The board of Australia’s peak organisation for training doctors has refused to explain how the emails of 21,000 members were obtained and used during its board and president election.

Following the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) election in March, Prof John Wilson was named president and three directors were appointed to the board; Prof Niki Ellis, Dr Jacqueline Small and Prof Paul Komesaroff.

The board then received complaints about the conduct of Wilson, Ellis, Small and Komesaroff after RACP members received multiple emails during the election campaign that urged them to vote for the four as part of a “reform ticket”. The complaints said using email addresses in this way breached college bylaws and possibly Australian privacy legislation.

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None of the other candidates standing for election had access to the email addresses. Wilson and the board did not respond to requests made by Guardian Australia through the RACP to answer questions about how the email addresses were obtained.

An independent third party was appointed by the RACP board to review the election complaints, but the board has not released the findings of the report to members.

An RACP spokeswoman told Guardian Australia: “The report you refer to and the associated matters are confidential to the board of the RACP, and we will not be making any further comment at this point.”

The RACP represents more than 17,000 physicians and 7,500 trainee physicians in Australia and New Zealand. The college’s election bylaws state: “No person may post, exhibit or distribute any material in support of the candidature of any person in an election on any property owned or occupied by the college ... Further a candidate must not directly or indirectly access or otherwise utilise college resources and assets, such as college generated databases, for personal electioneering or campaigning purposes.”

One of the complaints the RACP received about the election process was written by four past RACP presidents; Dr Catherine Yelland (president, 2016-2018), Prof Nicholas Talley (president 2014-2016), associate Prof Leslie Bolitho (president 2012-2014) and Prof John Kolbe (president 2010-2012).

Their letter called for the independent report into the election to be made public.

“All members, particularly those who stood for election, are entitled to see the full report,” it states.

Yelland told Guardian Australia the letter had been sent more than one month ago and yet the report had not been released.

“It’s pretty significant when four past presidents sit down together and say, ‘we have a big problem’,” she said. “Then, when we have written to the college about the elections and there has been deathly silence. We asked a series of tough but fair questions about what’s going on.”

A research fellow with the University of Melbourne law school, Dr Megan Prictor, said more information would need to be made available by the RACP to determine whether Australian privacy laws had been breached.

“If it’s a public company then it falls under the Commonwealth Privacy Act and email addresses constitute personal information,” she said. “If, when members signed up, they were told this was the kind of thing their emails could be used for, then it might not be breach as it might be part of the primary purpose of the college. If it wasn’t made clear then it could be OK if that kind of use was reasonably expected by the member and related the college’s main purpose.”

The election concerns follow anger from members in February when the RACP ran a crucial trainee doctor exam online for the first time, which crashed while being held. Hundreds of trainee doctors were forced to resit the exam which costs more than $1,800 to sit and requires intensive study. Trainee doctors also pay about $3,000 a year to be RACP members.