The final stretch of Victoria’s state election has become engulfed in controversy involving violent rhetoric, increasingly close ties between the Liberal Party and fringe groups, and claims of voter intimidation that led to an arrest.
An individual associated with the Freedom Party, Daniel Jones, was arrested after footage circulated on social media allegedly showing a man sticking a screw into a tyre of a car of an election observer.
A Victorian Police spokesperson confirmed to Crikey that a 40-year-old Epping man had been charged with attempted criminal damage and released on bail.
Jones has accompanied Freedom Party deputy leader and former Queensland politician Aidan McLindon during his campaigning. He’s also appeared in a campaign video for the party posted by party leader Morgan C Jonas.
Neither Jones nor the Freedom Party responded to a request for comment.
Jonas, a prominent anti-vaccine campaigner and once engaged to anti-vaccine group Reignite Democracy Australia founder Monica Smit, started the Freedom Party after a split with Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party prior to this year’s federal election. The party’s policies include banning vaccine mandates and lockdowns, as well as criminalising “gender transition therapy and surgery” for minors. The party has been increasingly promoting a “stolen election” claim in response to leaked footage of “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery requesting money for preference deals, and has called for the election to be postponed.
The Victorian Liberal Party is becoming increasingly enmeshed with these fringe claims. After being spotted at a protest organised by the Freedom Party outside of Premier Dan Andrews’ office after the release of the Druery video, the Liberal Party’s candidate for Mulgrave Michael Piastrino reiterated his calls for the election to be delayed.
“There has to be something put in place to investigate what seats have been bought,” he said to 6 News.
Piastrino also praised the Freedom Party and has been campaigning alongside its candidates during the election period. This candidate’s increasingly close relationship with a fringe political party comes as the Victorian Liberal Party faces criticism over candidates with links to extreme organisations and comments. The party’s state director, Sam McQuestin, also claimed the state’s election commission had made a “serious, deliberate, and unprecedented interference” into the election by referring an investigation about the party to the state’s corruption commission.
The party’s response was to jump on comments made by Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan saying that Victorian Liberal Leader Matthew Guy had preferenced “Nazis” on the Liberal campaign ticket, echoing previous lines used by Andrews.
The comments came in response to Angry Victorians Party candidate and current independent MP Catherine Cumming saying she wanted Andrews to be turned into a “red mist”. Cumming made the statement at a protest flanked by Harrison Mclean, an organiser of Melbourne freedom movement rallies who boasted about using the events to introduce attendees to radical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and had previously stated “Hitler had some good points”.
Ignoring those comments, Liberal Party Deputy Leader David Southwick put out a release stating that Andrews and Allan must apologise.
Others have reported incidents of voter intimidation at pre-polling, with one Twitter user claiming at a pre-polling booth that they had been confronted by a belligerent individual singing about “hanging Dan Andrews & others”.
Meanwhile, former Liberal MP and Democratic Labour Party candidate Bernie Finn — who had previously shared an image of Dan Andrews depicted as Hitler while in the Liberal partyroom — encouraged one of his Facebook followers to go confront other parties’ volunteers.
On Friday, Finn posted on his Facebook: “How can Victorian Socialists harassing people as they go into vote be legal? The VEC should stop them!”
One commenter asked: “How do I find out where these people are, I wanna go stir the pot.”
Finn replied: “Any pre-poll booth in the Western suburbs.”
