George Christensen's Facebook post has been referred to the Australian Federal Police. Credit:Facebook screenshot "That's why last night I was happy to announce a $12,000 personal contribution in 2016/17 to Libby's operations if I'm re-elected as the Member for Dawson." A spokeswoman for Mr Christensen confirmed the commitment would have come out of the MP's own pocket. GetUp national director Paul Oosting said Mr Christensen had "serious questions" to answer over the pledge. "We have referred the matter to the AEC requesting investigation into whether this is a bribery offence that falls foul of section 326 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, or whether it is just a ham-fisted and dumb attempt to gain votes," he said.

"There are so many things he could be doing in his electorate that do not involve personally paying people money on the condition of re-election." An AEC spokeswoman confirmed it had received the letter from GetUp, but had little to say about the veracity of the complaint. "The AEC will review the correspondence," she said. "The AEC has no further comment to make at this time" Describing GetUp a "left-wing extreme green group", Mr Christensen said it should donate $12,000 to the organisation in his place.

Mr Christensen denied any suggestion of electoral bribery. "Only the turtles materially benefit from my pledged donation and the last time I checked, turtles can't vote," he said. "The upshot is that, to avoid any confusion over what's in the guidelines and what's not, I've had to withdraw my offer of funding to the turtle rescue service." Mr Oosting said Mr Christensen was entitled to give his money to whoever he wanted, but could not make that contingent on his re-election.

"The turtle sanctuary does important work," he said. "It would be a shame if Mr Christensen were to deny them his donation because of his failure to understand what he has done wrong." University of Queensland professor and electoral law expert Graeme Orr said Mr Christensen's actions went beyond traditional pork-barrelling because he was offering his own money. "If this is a conditional promise, it's pretty tacky but tacky doesn't mean illegal," he said. "What Christensen is doing used to be called 'nursing' an electorate, from the old days when there were much smaller electorates – going back to the 1870s – when wealthy men were the ones running for Parliament and they'd go around the electorate making subscriptions to community groups and so on."