Dunkley winner Jodie Belyea.Credit:John Shakespeare
A lot has been made of Advance’s efforts in helping defeat Anthony Albanese’s Voice to Parliament referendum last year and that’s fair enough,but it’s an island of victory for Advance in a sea of defeat. The lobby group was set up in 2018 to rid the nation of the scourge of those “woke politicians and elitist activist groups[who] were taking Aussies for a ride with their radical agenda”.
Its first major foray into the electoral fray was dressing a bloke up in a superhero suit to follow independent candidate for Warringah Zali Steggall around Sydney’s northern beaches in an effort to stymie her 2019 federal election campaign to unseatTony Abbott,who sits on Advance’s advisory board. Abbott lost the seat.
At the 2022 national election,an Advance campaign featuring ads claiming Chinese Communist Party strongmanXi Jinping would vote Labor – if he could – attracted the attention of electoral authorities but didn’t keepAnthony Albanese out of The Lodge.
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In that same election,independent Senate candidate for the ACTDavid Pocock was aggrieved by Advance’s campaigning tactics as it threw everything at saving the political skin of junior Liberal ministerZed Seselja – who also has close links to Advance – and who was under some pressure from the Pocock challenge. Spoiler alert:the former Wallaby won,although his complaints to the Electoral Commission about Advance’s conduct went nowhere.
Maybe Advance’s aggressive US-style approach to campaigning isn’t the right fit for the Australian market. It’s a question that we wanted to chew over with the group on Monday,but it didn’t respond to our request for an interview.
JOYS OF SPRING STREET
Monday was a big day for celebrity spotters in the environs of Spring Street,with CBD’s informants excited to noticeSarah,Duchess of York,sitting down for a casual bite at the Sofitel on Collins Street.
The former wife of the controversialPrince Andrew is in town to attend theGlobal Citizen NOW summit,which is all about extreme poverty and the climate crisis in the Asia-Pacific region. Her visit has attracted surprisingly little fuss,considering the duchess remains an actual proper member of the royal family.
Then we had his Dan-ness himself,former premierDaniel Andrews making a rare appearance at his old offices at 1 Treasury Place,for reasons that remain unclear.
Andrews somehow managed to walk into a clutch of reporters – including Channel 7’sSharnelle Vella,who has had an interesting relationship of late with the government’s media unit – who wanted to know what the former premier thought of Opposition Leader John Pesutto’s staffing woes.
“Well,I’m retired,so I don’t have much to add,” Andrews said.
Asked how that retirement was going,he told the media pack that his encounter with them was “an absolute highlight”,before jumping into his nearby parked car and making his getaway.
Now,parking is a bit tricky in that part of town,and we’re not clear if that very convenient spot comes as part of the generous package of perks to which Andrews – as a former leader of the state – is entitled. But we’re looking into it.