Proving there’s more than one way to get your name out there before a parliamentary run, the protagonist in an odd little culture war episode from late last year is throwing their hat into the ring for the Liberals.
A tipster has pointed out that University of Sydney student Freya Leach is running in the seat of Balmain for the NSW election on March 25. Posters are up in the area, and she’s put together an Instagram in which she is perfecting the political skill of looking unnaturally happy to talk to people.
In November, Leach wrote to Sydney Uni’s law school about a take-home exam that set up a hypothetical wherein a character with the name Freya kills a politically ambiguous victim in a hit-and-run, has unprotected sex while HIV-positive and ends up being pushed out a window.
“I am concerned because it is clearly intended to depict me. Very rarely do problem questions use such specific names as Freya,” she said at the time. “People have also posted jokes about me in an anonymous Facebook discussion page, showing that even beyond the law faculty, people know it is me in the exam.”
The university said the use of the name was a coincidence. The whole thing spun out into a little media episode, with pieces detailing “concerns about a lack of respect for centre-right students on campus” and the like.
The 20-year-old has been given a tough gig. Historically Labor heartland, Balmain has been held by Green Jamie Parker since 2011, who has increased his margin to 10% since taking the seat from Labor’s Verity Firth. Parker won’t stand at the March election, but that’s more likely to bring Labor back into the frame than help Leach.
Always amazes me that any young person these hays would even consider the LNP mob of also-rans
Freya is embarking on a Liberal Party apprenticeship. Stand in an unwinnable seat maybe a couple of times, work a few years as a staffer, then hey presto….
and hey Presto, stand for pre-selection in a winnable seat and lose out to some far right young Liberal Christian male.
All fine and dandy, but does she have the GOD endorsement?…………………..
……..if not, how does she ever expect to win?
Or conversely, if she does have the endorsement, what will that say about her “God” when she gets thrashed?
Perhaps she should find a talking Eagle painting………………………..
Hmm, so Freya strongly self-identifies with a character who, “kills a politically ambiguous victim in a hit-and-run, has unprotected sex while HIV-positive and ends up being pushed out a window.”
Well, if that’s the case, then perhaps she’d like to inform the voters of Balmain, whether she’s killed somebody in a hit and run, had unprotected sex while HIV positive, or been pushed out a window?
this is just sick, creepy, intimidating and nasty gendered abuse.. freya leach is a young, female , socially conservative Catholic. so of course let’s have a bit of ‘fun’ with an extramarital sex/HIV riff.
sick sick sick misogynist bullying junk. you soft pap lefty hypocrites would, of course, call it outright ‘violence’. again, IF a post like this – grubbily, ‘mock innocently’ leveraging the gratuitously sexualised nature of the original ‘hypothetical’ to sexually antagonise a young woman – was aimed at a young LEFTY woman.
conservative women just don’t count.
The question was NOT about her or aimed at her. There’s a true non-event story behind it, and Freya Leach has been set straight on this but oddly, hasn’t made the correction (perhaps a conflated culture war attack is better for an aspiring politician?) However SHE is the one who chose to make it a culture wat. The true story is just banal silliness, a coincidence. The question was framed more than a year before FL saw it, and not by anyone who knew her.
this post is gendered bullying junk. it’d be intolerable to the soft pap prog feminist left. if it were aimed at a lefty. but only if, apparently.
Sounds like a standard case of Conservative Persecution Syndrome.
Or Conservative ‘Collective Narcissism’.
Ah, I wondered why the SMH gave such prominence to this story last year
Pity they didn’t do their research first.