Victoria's former Liberal party director has avoided a referral to Australia's highest court over controversial ads designed to look like they came from the electoral commission.
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Mr Frost authorised Chinese-language corflutes in the Melbourne seats of Kooyong and Chisholm, which when translated said the "correct" way to vote was to put the Liberals first in the 2019 federal election.
The purple and white signs, designed to look like they came from the independent Australian Electoral Commission, were in December found by the Court of Disputed Returns to be misleading or deceptive.
But on Thursday it ruled out referring Mr Frost to the High Court for breaches of electoral rules.
"Mr Frost authorised the printing, publishing and distribution of the corflutes ... likely to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote, when placed adjacent to AEC signage," Chief Justice James Allsop, and justices Andrew Greenwood and Anthony Besanko said.
The court said it did not have enough information to support a referral to the High Court.
"We made limited findings about what Mr Frost plainly knew, recognising ... that he was not cross-examined on his evidence that he did not intend to mislead anyone," they said of last year's hearings into the controversy.
"Given the limited nature of our findings in the December reasons and the way the hearing of the petitions was conducted, we are not in a position to draw such conclusion(s) about Mr Frost's state of mind and knowledge and it would be unfair on him so to do."
Failed political candidate Oliver Yates and climate campaigner Vanessa Garbett previously sought to overturn the re-election of federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong and the election of the Liberal's pick for Chisholm, Gladys Liu, claiming the corflutes were illegal.
But the court dismissed the challenge, finding there was "no real chance" the ads could have affected the May 18 results in Kooyong or Chisholm.
Mr Frydenberg won with a 5.7 per cent margin and Ms Liu beat Labor by about 1000 votes.
"They (the signs) are purporting to tell electors something unrelated to their choice or political judgment: that a correct or valid vote must be by voting for the Liberal Party and that they must vote for the Liberal Party, irrespective of what their preferred choice might be," the judges wrote of the corflutes.
"The deliberateness of the attempt to make the sign look like an AEC sign by someone in Mr Frost's position bespeaks a view of someone with experience in political campaigning that there was some advantage in doing so."
Australian Associated Press
