The Canberra Liberals may bear the cost of federal campaign advertising that pictured ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr alongside Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, urging voters not to "risk a Labor double whammy".
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ACT Electoral Commissioner Phillip Green said the advertisement, which linked a federal Labor government to an increase in ACT land rates, was arguably designed to influence the October election.
The money was spent in a bid to re-elect Senator Zed Seselja but will be considered as territory campaign spending, which limits the amount political parties can spend on advertising before the October election.
Spending on ACT election messaging is capped at $40,000 per candidate, which means major parties can spend up to $1 million should they field 25 candidates in October.
On Wednesday, the commission found anti-light rail advertisements paid for by the Liberal party during the federal campaign would be deducted from the pool of money available to the Canberra Liberals.
The Liberal Party used pictures of the ACT government's tram project on signs, direct mail-outs and advertisements during the last week of the federal election campaign to sway voters.
At least one advertisement showed ACT senator and former chief minister Katy Gallagher and Shane Rattenbury signing a power-sharing arrangement in 2012 to deliver the tram, urging voters to punish them at the polling booth.
"Clearly light rail is an ACT election issue and Mr Rattenbury is an ACT MLA and a member of the government, so that puts those advertisements within our purview," he said.
ACT Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson has argued light rail became a federal election issue once Greens Senate candidate Christina Hobbs proposed a further investment of $400 million.
"We would argue strongly, very strongly, that if the ACT senator wants to campaign on what is a federal issue after the Greens clearly made it one, he is entitled to do that," he said.
Mr Hanson said he would be "surprised" and "disappointed" if the federal spending was included in Canberra Liberal's spending cap for the October election.
The production and display costs are not yet known. On local radio, Mr Hanson said he and Senator Seselja would write to the commission to argue the light rail advertisements should be excluded from the ACT cap.
"It is obviously a complex situation when we have a federal senator responding to a federal issue, but that would somehow limit an ACT election party and what they are doing in an election three months later," he said.
Canberra Liberals' campaign manager Simeon Duncan said the party would accept the commissioner's ruling.
"There are often crossover issues between the federal and state campaigns and property and cost of living are just a couple of those," he said.
A final decision on what constitutes ACT election matter will be made after the election, when political parties supply a list of campaign expenses for a compliance review.
Mr Barr weighed in on the debate from New Zealand, where he met conservative Prime Minister John Key on Wednesday afternoon.
Mr Barr commended the electoral commissioner for his comments, and said it was not right that the Liberals be given a "free ride" by using the federal campaign to attack the ACT Labor government.
"There was also other Liberal Party advertising in the campaign that sought to link Bill Shorten and I, and our images featured in that advertising, so I would presume that would also be considered by the electoral commissioner against their spending cap for the territory election," Mr Barr said.
"That is as it should be, there can't be a free ride of utilising a federal campaign to put through local political messages," he said.
He warned Labor planned to refer other examples of federal Liberal advertising to the electoral commissioner, where it had strayed into the boundaries of territory politics.
