By James Massola, Natassia Chrysanthos and Olivia Ireland
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The Coalition’s election campaign is being dogged by a lengthening list of candidate issues, the latest revelation that the contender for the Melbourne seat of Wills pleaded guilty to obtaining financial advantage by deception and was ordered to pay fines and compensation worth more than $10,000.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton on Thursday stonewalled questions about Jeffrey Kidney, who pleaded guilty in March 2024 to the charge and was ordered to pay $10,640 in compensation to the Victorian Work Cover authority. Kidney’s breach occurred between May and October 2019.
Jeffrey Kidney, the Liberal candidate for the inner Melbourne seat of Wills.Credit: Liberal Party
A conviction was not recorded against Kidney’s name, so the matter would not have shown up on a national police check. Kidney also gave the Ringwood Magistrates’ Court an undertaking of good behaviour, was ordered to pay costs of $2000 and to pay $500 into the court fund.
The unearthing of Kidney’s court appearance makes him the latest in a series of Coalition candidates to have had issues from their past resurface during the campaign. Whitlam candidate Ben Britton was dumped for saying women should not serve in combat in the army, while Bennelong candidate Scott Yung faced scrutiny for his fundraising disclosures and links to a Chinese Communist Party figure.
Candidates in Leichhardt, Bradfield and Kooyong have also faced difficulties, prompting questions about the quality of candidate vetting undertaken by state divisions.
Underscoring the growing number of candidates who have faced scrutiny over their past, one Liberal Party operative joked that “it’s harder to get a real estate licence than it is to run as a candidate for the Liberal Party”.
Dutton did not identify any problems on Wednesday when asked about the Coalition’s vetting processes.
“If you look at the standard of candidates we have selected across the board, I think we have selected some amazing people,” he said.
The opposition leader then pivoted to a verbal attack on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for deceiving the Australian people, suggesting the prime minister could be convicted by a court.
“I don’t think the prime minister is somebody who can be trusted, now to your point, he [Albanese] hasn’t been convicted by a court, but maybe he will because if he keeps going like this you can’t trust this prime minister with anything that he says,” Dutton said.
Dutton defended his party’s Leichhardt candidate, Jeremy Neal, who used Donald Trump-like MAGA merchandise in his campaign launch this month, and made social media posts in 2020 and 2021 that blamed feminists for Trump’s election loss and labelled China “a grub of a country”.
“That candidate [Neal] is someone who has served as a paramedic; he has made statements with regard to the matter that you raised,” Dutton said.
The opposition leader also backed the Liberal candidates in Bennelong, Bradfield and Kooyong under questioning this week. Kooyong candidate Amelia Hamer had pitched herself as a renter trying to break into the housing market despite owning two properties, while Bradfield candidate Gisele Kapterian was named in a Commonwealth harassment settlement, although no findings were made against her.
But Dutton did not elaborate when asked three times on Thursday whether he supported Kidney, who is contesting the inner Melbourne seat of Wills for the Liberals.
Kidney, who lives in the suburb of Boronia, has paid the costs ordered by the court and the money to the court fund, but has not yet paid the fine according to the Magistrates Court.
He does not appear to be disqualified from standing for election as a result of the guilty plea because under section 44 of Australia’s constitution, a person is disqualified from standing for parliament if they have to serve a prison sentence of more than 12 months.
It is also not clear what type of financial advantage Kidney obtained from WorkCover. Kidney offered a series of “no comments” when contacted by this masthead.
The Liberal Party’s campaign headquarters did not answer questions about whether the party had been aware of the guilty plea, whether it had been disclosed during the candidate’s vetting and what financial advantage he had obtained.
A Liberal Party spokesman said: “This was a matter involving WorkCover that related to work done between 2019 and 2021. When the case came before the Magistrates court more than a year ago, it was adjourned with no conviction recorded.”
Meanwhile, Dutton confirmed that several “deeply concerning” issues led him to dump Britton in Whitlam, while opting to keep the specifics private.
After stating that he respected Britton’s service in the ADF, Dutton told 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Thursday he held a “number of views that I don’t agree with” and that was the “grounds on which his candidacy was cancelled”.
One Liberal MP, who asked not to be named so they could discuss the party’s selection process, said they could not believe Britton got through.
“You have to go out of your way to hide things. I had to give the party passwords for all my social media,” they said.
“I was grilled by a former police detective, so I thought to myself, ‘How did [Britton] get through that?’”
Each state division of the Liberal Party has a separate process for selecting and vetting candidates.
The contest in Wills is between Labor MP Peter Khalil and the Greens’ former state leader Samantha Ratnam, but the Liberals attract enough votes to affect preference flows.
In 2022, Liberal Party candidate Tom Wright finished third with 17.3 per cent of the primary vote.
Kidney is described as a “national operations manager” on the Liberal Party’s website “with strong experience in business and community events”.
He has previously put his hand up to be a Liberal Party candidate for the Victorian byelection when Daniel Andrews stepped down as premier in 2023 and vacated the state seat of Mulgrave.
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