Monique Ryan, husband apologise after he is filmed removing Liberal sign

Teal MP Monique Ryan and her husband, Peter Jordan, have apologised after he was filmed removing a sign backing Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer, marking the highest profile incident in a tit-for-tat signage war in the battleground seat of Kooyong.

Videos obtained by this masthead show two youths slashing a Liberal sign to “humiliate” a home owner while Ryan posters have been defaced with markers as the increasingly intense contest defies the affluent east Melbourne seat’s genteel character and some incidents end up in court.

Ryan, who campaigned on restoring integrity to politics, and her husband both apologised for his behaviour in taking away a sign. “I unreservedly apologise for removing the sign,” Jordan said in a statement after video of Saturday’s encounter was revealed by this masthead on Monday.

“It was a mistake. I believed the sign was illegally placed but should have reported my concerns to council.”

The footage of Jordan shows the MP’s husband walking briskly away with Hamer’s placard under his arm down a street in Camberwell as the person filming asks a series of questions.

“I’m taking the sign down,” Jordan says in the video. When asked why, he says “it’s on public land”.

Jordan is asked repeatedly who he is by the man filming, who notes Jordan is wearing a teal shirt underneath his jumper. “I’m not saying who I am,” Jordan responds.

At one point, the man attempts to take the sign away from Jordan on the basis that it remains his property. Jordan pulls it back, saying “if it goes back up, it’ll be taken down again”.

“It’s an illegally put-up sign – anyone can take [it] down because it’s illegal.”

Jordan, who is an executive at a medical device company, eventually surrenders the sign. Ryan echoed her husband’s apology for removing the sign.

“It should not have happened,” she said. “All concerns around signage should be reported to council.”

The man who recorded the video, who asked not to be named, said it was filmed on Saturday afternoon while he was visiting his parents.

“I was out the front doing some gardening and I hear some weird grunting noise and I opened up the door and there was a bloke ripping out the sign,” he said.

The man said he and his family are Liberal supporters, but not members of the party. He claimed he told Jordan he could have knocked on the door to ask the sign be moved instead of taking it.

“The sign was on the nature strip, but it’s hard to know where to draw the line in placing it,” he said.

Under state and local laws, campaign signs are not allowed to extend over, or be placed on, council land or public property such as nature strips.

A spokesman for Boroondara Council said it would not “proactively remove or review signage” but did investigate all reports by residents.

Liberal home affairs spokesman James Paterson said members of parliament and their spouses should behave better, especially after campaigning on an integrity platform.

“Dozens and dozens of Amelia Hamer’s signs have gone missing in recent weeks and others have been very badly vandalised,” Paterson said. “I think it’s important to understand whether Monique’s volunteers were involved in any way shape or form.”

Two more videos of Kooyong corflute vandalism emerged on Monday. One shows two young people using a knife to slice up a Hamer poster on a residential fence in Brighton on March 7 as they discuss how to “humiliate” the homeowner and candidate.

A Liberal spokesman said the incident had been reported to police. A Victoria Police spokeswoman confirmed officers were making inquiries.

The second video, from Monday morning, shows a man pulling down and throwing a Hamer sign while walking a dog in Balwyn. The identities of the people in both videos are unknown and there is no suggestion they are formally part of the Ryan campaign.

An Amelia Hamer corflute was allegedly destroyed on March 7 in Toorak in the federal seat of Kooyong.

In a statement, Ryan said she was distressed at footage of her opponent’s signs being destroyed and emphasised any damage to a corflute was unacceptable.

“Since January this year, I’m aware of more than 130 documented cases of defacement, damage, or theft of my corflutes — in some cases, this has extended to damage to fences and homes hosting the corflutes,” Ryan said.

“Victoria Police have been involved for some months in investigating these incidents: because of their investigations, there’s currently one matter pending before the Magistrates Court and another matter pertaining to multiple events under active investigation.”

In other cases, Ryan has made light of her own corflutes being vandalised, posting an Instagram montage of photos of corflutes where her teeth had been coloured with black marker with the caption, “reasons why we need to get dental in Medicare”.

Credit: Matt Golding

Last Friday Ryan’s campaign organised a snap rally of dozens of supporters outside The Tower Hotel in Hawthorn East to protest an ad on the pub which Ryan described as a “nasty piece of attack advertising which misrepresents my voting record in parliament”.

The “Teal Revealed” ad claimed Ryan voted with the Greens 77 per cent of the time in parliament as part of a wider campaign by the Liberal Party to discredit the Climate 200-backed independents.

Last year The Age and Sydney Morning Herald analysed the voting records of each teal independent. It showed Ryan voted with Labor on either the second or third reading of substantive legislation 70 per cent of the time.

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