A Sydney man has been ordered to pay a $30,000 penalty over the distribution of about 47,000 unauthorised pamphlets in Wentworth during the 2025 federal election, after agreeing the material breached Australia’s electoral law. The Federal Court also ordered Jarrod Davis to pay $15,000 toward the Australian Electoral Commission’s legal costs.
The case centred on pamphlets that expressed strong opposition to the Member for Wentworth and carried no authorisation statement, a requirement under section 321D of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The AEC first received complaints about the material on 21 April 2025, the day before early voting began, and later determined that more than 47,000 pamphlets had been distributed in the electorate. The commission identified Davis as the person who created them.
Davis gave a written undertaking on 23 April 2025 that no further copies of the pamphlets, or any other unauthorised electoral matter, would be distributed during the election period. Despite that, the AEC launched Federal Court proceedings against him on 3 October 2025, saying the case involved one of the clearest breaches of the country’s electoral authorisation laws it had seen in some time.
There was no evidence Davis was or had been affiliated with any political party or candidate contesting the 2025 federal election in Wentworth, which made the pamphlets’ reach more striking. They were not a campaign flyer from a known party machine or an obvious candidate backer. They were material aimed at the sitting member, but the source was hidden from voters who found them in letterboxes and public spaces at the most sensitive point of the campaign.
Jeff Pope, speaking for the AEC, said voters have a right to know the source of campaign material at a federal election, and said the result reinforced that expectation as a fundamental part of electoral law. The court order closes the loop on a case that began with complaints on 21 April and ended with a penalty that sends a simple signal: if campaign material turns up without a name on it, and it is distributed in large numbers, the law will catch up with it.
