When a long-time Mona Vale resident went to throw the trash into the bin of his apartment block on Friday morning, he lifted the lid to find a bag in it filled with mail addressed to nearby residents.
The plastic bag, which the man found in the red council bin of his apartment block in Seabeach Avenue, contained 39 opened same-sex marriage postal survey envelopes, with the voting forms and return envelopes removed.
Also stuffed in the bag were about 45 pieces of personal mail, all torn cleanly in half.
"They must have just raided all these letter boxes," said the 66-year-old man, who wanted to remain anonymous.
"Someone's come along, put their hand in and grabbed what they could," he said. "It doesn't seem like they were looking for credit cards or anything like that because all the personal mail has been ripped in half.
"My deduction is, all they wanted was the marriage equality survey."
Piles of discarded same-sex marriage surveys were also found in Melbourne earlier in the week.
"This survey is an absolute joke," the man said. "The thing is corrupted when you get situations like this happening."
The mail was taken from consecutive streets near Mona Vale Beach and Basin Beach, including Heath Street, Darley Street and Golf Avenue.
One of the postal surveys was addressed to the man's neighbour, Toby.
The man knocked on Toby's door and said: "Mate, you won't be getting your survey because someone's got to it already."
Toby, 33, was upset to learn that his voting form had been stolen.
"I found it frustrating. It pissed me off," he said.
He had been waiting for the marriage survey to arrive, adding that he had "enrolled especially so that I could vote 'yes' ".
The 66-year-old man, who has lived in his Mona Vale apartment for 36 years, was "livid" when he saw the ripped up personal mail.
"Some of those letters are important," he said.
"One person can lose their licence in October if they don't get this letter. There's an overdue fine, a notice about disconnecting electricity; there's one from the Tax Office."
The man took the mail to Mona Vale police station, where he said he was told there was not much the police could do other than write up a report.
"I asked them, well, can I put [the ripped letters] back together and give them to my neighbours? And they said I could."
ABS Deputy Statistician and Taskforce Lead Jonathan Palmer said the the bureau would work with police to investigate the alleged theft.
"The ABS investigated this incident swiftly. We have spoken with the person who found the materials and now have them all in our possession," Mr Palmer said.
"The ABS will work to contact each person involved to check if they received and completed their form. If any resident confirms they hadn't received their form, ABS will issue a new one and invalidate the previous one so it will not count."
People whose postal vote is missing or has not arrived can request a replacement form from the ABS between September 25 and 6pm on October 20.
The ABS will roll out a new advertising campaign on Sunday focusing on replacement survey forms.
Votes must be returned by no later than October 27.
