Following revelations that a Gymea (NSW) priest ordered Greens party posters and personnel to vacate church premises where people were voting in last month’s state election, the Sex Party has called on state and federal Electoral Commissions to cease using church properties for electoral purposes.

The priest, Monsignor Brian Rayner, ordered a Greens’ volunteer to remove himself and the party’s posters from the polling booth, citing ideological differences. He said he would not have allowed the Sex Party or the Communist party on the premises either.

Another angry Catholic priest, Fr Milstead, who was overseeing the polling booth at St Peters church on Devonshire st, Surry Hills, ordered Sex Party posters to be taken down while those of other parties remained in place. He allegedly told Sex Party volunteers, ‘This is a Catholic church, take these posters down right now". The volunteers agreed fearing an altercation.

Sex Party president Fiona Patten said that religious organisations were paid good money to use their tax-exempt premises for a public service and they had abused that relationship. “These two examples of intimidation and favouritism being evinced by clergy at polling booths, are clear indications of a breach of Section 151 of the NSW Electoral Act which expressly forbids this sort of behaviour under threat of 100 penalty points or 3 years jail”, she said. “The fact that an alleged Electoral Commission official has even come out in the Southern Courier backing the priest’s actions and telling the Sex Party to “Stop trying to blame the Catholic Church for all your woes”, is highly irregular and shows bias on this issue”.

She said that the Electoral Commission was very strict about what could be displayed on the perimeter of a polling place and the Sex Party and the Greens had adhered to these conditions. “The NSW Electoral Commission must have a role to play to ensure that conditions are respected”, she said. “They need to clarify for the public whether these instances of interference are acceptable or not. If the priests had ordered Labor and Liberal posters taken down this would be under investigation now”.

She said that it was incredibly hypocritical of church officials to take aim at Sex Party and Greens’ policies on sex and gender, when their own backyard was littered with the broken lives of thousands of sexually abused children and they still would not allow women as priests.

The Sex Party has formally written to the NSW Electoral Commission asking for an investigation of the matter. The letter is available on request.