How far into a candidate’s life should we delve?

There’s no question that anyone condoning illegal or violent behaviour must be condemned and dumped. But what about a bad taste joke that a 30-year-old posted when he was 18, asks Paul Williams.

It must be some sort of record.

Fifteen party candidates disendorsed since the start of the election campaign. Six dumped for various sexist, homophobic or xenophobic social media posts since nominations closed and ballot papers printed.

That means one or more of these can still be elected without the blessing of their party.

But that’s also why I can’t help but think how Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell would have responded: “To lose one candidate may be regarded as misfortune; to lose 15 looks like carelessness!”

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But how careless is it for a major political party? Yes, they supposedly employ rigorous vetting methods precisely so this sort of public relations disaster doesn’t unfold in the middle of a fraught campaign, but how far into a candidate’s personal life can — or should — a political party delve?

Labor’s candidate for the electorate of Melbourne, Luke Creasey, has stood down after social media posts in which he made controversial statements were revealed. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

Leaving aside the more egregious examples of stupidity and bigotry of which some of these candidates are guilty — sharing moronic conspiracy theories and raging about Muslim, Jewish and same-sex attracted Australians — is it truly the fault of parties if they select “average” and therefore flawed candidates who, after 15 years of social media use, have posted the odd asinine comment?

Or has the news media taken “gotcha” journalism to a new level in highlighting perhaps youthful and minor indiscretions of candidates who may yet become effective community representatives?

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Should the media refuse to report relatively trivial social media misbehaviour not genuinely in the public interest? Should they make it clear they’ll refuse any contact with the parties’ so-called “dirt units” designed to disseminate embarrassing (and sometime false) “information” not just about opposition candidates but sometimes their own factional rivals?

And where, exactly, does the boundary lie between an acceptable and unacceptable social media post, and how should voters regard it?

There’s no argument any public comment condoning illegal or violent behaviour, or in breach of racial, sex and other discrimination laws, must be condemned, with any offending candidate immediately dumped.

One Nation senate candidate Steve Dickson stood down after a video of him attending a strip club in the US surfaced. Picture: AAP/Dave Hunt

But what about the racy or bad taste joke a 30-year-old posted when he was 18? Like beauty and political correctness, morality lies in the eye of the beholder. What is offensive to me might be just a common sense statement to you. And it’s that “common sense” test I’m hearing from jaded voters. I heard it last week in response to those disendorsed candidates, and again after Queensland’s Department of Environment and science rejected Adani’s plan to manage the endangered black-throated finch.

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“It’s only a bloody bird,” I heard one opine. “People and jobs come first,” said another.

Because there are fewer than 1000 of these magnificent creatures left in the world — all of them near the Adani site — I’d scuttle the mine on this issue alone. And not just for the bird’s innate beauty. Who knows what environmental calamity we’ll unleash on the food chain if we kill off yet another species? Given global development and increasing human populations extinguish around 200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal life every day — that’s right, every day! — I know what morality means to me.

But my “common sense” threshold may well be different from yours. That’s why such questions can never be answered definitively. Yet the debate around what many regard has been an over-reaction to candidates’ social media posts does raise other key issues.

Tasmania Liberal candidate Jessica Whelan stood down after social media posts in which she wrote and supported controversial views were uncovered. Picture: Gary Ramage

For one, do young voters — high users of social media (and enrolling in record numbers) acclimatised to the rough and tumble of online life — really care? Are they living in an upside down political world where “offence” is something taken and not given?

For another, do we want to empty the candidate talent pool so completely that we’re left only with bland saints and whitebread idealists unable to relate to the “typical” Australian?

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And should voters and not party chieftains be the ultimate judges of online behaviour? After all, this is a liberal democracy: if a candidate acts like a goose, should we let the electorate inspect that goose closely before cooking it at the ballot box?

I often wonder where Australian politics would be if the Queensland Liberal Party had ignored and not disendorsed an unknown Pauline Hanson in 1996 for writing an irascible letter to a local newspaper condemning what she saw as indigenous privilege.

Deprived of martyrdom and media oxygen, Hanson would likely have sunk without a trace, and the divisive politics of the past 20 years might never have emerged.

Oh, the clarity of hindsight.

Dr Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University