Usually when looking back at the most pristine moments of weirdness of an election campaign, you’d look to the minors, the amateurs and the no-hopers to get any good material. Not this time. The 2022 Victorian election has given us enough bananas moments to fill two pieces, and the majors have delivered most of those.
That’s a bit Richmond
Lauren O’Dwyer, Labor candidate for Richmond — a seat the ALP is battling to keep out of the hands of the Greens after the retirement of former housing and planning minister Richard Wynne — has described herself as “a proud Yorta Yorta woman”. One of her relatives, however, was far more modest about the family’s Indigenous heritage, insofar as they weren’t convinced it existed. “I was really surprised when I read that on Facebook that she was … a proud Yorta Yorta woman,” they said.
Further, she was allegedly not so proud that she had ever met with any Yorta Yorta elders. “I’m not against this woman per se, but it is very clear that she has no right to procure an identity as a Yorta Yorta without going through the proper channels and going to their elders,” said Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Monica Morgan. O’Dwyer has been steadfast: “I know who I am and am proud of my heritage.”
Elsewhere, Labor denied putting up posters featuring a Herald Sun tweet that called the Greens candidate for the area, Gabrielle de Vietri, “out of touch” for her use of a ratepayer-funded nanny, which would have breached electoral law.
Stating a preference
After Deputy Premier Jacinta Allen accused the Liberals of preferencing “Nazis” and “extremists”, the opposition went on the attack, calling the statement a “baseless, disgusting and vile ‘Nazi’ slur campaign”. But as Crikey reported yesterday, at least one candidate the Liberals are preferencing ahead of Labor is a member of neo-Nazi chatrooms, posts anti-Semitic and white supremacist content and smiling selfies at concentration camps. Among others the Liberal Party is directing its preferences to ahead of Labor is Catherine Cumming, who called for Premier Dan Andrews to be turned into a “red mist” at a rally (not in a violent way, she later clarified).
Legal troubles
The weirdness is coming from inside the house when it comes to the Liberal Party. Its former in-house lawyer Chandra Lloyd quit the campaign leadership in early October, because the party wasn’t listening to her advice that some of the actions of the secretariat “may be considered criminal in nature”. She singled out state director Sam McQuestin.
McQuestin has since demonstrated his commitment to the rule of law by starting a local variant of the “stop the steal” narrative, accusing the Victorian Electoral Commission of “interference” in the election process after it announced it was referring a probe into party leader Matthew “call me Matt” Guy and his former chief of staff, Mitch Catlin, to the state’s corruption watchdog.
The Liberal candidate for Mulgrave, Michael Piastrino, who kicked off the 2022 weirdness by promising that under a Liberal government Andrews would be “brought to justice for the murder of 800 people”, has made repeated calls for the election to be delayed in response to leaked footage of “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery requesting money for preference deals.
Enter the Dragan
Timothy Dragan, 26, running in the safe Labor seat of Narre Warren North, looks like an uncharitable cartoon by an unimaginative uni paper of a young Liberal (specs, beard, blue suit), and as it turns out, that’s how he talks too.
Having couched a lot of his early campaign rhetoric around revamping the school curriculum (on account of all the “cancel culture” kids are taught these days, or something … ), Dragan was caught on tape saying the kind of stuff one always suspects is lurking behind such sentiments. Leaked audio had him saying he “100%” opposed a treaty with First Nations peoples (“We won this land fair and square”) and that he would cross the floor to vote to ban abortion (“I actually believe that two cells combined are actually a human. And so if murder is wrong at an adult’s stage, where do we stop with the concept of murdering a human?”).
He also said that Brad Battin, the Liberal MP for Berwick, the seat where Dragan actually lives, is a “prick”.
Coming in part two: a flurry of corruption investigations, mainstream media goes full conspiracy theory, the religious right makes a play for power, and plenty more oddball candidates.
It’s been said a million times, but don’t let it off the radar. John Howard opened the floodgates when he politically legitimized racism in politics. It then became an easy path for low-lifes of all stripes to follow.
Remember the Chesterman couch and the white picket fence.
I think the White Australia Policy was officially brought in in 1901 with the Immigration Restriction Act of Toby Barton’s first federal government. But colonial governments had been restriting immigration of Chinese miner’s families since the 1850s. All Howard did was pull the scab off a deep wound that hadn’t healed and disappeared, like many had hoped.
Howard stalled, perhaps reversed, progress on anti racism efforts but we have a racist history that started looking before him
Also with some imported ‘oven ready’ socio-political agitprop masquerading as policy for electoral consultants to poll, direct from a US white nationalist network whose ‘architect’ admired the white Australia policy while promoting immigration restrictions under the guise of faux environmental ‘hygiene’ and population control policies.
They also have a presence in the UK behind a Tufton St. NGO, UKIP/Tories, Brexit and platformed as demographic and/or migration experts by all media, but especially (K)GB News and Fox in the US.
Andrews would be “brought to justice for the murder of 800 people” – okay, so how many thousand deaths should Scomo and his bunch of muppets be put on trial for?
Let us count the ways! Robo Debt, Refugees, Aged (UN)Care, wars, First Nations. There will be more!
Don’t forget the Liberal’s tv ad where they show Dan Andrews’ appearing to doge questions about Labor’s previous election promises. They’ve managed to take actual footage of Andrews being, literally, dodgy, and make it look like a bad deepfake. That takes some real skills.
The Liberal Party of Victoria gets its best lines from the Republican Party of the USA. There is no room in either party for policy, they exist simply for divisive and racist commentary. The Victorian Liberal party will get its rewards this Saturday,the Republicans were warned earlier this month.
I think you can gauge where a party’s at, by their freakshow factor. If you can cobble together a half-decent sideshow alley from the members, then something is very very wrong.
Trumplicans, the Scummo/Abbott show, and the Vic Libs …roll up roll up, only ten cents to see a collection of the world’s greatest oddities…
You’d think someone in the Libs of the 21st century would wake up to how imported US GOP architecture of influence and white Christian nationalist policies of the 19th century are not going to be adopted in Oz, easily if at all; Australia is neither America nor the UK, and more like an EU nation.
The Liberal’s issues reflect complacency of their own making having media protection, no in house policy development, while catering to oldies and top end baby boomers, but ignoring or trying to shut down diversity, empowered women, higher education and global outlook of emerging cohorts inc baby boomers.
False equivalence is the theme for the third millennium.