26 September 2024

Deja vu for Liberals as candidate woes detract from policy announcements

| Ian Bushnell
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Ginninderra candidates Darren Roberts and Elizabeth Kikkert campaigning together earlier in the year. They are now problems for the Canberra Liberals. Photo: Facebook

It had all started so swimmingly, but for the Canberra Liberals, it’s been a case of deja vu this week.

In 2020, a Liberal candidate in Kurrajong had to pull out of the race due to comments about Welcome to Country ceremonies and ACT Policing being influenced by a homosexual agenda.

Peter McKay was shown the door, with the party saying his views did not align with theirs.

Four years later Ginninderra candidate Darren Roberts is in the spotlight for posting contentious political comments as Bert Poppins on Facebook. These, too, are not the views of the Canberra Liberals, but according to Leader Elizabeth Lee, it’s too late to act against him, with the ballot locked in on Wednesday.

The Liberals really could not afford to lose him after failing to replace the disendorsed Elizabeth Kikkert on the Ginninderra ticket.

The conservative Liberal was booted out earlier this month over alleged bullying of party staff and breaches of the Electoral Act due to donation irregularities.

She has denied all allegations and accused the party of being dishonest.

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This week a very short video was leaked to the media purported to show an altercation in the party office with a staffer but Mrs Kikkert says it’s misleading and called for the whole security video to be released to show the full context.

The top-polling Liberal in Ginninderra’s 2020 vote, she is now lining up with the ultra-conservative Family First.

So in the Belconnen-based seat, the Liberals will field only four candidates, including one who holds views the party disavows, their top vote-getter is off the ticket, and the wash is threatening to spill over into the general campaign.

It is worth noting that Mrs Kikkert was allied with former deputy leader Jeremy Hanson, and Ms Lee dumped both from the front bench last year.

That was part of Ms Lee’s repositioning of the party to the centre, much needed if the Liberals were ever going to have a chance of winning government in progressive Canberra.

It took attention away from vote-losing social issues and put it on more competitive ground such as the economy, housing, health and education.

Ms Lee started strongly with headline announcements on the convention centre, city stadium and plans for a new town centre at Kowen Forest.

But two weeks into the campaign and it’s now all about Roberts and Kikkert and the Canberra Liberals’ credibility.

Chief Minister Andrew Barr didn’t hesitate to put the boot in, calling them a rabble, adding that deeply conservative views were endemic in the Canberra Liberals.

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On Wednesday, when media were clamouring for answers from Ms Lee, she appeared to go missing, leaving a hapless Deputy Leanne Castley to face a grilling when all she wanted to talk about was elective surgery waiting lists.

Ms Lee says she had other commitments on the day but all that did was fuel speculation and give air to the story for another day, detracting from policy announcements.

As Leader, she should have cauterised the wound on the day and put it behind her.

As it is, the Liberals still have a problem in Ginninderra, with a candidate Ms Lee would rather not have in the party room and another she might reluctantly have to negotiate with after election night.

The good news for the Liberals is that it is still early in the campaign and the caravan will roll on. But it is a couple of days they would rather forget.

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The Right: 1 + 1 = 2

The Left: Racist! Vile! Hatred! Reeeeee!

Such absurdity is made possible by the fact that, although everyone is self-interested, only small percentage of people are rational. As such, a lot of people simply want to justify their feelings, and all the more when the Left encourages it – people feeling asthough they’re something they’re not, and this being accepted as they’re reality, being a good example of this.

Therefore, no-one should be under the illusion that Bert the Legend Poppins said or did anything more than speak the truth

The right literally caught posting bigotry and your response is that it’s really the left who are the bigots. Funny stuff.

Bright Spark5:18 pm 29 Sep 24

Omg really Riotact?

How about we focus on Labor/Greens appalling multi-decade reign, and the 10’s of $$$millions of ACT Ratepayer dollars that’ve been wasted.

Or the entitlement and arrogance from a government that’s been in power for too long.

Just look at the entrenched issues we’re all now dealing with -> the error-ridden/lack of factual basis for the 100% electrification policy; the broken, biased, and battered Development Approval process; the lack of accountability for the damaged CIT staff, students and the ACT community for the utter SNAFU that is the CIT debacle…

Need I go on?

Come on Riotact, you can do so much better than this!!!

How about we not elect bigots and kooks.

The Canberra Liberals can still hold Darren Roberts to account and give him the boot which they refuse to do ! The party and its leader have known for months of Mr Roberts’ disgraceful actions and turned a blind eye! Outrageously, Mr Roberts’ hypocrisy is highlighted in the latest image of himself posted to his Facebook yesterday!

Could you imagine the outrage if any Labor candidate was found to have used a pseudonym to post racist and offensive comments on social media especially against the Liberals or any of its foreign born candidates? Heaven forbid the same unsavoury images or criticisms were directed towards the thin-skinned party leader Elizabeth Lee who likes to keep reminding us of her Asian heritage and the racism she has experienced! Oh the hypocrisy!

All that confected outrage and squawking we would hear from the Liberals should it be Labor and not one of their candidates would be deafening!

If only Baaaa and his cronies got this kind of scrutiny!

The Canberra Liberals keep trying to con the electorate into believing that they’re not the extreme right-wing party the electorate keeps rejecting.

Unfortunately for the Canberra Liberals the electorate is too smart for cheap tricks and they’re too dumb to learn a lesson.

Darling, try and educate yourself about what ‘extreme right-wing’ is before you make a fool of yourself again, or appear ‘too dumb’

Yeah, The Canberra Liberals voting against a ban on gay conversion therapy, voting against abortion access and voting against VAD are extreme right-wing positions out of step with mainstream sensible Canberra.

Pro-tip: before levelling lame insults maybe have a point if you want to convince others that the Canberra Liberals aren’t extremists because you’re doing the opposite champion.

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