Andrew Bolt: Self-righteous Teal pollies want more ‘honest’ campaigning – what hypocrites

In an election campaign drowning in utter bulltish, be sure to spare some contempt for sanctimonious Teal politicians caught in a cash-for-comment scandal.

In an election campaign drowning in bulltish, spare some contempt for sanctimonious Teal politicians caught in a cash-for-comment scandal.

Oh, how they campaigned on being more honest and transparent.

Take Allegra Spender, in Wentworth, declaring she’s determined to “do politics differently, with more integrity and more transparency”.

Or finger-wagging Monique Ryan, in Kooyong, likewise demanding more “transparency” and “truth in political advertising”.

Hypocrites. Spender now admits she paid an agency to get social media “influencers” to make videos about her, which you wouldn’t have known from what was posted.

Wentworth MP Allegra Spender previously declared she’s determined to do politics differently. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Milly Rose Bannister, a “mental health advocate” and “content creator”, dutifully made a video praising Spender as a saint: “Not a career politician, she’s a wicked-smart economist, mother, a daily five k (kilometre) queen.

“She had a perfectly lovely life, people just kept begging her to do it … She now fights, I mean fights, for actual climate action, political integrity and lowering cost of living.”

The only faint clue that this was cash for comment was a note at the end that the video was made “in collaboration” with Spender.

Bannister has also made videos for the Teal MP’s funding body, Climate 200, where she pats a dog more hysterically the more she claims to love a policy. She nearly kills the poor animal when she’s told of the Teals’ wind and solar promise.

That video, too, said only that it was made “in collaboration” with Climate 200.

When John Laws and Alan Jones took cash for making kind comments about products on their radio shows, journalists went nuclear. There was even an inquiry by the Australian Broadcasting Authority.

Monique Ryan didn’t have an opinion on whether such videos should at least warn viewers they’d been paid for by the politicians. Picture: Instagram

But things have changed. Asked on the ABC on Sunday whether such videos should at least warn viewers they’d been paid for by the politicians, the very opinionated Ryan suddenly had no opinion at all.

“I don’t have an opinion on it,” she said. Bugger transparency, it seems.

Interviewer David Speers seemed stunned: ““Really? You don’t think voters deserve to know that if someone they’re watching is saying great things about a politician, whether they’re being paid by that politician?”

Ryan, smirking, dawdled into long silences, eventually saying: “I’ll have to give it some thought … It’s not something I’ve given great thought to myself … I don’t know …”

Maybe she had other things on her mind, like her husband being caught stealing an election poster of Ryan’s Liberal opponent.

But stolen now is the Teals’ credibility on transparency.