some voters.

The Australian Electoral Commission received 550 complaints about aggressive and intimidating behaviour during the campaign, acting commissioner Jeff Pope told a parliamentary committee examining election laws.

In one case, an AEC staffer was abused and filmed after they intervened to ask someone whose days of anti-abortion rhetoric had been upsetting other volunteers and voters to change their language.

The problems appeared to be worse at highly contested seats in metropolitan Melbourne and Sydney.

“There was a sea of corflutes out in front of many pre-poll voting centres — of different waves, of different colours — like we’ve never seen before. And we did have voters telling us that they found that intimidating,” Mr Pope said on Wednesday.

“Some people find it intimidating to go to a polling place in the first instance, but to find so many corflutes, an overwhelming number of people that were campaigning at the front on top of that, some people found that very intimidating and very difficult … to navigate.”

The committee is examining the conduct of the election campaign, including the rise in intimidating behaviour towards party volunteers and electoral staff.

Some have pointed the finger at the involvement of a secretive church group, the Exclusive Brethren, who staffed booths in support of the Liberal Party, while others say the increasing participation of people on the far right and far left of politics has led to a breakdown in longstanding conventions of campaigning.

Possible solutions could involve extending the distance outside polling places where people aren’t allowed to campaign so that voters don’t have to run a gauntlet of party workers and signs on their way in.

Committee chair Jerome Laxale, whose seat of Bennelong was among those hotly contested in Sydney, said the 2025 campaign had a “different feel” to previous elections, particularly on pre-poll booths.

Caucus colleague Shayne Neumann said he had never seen anything like “the harassment, intimidation, aggressive pushy behaviour, blocking of walkways, asking individuals their voting intention and yelling” in 15 Federal campaigns.

Independent MP Monique Ryan claimed an electoral commissioner employee had quit from a booth in her seat of Kooyong because of the level of poor behaviour from some campaigners, although the AEC replied that it wasn’t aware of the case.

She also observed that “the size of the corflutes tended to increase over the course of the campaign … (and) it was inversely related to the success of the candidates”.

Labor senator Corinne Mulholland complained about posters with cartoons mocking candidates posted in Queensland seats.

“What are some of the solutions so that we don’t have bullying material displayed at churches and schools in local areas – and the AEC is agnostic, you can’t do a damn thing about it,” she said during the hearing on Wednesday.

Mr Pope said the AEC had no role in adjudicating the content of election signs or campaign material, provided it was properly authorised.

“We are not the campaign police, just as we are not the internet police, and we’re not the truth police,” he said.

“I’m firmly of the view, though, that we ought not to be the arbiters of truth, of content of political advertising.

“As soon as we are, I suspect that will deeply impact our actual and perceived impartiality, and I think that would be the start of a spiral that will be really difficult for us to navigate our way through.”