Last month, several people complained they had received unsolicited correspondence to private email addresses from the Marriage Alliance, a group opposing same-sex marriage that launched in mid-2015.



The email criticised Labor leader Bill Shorten and asked for donations.

Sports writer Erin Riley told BuzzFeed News in April she and other recipients who had not signed up to the Marriage Alliance mailing list realised the one thing they had in common was being a former or current member of the Liberal party.

“When I got the Marriage Alliance email, it was to my personal email address, which isn’t public. I rarely sign up to things with that email address, but it was the one I had associated with the Liberal party. And that was a common thread among the people I spoke to,” she said.

In a submission seen by BuzzFeed News, the OAIC is being asked to investigate whether Liberal party email lists were improperly provided to or accessed by Marriage Alliance.