SA Liberal MP Stephan Knoll’s profile revealed on hacked and dumped Ashley Madison website
A MARRIED South Australian Liberal MP has admitted he was “intensely stupid’’ to join extramarital affairs website Ashley Madison, but says he signed up as a joke and has never used it.
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LIBERAL MP Stephan Knoll has admitted he was “intensely stupid’’ to join extramarital affairs website Ashley Madison, but says he only signed up as a joke and has never used the controversial service.
The married father of one claims he joined “eight or nine years ago’’ as part of a prank with his sister-in-law, but his email address now has been revealed as one of the 37 million user profiles dumped on the internet by hackers this week.
The scandal is engulfing politicians and senior figures all over the world, with Victorian state Liberal director Damien Mantach — who this week has also been accused of stealing $1.5 million of party funds — also being linked to the Ashley Madison website, an online dating service that matches married people seeking secret affairs.
“I was at work with my sister-in-law,’’ Mr Knoll said on Friday.
“Her and I were talking about this billboard called Ashley Madison and we wanted to know what it was. I can’t remember what the slogan was, but it was something quite catchy.
“So we went on and created a profile, which I then proceeded to try and delete three times.’’
In a later emailed statement, Mr Knoll said it was a “fake account and looked at the site once to have a laugh”.
“We joked with my wife at the time about how ridiculous the site was.
“That was the last time I’d even heard about the site until it made the news recently.”
Mr Knoll, who was elected to the Barossa Valley seat of Schubert at last year’s election, said “it’s amazing they would still have my records’’.
The MP, who was married at the time he signed up, said his wife, Amy, had found it funny.
“When this thing was exposed I said to my wife I remember vaguely in ancient history somewhere logging on to this thing,’’ he said. “She laughed it off.’’
Mr Knoll has been lauded as one of the rising stars of the Liberal Party, earning preselection as a 30 year-old, and leaving his promising business career as a general manager of Barossa Fine Foods to move to North Terrace.
In his maiden speech to Parliament in May, he said becoming a politician had never been a goal, even though he had joined the Liberal Party in 2008.
“I have always been an activist, I have always been a joiner of things, but I did not think that the life of a parliamentarian was my destiny,’’ he said in the speech in which he thanked Senator Cory Bernardi as the man who inspired him to run for office.
Political figures all over the world have been worried about being caught out by the Ashley Madison hacking scandal.
In Victoria, Mr Mantach, the Liberal state director who allegedly siphoned off $1.5 million in party money to fund his lifestyle, has also been found in the Ashley Madison database, although there is no evidence that he was the one who signed up.
In the US, family-values activist Josh Duggar called himself the “biggest hypocrite ever’’ after being exposed, while in Scotland, nationalist MP Michelle Thomson claimed to be the victim of a “smear campaign’’ after her name surfaced.
Other names in the Ashley Madison database include employees at the United Nations, the Vatican and corporations such as Amazon and JP Morgan.
Opposition Leader Steven Marshall was unavailable for comment last night.
