Member for Kiama, Gareth Ward moved a motion in Parliament on Tuesday 17 September to ban the distribution of electoral material within one kilometre of a polling booth.

Under the motion, how-to-vote cards handed out at pre-polling and polling day will be prohibited. “People aren’t stupid, and most people have made up their mind by the time they arrive at a polling booth”, Ward says. 

How-to-vote cards display suggestions in relation to the casting of votes and are given to voters during pre-polling and election day to promote a particular candidate.

At the recent election, candidate volunteers urged passers-by to bring the cards back to be recycled for the next day. Ward says the environmental detriment that single-use cards have can be avoided through digitisation of campaign material. 

“How-to-vote material can easily be distributed electronically and how-to-vote material could be on display inside each polling booth…Think of the trees we’d save.”

Leading up to the local election, the town was plastered with a sea of event signage on corrugated plastic material made from polypropylene, or corflutes, that usually display a candidate’s headshot and slogan. Corflute signage contaminates mixed recycling bins and does not break down in landfill, according to Monash University. 

“Given that other jurisdictions have done the same without challenge, I don’t envisage any constitutional issues given that this isn’t a case of limiting speech but regulating an electoral process,” Ward says.