"I believe anyone with knowledge of the Facebook trolling should be kicked out of the party," Mr MacDonald said.

Mr MacDonald refers to an incident in which Liberal candidate for Port Stephens Jaimie Abbott had apologised to Labor MP Kate Washington after it emerged one of her volunteers had been using fake Facebook profiles to troll the Labor campaign.

Facebook deleted seven profiles connected to the volunteer, who was also a staffer of Liberal duty MLC Catherine Cusack.

The staffer denied opening the accounts when approached by the Newcastle Herald about the claims a fortnight before the accounts were deleted. 

Trolling remains an uncomfortably common occurence online, particularly for prominent female commentators.

While the term trolling generally refers to a broad group of behaviours online, its most egregious proponents push far past the bounds of taste.

The Port Stephens trolling was certainly not at the most dangerous end of the spectrum, but it is hard to disagree with Mr MacDonald that political organisations should have little patience. 

AFLW star Tayla Harris used tasteless comments on an image of her booting a goal last week to fuel her into clinching a grand final berth for Carlton on the weekend.

While Harris was able to harness the abuse as motivation, there is no argument that it was a benign or positive force. Author Sam George-Allen, who has traced historical examples of fear and suspicion of female power, says the fear lives on.

She told the ABC it can also serve as a "gate-keeping" exercise. "That kind of response that's either sexualising or putting down, that's an attempt to put someone in their place - that place being not in AFL," she told the ABC. 

The motives of trolls, and indeed their actual beliefs compared to those they espouse, are often opaque by nature.

The term has broadened to become a catch-all for those who bait others into argument or debate, often to expose perceived hypocrisies.

The role of far-right online groups in the Christchurch massacre is perhaps the most serious example of why speech in public fora, digital or physical, matters. 

We expect leaders to lead. If civility matters, they must set that tone through their own words and actions as well as dealing with breaches of that decorum appropriately. 

The standards of candidates and volunteers are matters for individual parties, of course, but given the success of those parties hinges on public support they are wise to read the tea leaves of social sentiment. 

A simple step towards expelling trolling from the political operatives' arsenal, such as a policy and set penalties such as expulsion, may demonstrate how unwelcome it is and raise, or at least preserve, the tone around our political future.