Territory Alliance Drysdale candidate Aiden Pigram quits after discriminatory social media posts surface
A TERRITORY Alliance candidate who once compared Islam to ‘modern day Hitler’ has resigned from the party after discriminatory Facebook posts he wrote came to light.
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A TERRITORY Alliance candidate who once compared Islam to “modern day Hitler” has resigned from the party after discriminatory Facebook posts he wrote came to light.
Aiden Pigram’s stint as Territory Alliance’s candidate for Drysdale lasted a week after the NT News approached the party with numerous Facebook posts written by Mr Pigram in recent years that were either prejudicial to Muslims, women, children in detention, and even teachers.
Mr Pigram is the second candidate Territory Alliance has lost in the seat of Drysdale, after original high-profile candidate NT Police detective Andrew Bedwell chose to bow out of the race.
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In a post to the page “Boycott Halal in Australia”, Mr Pigram wrote in 2014; “It looks to me that islam is the modern day Hitler. World domination eradicate non converters and all that crap. So why is it that Governments standby and do nothing”.
In a 2015 post, Mr Pigram pondered, while watching a TV show about white-supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan, if they were still active in the NT.
“Now before anyone say I am racist no I am not I am just simply wondering … they used to be active in Darwin years ago but not sure if they are still around.
“Does anyone know or maybe heard if they are still around,” he wrote.
Also in 2015, Mr Pigram asked why a whole school had to take a day off for personal learning, saying he was “sure that the teachers could do that in the 12 weeks a year they get for holidays”.
Mr Pigram, in July 2016, posted that he was “getting a bit sick” of hearing about “these poor kids in detention” in relation to the children that became the focus of the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre after allegations of mistreatment and the use of pepper spray and spit hoods on kids.
Territory Alliance leader Terry Mills said the social media posts “did not reflect the values of the party” and he had asked Mr Pigram to resign as the candidate.
The party confirmed that he had.
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Mr Pigram, when announcing his candidacy, said that as a long-term resident of Palmerston he wanted to see “immediate action on the obvious crime and youth issues and anti-social behaviour” in the community.
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