The parliamentary committee investigating the last federal election wants to impose strict new rules on behaviour around polling booths after a campaign that “felt like an assault on our democracy”.
A report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters tabled on Tuesday says behaviour at polling booths was so bad that 550 people had complained to the Australian Electoral Commission about “harassment and intimidation”. The police recorded a 17 per cent increase in threats against candidates.
“Something happened at the 2025 federal election – something that felt like an assault on our democracy,” said committee chairman and ALP MP Jerome Laxale when tabling the report.
“Many described this assault by third parties identified in submissions like the Plymouth Brethren and Advance as a fundamental disruption to the foundations of our free and fair voting process.”
Citing multiple submissions from politicians and the public, the committee found in an interim report that a record number of third-party campaigners converged on polling booths and created “an imposing and intimidatory gauntlet” in contested seats that people had to run as they tried to vote.
One participant in the committee’s Ipswich hearing described the experience to be “absolutely mind-blowingly different to any experience that I’ve had,” and “more like a war zone than it was a polling booth”.
The committee’s deputy chair, independent MP Monique Ryan, agreed there was a “clear escalation in personal safety risk”.
“It is only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured at a polling place if we do not act.”
The report recommended a serious crackdown on campaigners’ behaviour, an extension of the exclusion zone outside polling booths, and a new definition of “domestic interference” in elections.
The committee did not say how large the new “campaign zone” outside polling booths should be, but noted that the Australian Electoral Commission’s six-metre zone had helped create the gauntlet effect.
The government should establish a legal definition, or criminal offence of “domestic interference” in an election to ensure no player could use co-ordinated harassment to intimidate citizens out of voting or participating, the committee said.
And a new code of conduct and registration scheme for campaigners around polling booths should be developed so they can be identified and regulated, and stronger rules imposed on the way campaign material is authorised.
The interim report insisted that many of the third-party campaigners had run significant campaigns “without appropriate transparency about who they were”. The electoral commission should get new rules to capture “significant third parties” so that “co-ordinated involvement in the electoral process at scale is adequately captured”, the report said.
The Brethren has denied it needed to register as a third party because it insists its thousands of members were individually motivated to campaign, organising in small groups, with no influence or involvement from the church itself.
The committee also recommended limiting campaign signage after what independent MP Zali Steggall called a “crazy amount of corflutes and wrapping”, and another submitter described as “the Hunger Games” as different campaigners vied for space around booths.
A number of the findings were rejected by the Coalition members of the committee, who particularly objected to mention of the members of the Plymouth Brethren.
“Of particular concern is that the conduct of one of the parliament’s most serious committees has been reduced to a partisan witch-hunt of Australians based on their religious faith,” the Coalition dissenting report said.
“Coalition members are deeply troubled of the pursuit by any political party against another group based on their religion, ethnicity, gender or creed.”
Other recommendations would “expand the regulatory and enforcement reach of the state over ordinary political participation”, the Coalition said, which would “burden grassroots involvement and that sit uneasily with the constitutionally implied freedom of political communication”.
Michael Bachelard is a senior writer and former deputy editor and investigations editor of The Age. He has worked in Canberra, Melbourne and Jakarta, has written two books and won multiple awards for journalism, including the Gold Walkley.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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