Little-known outfit Hothouse Magazine spending big on political ads attacking Peter Dutton

A little-known political outfit claiming to be a "magazine" has turned out to be one of this election's top 10 spenders on Facebook and Instagram.

That group of top spenders includes the likes of the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, and the Australian Electoral Commission.

Analysis by ABC NEWS Verify also shows the entity, called Hothouse Magazine, over the span of a month, targeted its political advertising at a handful of seats being contested by so-called "teal" candidates, while also running ads attacking Liberal candidates.

The Liberal Party has labelled Hothouse a "cashed-up activist group" pretending to be a news outlet.

Hothouse Magazine has spent more than $400,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads since February 4, running them for several weeks before the election was called on March 28.

Labor was the highest spender over a similar period, spending more than $1,400,000 on ads from the party's official Facebook page, a figure that does not include ads on any other pages linked to the party.

Hothouse has also forked out more than $45,000 on YouTube ads since April 13.

This morning, on the eve of the election, the outfit also paid to have front-page ads run in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Its director and "chief editor", Matt Bray, who authorises its advertising, has a background in arts and activism.

He has boasted on social media about his "meddling in Australian politics", and describes Hothouse as an "arts, entertainment and news platform".

But many of the outfit's ads attack Peter Dutton, including comparing the opposition leader to US President Donald Trump. Other ads take aim at seats contested by so-called teal candidates — attacking, for the most part, Liberal candidates.

Hothouse has also paid for billboards, put up corflute signs, and placed campaign material in letterboxes. Some of this material features Mr Dutton, alongside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, below the slogan: "The parties are the problem."

One of Hothouse's latest corflutes shows an image of Mr Dutton's face merged with Mr Trump's.

"Once you start adding in billboards, paying perhaps for people to distribute materials, AusPost fees to mail out materials as well, costs can certainly mount," said Daniel Angus, a QUT political communications expert.

"They have been spending big," he said.

Mr Bray said the money being used on Hothouse's advertising had been "crowdfunded".

'Pretty lean' operation

Hothouse was registered as a company in September last year, also registering as a significant third party with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in March.

Some of Hothouse Magazine's advertising references, or links to, news articles by media outlets.

That might be because only nine articles appear listed in the archives of the website — seven of which are authored by Mr Bray.

One of them is titled "Calling Canberra. Hothouse is en route to bust your balls".

Mr Bray is the founder of Art Disrupt, a Melbourne-based creative studio.

"As Art Disrupt, I have run self-funded and crowdfunded political content and campaigns," Mr Bray told ABC NEWS Verify.

"Hothouse works in collaboration with a collection of politically active creatives, writers, artists and educators to create engaging and factual political advertising.

"Hothouse brings more voices into the conversation and, through our combined network, we've crowdfunded for donations."

He is also a vice-president at communications agency Comms Declare, which says it aims to "supercharge the transition to a climate-friendly future". This position is understood to be voluntary.

On January 31, a few days before publishing the first of more than 1,700 Meta ads, Mr Bray wrote in a Hothouse article: "As we set up shop things will be running pretty lean."

Targeted advertising

ABC NEWS Verify analysed a month of Hothouse's advertising on Facebook and Instagram, using postcode data from political ad-tracking tool Who Targets Me.

Between March 28 and April 26, apart from a handful of national ads, the outfit aimed its content at postcodes that mostly overlap with electorates being contested by some of the 35 Climate 200-supported independent candidates.

Liberal senator James Paterson took issue with the outfit's claim of being a magazine.

"Australians deserve honest journalism — not cashed-up activist groups posing as news outlets running attack ads on the Coalition in seats targeted by their teal allies," Senator Paterson said.

"Disguising political attack ads as news reporting is an affront to journalism and risks dangerously eroding public trust."

ABC NEWS Verify sent no less than five media requests to Climate 200 asking if it had any links to Hothouse. No response was received. Calls and texts to its head of media went without reply.

A call and texts to its convenor, Simon Holmes à Court, went unanswered.

Mr Bray did not directly answer if Hothouse had received any financial assistance from Climate 200, only saying: "We've crowdfunded for donations."

He did not respond to requests for further detail.

As a registered significant third party, Hothouse Magazine will have to disclose any funding over the disclosure threshold to the AEC later this year.

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