Titled “why define marriage?”, the pamphlet states it was prepared by a group of students from Wagga and has been spotted in letterboxes in Thurgoona and East Albury.

“Same-sex marriage really does affect children. A child is being placed in a non-ideal situation, simply to satisfy the desires of two adults,” it states.

The group also connected same-sex marriage with what they said was “reproductive incompatibility”, and said there would not be enough female volunteers to be surrogates.

“Since commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, such situations would inevitably lead to the exploitation of cheap foreign surrogate mothers.”

It encouraged people to vote “no” in the postal survey.

Voting forms were due to be mailed out to homes from Tuesday.

Albury deputy mayor Amanda Cohn said the pamphlet was the type of negative “propaganda” the LGBTI community and Australian Medical Associate feared would come out during the postal survey.

“I’m not surprised this sort of rubbish is going around,” she said. “The ones in Melbourne are the worst and I’m glad they haven’t reached Albury yet.”

Cr Cohn said same-sex couple had been raising children for years and a “yes” vote could actually allow to them to be part of a traditional family structure, if their parents were given the opportunity to legally marry.

The Wagga students did not respond to The Border Mail’s request for comment.