Advance aiming to roll back ‘Greens tide’

Conservative activist group Advance has launched a campaign against Zali Steggall over transgender athletes.

One of Advance’s Zali Steggall billboards hits the road in northern Sydney on Sunday.

Conservative activist group ­Advance has launched a campaign against pro-climate Warringah MP Zali Steggall over transgender athletes and will spend $1m sandbagging at-risk Coalition seats ahead of the May 21 election.

The group, set-up as Advance Australia ahead of the 2019 election to counter GetUp’s operations, on Sunday launched a blitz of Ms Steggall’s northern Sydney electorate with billboard trucks attacking the independent MP.

Advance executive director Matthew Sheahan said they were ramping up their focus on climate change independents and “woke politicians of all party persuasions wherever they might be found”.

Scott Morrison and Country Liberal Party senate candidate Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on Sunday defended Warringah Liberal candidate Katherine Deves over her comments on trans women.

Katherine Deves. Picture: Nikki Short

Ms Price, who said being “pro-women is not anti-trans”, said she had captained AFL teams in Central Australia “but if you have to be up against a bloke, that’s potentially life-threatening”.

“This is what we’re talking about, and this is what Katherine Deves is talking about when she is standing up for the rights of women,” Ms Price said.

Mr Sheahan said Ms Steggall, whom Advance is targeting with billboards featuring swimming champions Dawn Fraser, Emma McKeon and Emily Seebohm, had gone too far in her criticism of Ms Deves.

“The results of this election may change the Australia we love. Protecting jobs from the crazy climate agenda, building up Australia’s defence capabilities to strengthen our national security, and standing up to extremists like Zali Steggall who want to block protections for women and girls sports from transgender athletes, is crucial to protect Australian ­values,” Mr Sheahan told The Australian.

“We know that if we vote for Labor, we’ll get the Greens. And the election is looking more and more like it will wind up in a hung parliament.

“The Greens have said they’ll back Labor and the only thing climate candidates like Zali Steggall stand for are getting the Coalition out of office and calling parents ’transphobic’ because they worry about their girls competing against males in female-only sport.”

Swimming Australia chief executive Eugenie Buckley told Nine Newspapers late on Sunday that the organisation’s lawyers had demanded Adavance Australia stop using the images of swimmers on its billboards.

The billboard that Swimming Australia has demanded stop being used.

Mr Sheahan said Advance, which claims to have 300,000 supporters and 10,000 donors, would spend big on social and traditional media advertising to warn Australians that “if they vote Labor, they will also get the Greens”.

Advance is pouring resources into seats of Coalition MPs who are “focused on Australian values and protecting our freedom”, including Andrew Hastie in Canning and Defence Minister Peter Dutton in Dickson.

Mr Sheahan, who has deployed the group’s Xi Jinping “truth truck” across key electorates ­attacking Labor, said he was ­focused on avoiding an Anthony Albanese-Adam Bandt alliance and a “re-run of the 2013 Gillard-Greens government”.

“To Advance and its supporters, there is no greater threat to Australia’s freedom, security and prosperity than an Albanese-Bandt government. Albanese will swear till he’s blue in the face there will be no coalition, but the truth is, they’ve done it before,” he said.

“There is no doubt the ­Coalition is flawed and the march of net-zero climate hysteria and identity politics is its Achilles heel.

“But Advance will do what it can to let Australians know that Labor and the Greens are not fit to govern the country.”

GetUp national director Paul Oosting earlier this month told The Australian he would spend $3m during the election ­campaign.

GetUp is campaigning in the marginal Labor-held seats of Gilmore, Eden-Monaro, Macquarie and Lingiari, and inner-city Liberal seats targeted by Climate 200 independents, including Koo­yong, Goldstein and Mackellar.