A parliamentary committee has recommended new laws surrounding stricter policing at Australian polling booths after finding that conduct during the 2025 federal election eroded democratic norms.

The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters tabled its interim report into the 2025 election this June and made 13 recommendations.
 
Committee Chair Jerome Laxale remarked the report was a “response to the assault on democracy that many witnessed at the 2025 election”. 

“In target seats, the 2025 federal election saw the established norms for conduct at polling places shattered.”

The Australian Electoral Commission’s submission to the inquiry recorded more than 2,200 complaints about campaigner behaviour, advertising and postal vote conduct.

What the Committee Wants

The report recommended that the Electoral Commissioner develop and maintain a registration system for partisan campaigners, spanning party-affiliated and third-party volunteers. 

It recommends the AEC be granted additional statutory powers to address aggressive behaviour and misconduct and that a new “campaign zone” be implemented beyond the existing six-metre rule.

Currently, the six-metre rule delineates that campaign material must be placed at least six metres from a polling venue’s entrance.

“Outside of the six-metre rule, the AEC does not regulate the placement or quantity of campaign signage,” said Jeffrey Pope, Electoral Commissioner.

The inquiry received 360 submissions. Many described a rise in third-party activity at polling places, Laxale told the House. 

On the same day, the independent federal member for Kooyong and member of the committee, Dr Monique Ryan, pushed for greater action, stating that “the interim report does not yet address several key issues within the Inquiry's scope”.

“The involvement of significant third-parties like Advance and the Plymouth Brethren in the 2025 federal election has not yet been properly examined by this inquiry. The nature and extent of these groups' involvement in the election remains unclear,” Ryan said.

Ben Small, the Coalition's electoral matters spokesman, defended the Plymouth Brethren and called the inquiry a “hyperpartisan witch-hunt of a group of religious Australians”.

Laxale also pointed to gaps in how the AEC authorised and enforces political advertising, and to a category he called “domestic interference”. 

The government's own Electoral Integrity Assurance Taskforce has a working definition of foreign interference, which reserves the offence to foreign governments or their proxies. It does not include domestic organisations.

The report recommends the government revise electoral law to define and address domestic interference.

The Third Parties

Advance is a conservative campaign organisation, formally unaffiliated with parties and outside the definition of a lobby group. Launched in 2018 to explicitly contest progressive group GetUp, Advance launches professionalised digital and ground game campaigns aimed at voters.

Its largest disclosed donor in 2023-24 was the Cormack Foundation, an investment fund of the Liberal Party's Victorian branch, which gave $500,000. Advance reported an income of more than $15.5 million that year.

It was the highest-spending third party of the 2025 campaign, directing most of its advertising in progressive seats the Greens hoped to capture.

The Plymouth Christian Church, formerly the Exclusive Brethren, is a closed Christian Sect whose members have historically abstained from voting.

In the 2025 election, members turned out at voting centres in marginal seats campaigning for the Coalition. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reported that members were instructed to keep their church affiliation concealed, presenting themselves to voters as “friends”.

In its submission, the church said it “does not campaign for, nor support, any political parties”, emphasising that members who volunteered did so as individuals, and that everyone has the right to participate in elections regardless of religion.

Much of the conduct described in submissions to the inquiry on the Brethren members described an aggressive presence at booths in the NSW seat Eden-Monaro. The Jerrabomberra Residents Association told the inquiry 2025 was the first election in its 35-year history where significant issues were observed at polling places, tied to the arrival of the group.

Both groups declined invitations to appear at three rounds of hearings. In June, the committee moved to compel them, threatening a rare summons.

Laxale called it an “extraordinary step”.

"It is not just in the committee's interest, but Australia's interest, to understand the involvement of both of these third parties in the 2025 federal election and their influence on the electoral process," he said.

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 2025 received royal assent in February 2025 in what at the time Acting Electoral Commissioner, Jeff Pope, called the largest reform to funding and disclosure law in nearly 40 years.

The Act’s financial disclosure reforms will take effect in January 2027, after being deferred from July 2026, meaning they weren’t active in the previous 2025 federal election.

For now, the 13 recommendations are waiting for parliamentary review. The final report is due in November 2026. Only then will the committee say which of these measures it wants written into law before the next Australians vote.

Image source: The Guardian / Bec Lorrimer