Vikki Campion: Let’s not kid ourselves, The Voices sound like a political party

The Coalition once made a virtue of never pandering to the Greens, but with this new coat of paint, in shades of teal and pink, The Voices have it spooked, writes Vikki Campion.

Dollars speak about where an election will be won or lost, and the dollars go to central Queensland.

The online footprint of targeted political advertising campaigns shows Labor running pro-mining ads to the people who once handed out their how-to-vote cards in central Queensland and the mining areas of the Hunter — albeit with two different messages.

In the former they promise to back mining jobs; in the latter, they promise to make electric vehicles more affordable — with a spike of advertising investment of $20,000 from Labor’s national secretariat in November.

Independent candidate for Wentworth Allegra Spender has only 74 followers on Facebook but has spent $7882 on its platforms already. Picture: Jane Dempster

This dual-messaging is a risk the Coalition runs now, as inner-city Liberals get spooked by the self-proclaimed, non-partisan “Voices of” groups.

For a non-partisan outfit, The Voices echo each other’s lines, copy each other’s ads, and collectively spray against the Coalition.

Labor somehow always escapes animosity from this non-group of apparently disconnected, non-partisan “independents”.

The Coalition once made a virtue of never pandering to the Greens, but with this new coat of paint, in shades of teal and pink, The Voices have it spooked.

If the Coalition had given in to the Stop Adani movement the last election, it would not have won 77 per cent of the seats in Queensland, which, combined with the result in WA, was what handed them government.

Yet this week we’ve stopped gas and oil drilling and exploration off the NSW coast — which is what The Voices want: no gas, no oil, no mining. The consequence of that is commodities become scarcer, more expensive, we lose jobs, and we become more reliant on other countries.

Australia’s domestic diesel fuel additive supplies have dwindled. Without the diesel additive AdBlue, modern trucks just don’t work. Tamworth has one bowser left and it’s on rations. This would have our trucks and farming stop by February if news reports are believed, causing more chaos than Covid because we don’t produce urea in Australia any more as overseas companies and emissions targets move our industries overseas.

Fuel prices are set to soar exponentially and have already hit record highs.

Kylea Tink has spent $6385 on her 14 ads since September. Picture: John Appleyard

The government can best regulate The Voices like other political parties and treat them like the Greens, who the Liberals never sought to appease and the Nationals enjoy driving to maddened exasperation.

Funnily enough, these so-called independents are more manageable to herd into one party line than the candidates of any of the major parties.

Whether in Mackellar, Kooyong, Wentworth or North Sydney, their advertising is eerily similar, all warning that the city MP they are fighting “votes with Barnaby Joyce on climate” — almost as if they aren’t independent at all, but following talking points issued by one guru.

The Voices team, which claims not to be a team, runs thousands of dollars of advertising on online platforms each week. At the same time, Facebook pages professing to be “community organisations” and “independent” climate groups run thousands of dollars more on their behalf, and self-diagnosed NGOs run their political infrastructure.

What The Voices lack in followers the make up with money, running up to four times the PM’s online spend in the past seven days.

Kylea Tink, an “independent” for North Sydney, and “North Sydney Independents Pty Ltd” has spent more than $6385 on her 14 ads since September, with an authorisation on the Voices for North Sydney page from an address in Kiah, 500km away on the border of NSW and Victoria.

That would be normal if it were a political party with a head office somewhere, but why is the third-party authority for Voices of North Sydney coming from a seven-hour drive away?

Mackellar “independent” Dr Sophie Scamps spent $1644 in the past seven days on Facebook advertising — nearly twice what the Prime Minister spent — and Monique Ryan, the “independent” for Kooyong, has only had her page for seven days at the time of writing but had already spent $3539 — nearly four times the equivalent of what the Prime Minister spent on Facebook advertising in the past week.

Wentworth’s Allegra Spender only has 74 followers on Facebook but has spent $7882 on its platforms already, including more than $3111 in the past week.

Unlike political parties, The Voices don’t disclose their fortunes.

They haven’t had three years to fundraise, so where are these thousands of dollars a week for advertising coming from?

And, most importantly, who will they back when they need to choose the PM?

Opinion writer Vikki Campion. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Gary Ramage

Clive Palmer, whether you love him or hate him, (and my father is running as his United Australia Party candidate for Kennedy) at least is upfront about his advertising prowess, where his money comes from, and what he believes in.

All we can ascertain from The Voices is they somehow read each other’s minds since they say they are not linked in any way.

They spend a lot of time on social media talking about how they aren’t working together, then repost and congratulate each other and wish each other luck.

It’s all eerily reminiscent of Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor who, surprise, surprise, are in a working arrangement with one of The Voices’ biggest supporters, Simon Holmes a Court.

Tony, Rob and a whole bucket of bile.

Activist groups such as Climate200 then say they “support winnable campaigns with funding expertise and infrastructure” so long as they are “committed to climate action and integrity”.

If it looks like a political party, talks like a political party and spends like a political party, it’s a political party — and should be treated as such.

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