Victorian Greens candidate Jay Dessi quits over Facebook posts

Jay Dessi stepped down after offensive posts emerged, including a joke about an Asian friend’s eyes.

Greens candidate Jay Dessi.

The Greens candidate for the Melbourne seat of Lalor Jay Dessi has been forced to quit after numerous offensive social media posts emerged, including a racist joke in which he questioned “which eyes are the real eyes” of an Asian friend.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale, who asked for a full briefing on Mr Dessi’s comments, said the ex-candidate’s posts between 2012 and 2015 were “clearly unacceptable”.

“Jay Dessi has given an unreserved apology to anyone they may have offended. I have now been advised that he has stood down as Candidate for Lalor,” Senator Di Natale told The Australian.

But the Greens leader appears to be sticking by his Northern Territory Lingiari candidate George Hanna, who has refused to apologise directly for sharing a meme in which the Liberal Party’s candidate Jacinta Price was called a “coconut”.

Mr Dessi has become the first Greens candidate to have to stand aside in this federal election campaign, but insisted it was his choice.

“I again apologise for offense that my posts may have caused,” he said.

A Victorian Greens spokesman said the party would take down campaigning materials in his name and apologised for not picking up on Mr Dessi’s “unsavoury” posts during the vetting process.

“This election has made it clear that social media has created new challenges for all parties in the candidate selection process, particularly for younger candidates who have grown up using social media,” the spokesman said.

“Following the Victorian Election, the Australian Greens provided additional resources to state parties to assist in the vetting of social media profiles. As a grassroots organisation, we do rely upon the assistance of candidates during this process. In this instance, some unsavoury comments from several years ago were not identified. The Victorian Greens apologise for this error.”

Senator Di Natale was accused of double standards by the major parties after it was revealed Mr Dessi and Mr Hanna had made racist jokes on social media while he publicly condemned others over hate speech.

Senator Di Natale told the ABC this morning: “I’m getting a briefing on that. They have given a full apology, in particular the gentleman in the Northern Territory, himself an aboriginal man.”

As reported in The Australian today , Mr Hanna called Lingiari Liberal candidate Jacinta Price, who like Mr Hanna is indigenous, a “coconut”.

Dessi’s offensive posts emerge

Earlier, The Australian revealed full details of the posts.

Mr Dessi joked about having sex with children and dead people, made a racist joke about an Asian friend’s eyes, posted a cartoon about oral sex and liked a post which joked about abortion and child pornography. Mr Dessi made the comments on social media between 2012 and 2015.

A post Mr Dessi liked.

The financial technology developer wrote the word “ectogasm” in response to a mock google search that began with the phrase “I had sex with” and offered the options “a minor”, “a child”, “a ghost”, “a 14-year-old” and “a condom”.

An “ectogasm” is sexual arousal inspired by someone who is dead.

Next to a photograph of an Asian friend wearing a frog hat, Mr Dessi wrote: “Which eyes are the real eyes?”

He posted a cartoon of a male animal receiving oral sex alongside a photograph of a friend, joking that the friend had a similar facial expression to the male animal, and liked a meme which said: “If abortion is considered murdering a baby, are ultrasounds child pornography?”

Next to a cartoon weather forecast predicting rain, Mr Dessi wrote, “That’s what she said.”

A post liked by Greens' candidate for Lalor, Jay Dessi.

On a post from a friend referring to a woman with many items in the express lane at a supermarket of being a “cow”, Mr Dessi wrote: “Hopefully they short-changed her.”

He also captioned a picture of people packed into a Melbourne train as “weekday peak hour, but with more of the unwashed,” and joked about putting starving children “through a mincer”.

As Nine Newspapers revealed yesterday, Mr Dessi had also referred to gamers who like violent video games as “faggots”, slammed a movement fighting to bring African war lord Joseph Kony to justice as “goddamn retards”, and liked an image of an impoverished black child with the caption “doesn’t own a computer, can still play minesweeper”.

A post on which Mr Dessi commented: ‘Clearly sex is for faggots’.

The controversy over Mr Dessi’s online conduct follows Greens Member for Melbourne Adam Bandt last week welcoming his Labor opponent Luke Creasey’s disendorsement, after Creasey was caught having made offensive posts on Facebook.

“The decision of the Labor candidate to resign is the right one,” Mr Bandt said at the time.

Labor MP Joanne Ryan, who holds former Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s old seat of Lalor with a margin of 12.2 per cent, said the comments were “insensitive, offensive and demonstrate poor judgment from someone who is politically involved and seeking public office.

“Adam Bandt and Richard Di Natale need to explain why there is one standard for Greens candidates and another for everyone else,” Ms Ryan said, noting that Mr Dessi had also stood for the Greens in the state seat of Werribee in November.

The Greens’ scandal-ridden state campaign saw one candidate accused of serious sexual misconduct and another exposed as having rapped about date rape and domestic violence.

The November campaign also saw a Greens staffer stood down over tweets which joked about child pornography, Muslims and feminism, and an upper house candidate who had boasted on Facebook about shoplifting and drug use forced to resign.

Greens candidate George Hanna shared this meme of Janinta Price.

In a statement, Mr Dessi said he was “truly sorry for the language used” in social media posts he made “many years ago” and comments he shared.

“The language and content was plainly offensive, and doesn’t reflect who I am today,” he said.

“I apologise unreservedly to anyone that it may have hurt.”

A spokesman for the Greens said the party was disappointed in the language used by Mr Dessi.

“The content of these posts and ‘likes’ is contrary to Australian Greens social media policy, and he has apologised for that,” the spokesman said.

“We have asked him to remove the posts to prevent further offence.

“As a party, we expect all candidates and members to be considerate in the way they talk online — and particularly when talking about race, disability, and gender and sexual identity.

“Young people who have grown up using social media are increasingly discovering that historic social media posts can have consequences long after the fact.”