Last week, residents in the inner south eastern Melbourne electorate received an automated phone call commissioned by Noah Carroll, the Australian Labor Party's national secretary and campaign director.



The poll asked callers a series of routine questions about their preferred political party and leader, before ending with a question linking the Australian Greens to the anti-vaccination movement. It asked whether voters would be more or less likely to vote Greens after finding out they were anti-vaxxers.

"The last question asked how I felt about the Green Party policies appeasing the anti-vaccination movement," one Caulfield resident who received the call told BuzzFeed News.

He felt the question inaccurately linked the Greens to the anti-vax movement and was framed in a way that would elicit an anti-Greens response, a common tactic used in push polling.

Push polling is a strategy used by political parties to manipulate voters' answers in an opinion poll by asking leading and often negative questions.

"At the end of the call, there was a message saying this call was authorised by Noah Carroll ... [I did a Google search] and discovered he is the national secretary of the Labor party," he said.

To find out further information about who commissioned the survey participants had to opt in to listen to a long legal message and press a button requesting more information.

Labor's national office refused to answer BuzzFeed News' questions, saying it doesn't comment on any research it undertakes. But the office of current Labor member Michael Danby was not aware the polling was taking place until informed by BuzzFeed News.