Then Liberal candidate Meralyn Klein in front row of Anti-Islam party’s campaign launch

A Liberal candidate contesting a marginal seat was in the front row of an Anti-Islam party’s campaign launch, the same party she said tricked her into making a video that called for a “Muslim ban”.

Disendorsed Liberal candidate Meralyn Klein at the campaign launch of an anti-Islam Australian Liberty Alliance Party. She listened to speeches by Avi Yemini and Fraser Anning.

A LIBERAL candidate contesting a marginal seat was in the front row of an anti-Islam party’s campaign launch, the same party she said tricked her into making a video that called for a “Muslim ban”.

Meralyn Klein was disendorsed after she appeared in the Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA) video, which Liberal leader Matthew Guy dubbed ‘grossly inappropriate’.

She said the ALA and its candidate Avi Yemini duped her into appearing in the video and “then cut and sliced it” to appear anti-Muslim.

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Avi Yemini speaks at the launch.

But the Herald Sun can reveal Ms Klein was at the ALA’s campaign launch in October, months after she was preselected to run for the Liberal Party in Yan Yean.

Far-right federal MP Fraser Anning, who was dumped from One Nation and the Katter Australia Party, after calling for a ‘final solution’ to immigration, also spoke at the launch.

Mr Yemini said Ms Klein had courted his party’s supporters for months.

“She was in the front row of our campaign launch,” he said.

“She sat through all our anti-Islam speeches that night.”

Mr Yemini said the ALA — which has a policy to ban all Muslim migration for 10 years — had only run a candidate in Yan Yean so it could direct preferences to Ms Klein, it is the only lower house seat the party is contesting. Ms Klein has denied she is anti-Muslim.

Ms Klein said this week she would run as an independent in Yan Yean, even though the ballot paper will still list her as a Liberal, held by Labor’s Danielle Green with a margin of just 3.65 per cent.

Ms Klein could not be contacted last night.