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| Labor's Luke Creasey and Liberals' Jessica Whelan quit over social media posts | |
| (about 5 hours later) | |
| Two more candidates have quit over inappropriate social media posts, with Scott Morrison saying he was lied to about anti-Muslim posts attributed to a Tasmanian Liberal candidate and Labor withdrawing support for a Melbourne candidate who shared rape jokes and made offensive remarks about women. | |
| Jessica Whelan, who was running for the marginal Tasmanian seat of Lyons, resigned on Friday morning but repeated earlier remarks thatIslamophobic posts made under her name had been doctored, saying she intended to “continue legal action regarding these posts falsely attributed to me”. | |
| She had earlier called for the Australian Federal Police to investigate the matter. | |
| “I have been receiving threats to the level I could never have imagined,” Whelan said in a statement to WIN News in Tasmania. “These have included messages to kill my children and myself. | |
| Secret strip-club videos and lewd posts: Australia’s fallen election candidates | |
| “I admit to making some ill-advised and misinformed comments in the past, but I absolutely deny making a particularly vile post as reported yesterday. A number of the other posts which have been reported are also not mine.” | |
| A few hours later the Labor candidate for the seat of Melbourne, Luke Creasey, resigned over Facebook posts in 2012, including one in which he joked about watching a group of people “roughly take” a female friend. | |
| “While I made those awful comments many years ago and they in no way reflect the views I hold today, I understand, especially as a member of the LGBTIQ community, that we need to be careful about what we share or like on social media,” Creasey said in a statement. | |
| “I think this is a really important lesson for young people that your social media footprint will follow you.” | |
| Morrison stood by Whelan at a visit to Tasmania on Thursday, saying it was not “hard to believe” that screenshots of the offensive remarks could have been digitally altered. | |
| He withdrew his support the next day, telling reporters in Melbourne that he now had more information. | |
| “When it became absolutely clear those were the comments that had been made, those comments are things that I don’t share, that I don’t accept and I won’t stand for and in our party we won’t,” Morrison said. “As a result, the candidate, Jessica, has resigned.” | |
| Asked by reporters if he had been lied to, Morrison said: “Yes.” | |
| Just one day earlier, he said the screenshots of Whelan’s account “appears to have been doctored. I don’t think it’s hard to believe in this day and age that images can be doctored.” | |
| Scott Morrison stands by candidate accused of anti-Islamic social media posts | Scott Morrison stands by candidate accused of anti-Islamic social media posts |
| Overnight more anti-Muslim comments made by Whelan emerged, including comments posted to the far-right group Reclaim Australia calling for the borders to be closed to Muslims, and comments made on pages linked to One Nation. | |
| Whelan had also expressed a desire to join One Nation. | Whelan had also expressed a desire to join One Nation. |
| Speaking on Friday morning, the Liberal party’s campaign spokesman, Simon Birmingham, said Whelan would be “swiftly” disendorsed. | |
| “More information has come to light overnight, and as a result of that the state executive of the Liberal party in Tasmania will be taking steps to deal with this candidate situation today. | “More information has come to light overnight, and as a result of that the state executive of the Liberal party in Tasmania will be taking steps to deal with this candidate situation today. |
| “We are not going to tolerate racist comments.” | “We are not going to tolerate racist comments.” |
| He said the posts had not been declared by the candidate, which was “unacceptable”, but he would not comment on whether the AFP had been involved. | He said the posts had not been declared by the candidate, which was “unacceptable”, but he would not comment on whether the AFP had been involved. |
| The Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said the Liberals had attempted to “cover up” the scandal surrounding the Whelan posts by suggesting they had been made by someone else. | |
| In comments made before Creasey’s resignation, Albanese said there was a “difference” between the multiple Islamophobic posts made by Whelan, saying the Creasey’s posts had been written in his “early 20s”: “There was no cover-up or anything else here, he made errors when he was a young bloke.” | |
| Birmingham accused Labor of hypocrisy. | |
| “Labor’s candidate in Melbourne, who has been caught out in relation to making comments that White Ribbon has criticised because indeed they are undermining a domestic violence campaign, they are derogatory towards women – why is it that Labor are applying a double standard when it comes to their candidate in Melbourne?” he said. | |
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| Australian politics | Australian politics |
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| Scott Morrison | Scott Morrison |
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