Exclusive: candidate who contested Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong says material was ‘clearly designed to deceive voters’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Independent candidate Oliver Yates has confirmed he will challenge Liberal party Chinese language signs, designed to resemble Australian Electoral Commission material, in the court of disputed returns.

Yates – who unsuccessfully contested the seat of Kooyong against treasurer Josh Frydenberg – told Guardian Australia he will lodge a challenge before the 40-day deadline after the return of writs, set to expire on 31 July.

The signs used the purple and white AEC colours and told voters “the correct voting method” was to put a “1” next to the Liberal candidate and then number the rest of the boxes from lowest to highest.

Fine print at the bottom of the signs said they were authorised by acting state director Simon Frost for the Liberal party’s Victorian division.

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Yates believes the signs infringe the Electoral Act, which bans material that is “likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote”.

However, because Yates can only challenge the result in Kooyong and not in the electorate of Chisholm, where the signs also featured, the case is more likely to serve as a test case for misleading electoral information than to disturb the results.

In Kooyong, Frydenberg comfortably won with 55.7% of the two-party preferred vote. In Chisholm, Liberal candidate Gladys Liu won with a primary vote of 43%, defeating Labor’s Jennifer Yang by just 1,090 votes, or 0.57% of the two-party preferred vote.

Guardian Australia understands that Labor, despite raising similar concerns, is unlikely to challenge the result in Chisholm.

The Australian Electoral Commission inspected the signs on election day and concluded they were authorised. It said there were no rules regarding the use of colour in campaign signage.

Yates said he will submit a petition to the court of disputed returns “on behalf of many Kooyong constituents who were appalled by these signs, including many in the Chinese community”.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

Yates said that major parties “claim they can say whatever they like during an election” based on a high court precedent limiting the definition of misleading and deceptive conduct to acts affecting the process of filling in a ballot paper, not influencing how voters formed their decision.

Yates questioned whether that was “the court’s intention”, arguing it would lead to politics being “the only industry where misleading and deceptive behaviour is considered a necessary and positive skill set”.

Frost said: “All election material was properly authorised as required by the Commonwealth Electoral Act.”

On election day Liu told Sky News they were “good signs” and defended their use. “The sign has been approved and authorised by the state director of the Liberal party,” she said. “I think that this is a good sign to have to inform people to vote.”

Yates also complained that he had been attacked “through fake web sites and dirt mail that I was untrustworthy and in bed with the coal industry or that another Kooyong candidate may have supported female genital mutilation”.

In recent times Labor’s claims that the Liberals would privatise Medicare in the 2016 election and Liberal claims that Labor planned to introduce a death tax or tax non-electric vehicles in the 2019 election have prompted calls for truth in political advertising laws.

The federal government introduced truth in political advertising laws in 1983, but they were described as unworkable and dumped a year later.

After the 2019 election former Labor frontbencher Ed Husic suggested an “armistice” between the parties to prevent a proliferation of fake news claims.