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Abbott to draw social media battlelines against GetUp

Tony Abbott will direct a Liberal campaign mach­ine on the back of his Facebook followers to counter the left-wing activist group.

Tony Abbott as a large following on Facebook. Picture: Kym Smith
Tony Abbott as a large following on Facebook. Picture: Kym Smith

Tony Abbott will direct a Liberal Party social media campaign mach­ine on the back of almost half a million of his Facebook followers in a bid by the federal party to mobilise its centre-right support base as an election counter to the left-wing activist group GetUp.

The move to mirror the election campaign tactics used by Labor and groups aligned to the Left has been backed by Scott Morrison and the federal Liberal secretariat as a key campaign and fundraising vehicle ahead of the May election.

The creation of a campaign website based around Mr Abbott’s extensive social media footprint follows concerns among senior Liberals that the party, and the ­centre right more broadly, had failed since the 2007 election loss to deal with Labor’s formidable campaign resourcing and the success of the activist Left.

Mr Abbott has the largest social media footprint of any federal MP, with 450,000 Facebook followers.

Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews is understood to be the only Australian politician with a larger following. “This is something GetUp have been doing effectively for some years now,” Mr Abbott told The Australian.

“It will be seeking to mobilise Liberal Party supporters, which are a significantly larger group than Liberal Party members, to get active in campaigning.

“Since the 2007 election loss there has been a lot of talk of the need to develop a counter force to GetUp. Until now, it’s been a lot of talk and no action. I think the ­centre right has been too polite and too passive in this space.

“The silent majority ceases to be a majority if it remains silent.”

Mr Abbott is facing a contest to retain his seat of Warringah, with several independents challenging for the seat in Sydney’s northern suburbs. A former staffer of Malcolm Turnbull, Alice Thompson, yesterday announced she was running in the seat.

Mr Abbott said the social media campaign was a separate entity to his local campaign, funded independently and aimed at a national audience for the re-election of the Morrison government.

The website will go live today under the banner of Battlelines, based on the title of Mr Abbott’s political treatise first published as a book in 2009.

It is understood to be a completely separate entity to Mr ­Abbott’s electorate campaign site and did not involve any taxpayer electoral funds, relying solely on political fundraising by Mr Abbott.

A senior Liberal Party source said it would be a “significant” campaign tool for the government.

“Frankly, no one on the Right has done this well,” the source said.

“Labor does it well, GetUp do it very well.

“This is about creating a centre-right campaign site to engage and activate half a million people online. He (Mr Abbott) has a huge social media presence. There is no one bigger federally.

“The point is that Liberal MPs need to modernise the way they deal with their electorates. The bloke has a huge megaphone in terms of his reach and brand.

“When he speaks, hundreds of thousands of Australian listen … it’s not a leadership issue. He has a particular brand and, as a former PM, people listen.”

The Australian revealed late last year that a third-party centre-right political lobby had been formed with the backing of several prominent Australians.

Advance Australia claimed at the time it was established as the mainstream version of GetUp, with informal links into the Liberal Party.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/abbott-to-draw-social-media-battlelines-against-getup/news-story/257b483b309867bae13d1b537f6b1cbb