LNP Senator Amanda Stoker admits to using pseudonym on social media
Queensland LNP Senator Amanda Stoker has admitted to using a pseudonym – Mandy Jane – on social media to defend against her attackers, agree with her supporters and promote her political views on controversial topics.
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AN LNP Senator has admitted using a pseudonym on social media to promote her political views on controversial topics including race, family law and religious freedom.
Analysis of first-term Queensland Senator Amanda Stoker’s official Facebook site has identified a series of political exchanges stretching back to last year involving a Mandy Jane profile.
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In some of the exchanges, Mandy Jane refers to Senator Stoker, whose middle name is Jane, in the third person as she defends the politician from attacks or agrees with her supporters.
In one exchange Mandy Jane copies a previous comment posted by Senator Stoker but changes the pronouns so it appears they are different people.
“Another senator denied formality to the motion – it wasn’t Stoker,” says part of a Mandy Jane post.
When Senator Stoker posted the same comment earlier, she wrote, “ … it wasn’t me”.
A spokesman for Senator Stoker told The Sunday Mail the Mandy Jane account was her personal profile but denied she should have disclosed that information before posting on the official page.
“Senator Stoker is simply providing information that is already publicly available or already attributable to her public profile,” he said.
He said Senator Stoker was unable to have both accounts active concurrently on her mobile device.
If she was not in front of a desktop but wanted to reply quickly to clear up a simple point, she responded from a mobile device linked to the Mandy Jane profile, he said.
He said she had tried to keep her personal profile personal and “occasionally posts in the third person to avoid confusion”.
It’s understood that it was widely known within the LNP that the Mandy Jane account, which has 1020 friends including many conservative politicians from all levels of government, was Senator Stoker’s private account.
The first profile picture posted to Mandy Jane’s account on October 8, 2018, was a headshot of Senator Stoker.
In March last year, Mandy Jane’s profile picture was changed to show a storybook character called Serenity Strainer.
When a friend asked Mandy Jane to explain the picture, she said Serenity Strainer was an “A-type perfectionist whose life outlook is changed when she finds her belly button fluff attacks and eats her family”.
Pressed if she identified with the character, Mandy Jane said, “a bit!”
On a trip to north Queensland in September last year, Senator Stoker’s official account posted that she was with Mandy Jane and two others.