Election 2022: GetUp shifts campaign tactics, confirms talks with Climate 200

GetUp boss Paul Oosting has had conversations with Simon Holmes a Court but says the left-wing activist group will judge Climate 200 candidates on their policies.

GetUp national director Paul Oosting says the pro-climate group has abandoned the failed personal attack strategy it used in 2019. Picture: Jane Dempster

GetUp national director Paul Oosting has had conversations with Simon Holmes a Court but says the left-wing activist group will judge Climate 200 candidates on their policies, as he prepares a $3m election campaign blitz.

Mr Oosting, who has run the controversial grassroots activist movement since 2015, said GetUp had shifted its campaign strategy away from deeply personal tactics employed at recent elections to a clearer focus on core issues.

With GetUp campaigning in Labor marginal seats and inner-city Liberal seats where Climate 200 independents are running, Mr Oosting rejected claims that he was co-ordinating resources to support opposition MPs and pro-climate candidates.

“GetUp is an independent movement. We will judge Climate 200 and the candidates around them just as we will Labor, the ­Coalition, Greens, other minor parties and independents and hold them to account,” Mr Oosting told The Australian.

“We can see where parties are stacking up and that’s the basis on which our members will direct their efforts. When we get out and hit the streets, making phone calls, and being present on election day … there will be no co-ordination directed to those candidates.

“These sorts of innuendo get thrown around in election campaigns but we’ll stick to working on our issues and that is the most ­effective way and judging the ­candidates on their merits.”

GetUp is supporting pro-climate candidates in the Liberal seats of Goldstein, Kooyong and Mackellar, held by Tim Wilson, Josh Frydenberg and Jason Falinski. It is also pouring resources into marginal Labor seats Macquarie, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore and Lingiari, and Labor-Greens target seats Leichhardt, Page and Ryan.

Mr Oosting said he had “absolutely” spoken with Mr Holmes a Court during his time with GetUp but stressed that “our work ­remains independent”.

“He and I have spoken in the past – he’s obviously been a long-term activist on renewable energy topics and has been well known for the last decade speaking out as a public figure on those and also his other roles in the space on boards and as an investor,” he said.

Mr Oosting said GetUp’s policy platform was based around the climate impacts of bushfires, floods, drought and storms, protecting ­Indigenous communities from fracking, and better healthcare.

After a disastrous 2019 campaign where GetUp’s “hard right strategy” – targeting Liberal conservatives Nicolle Flint, Peter Dutton, Kevin Andrews and Greg Hunt – failed to dent the ­Coalition’s success, Mr Oosting said the group had shifted its focus from safe seats to tighter contests.

“In the previous election we did focus on the role of the hard right faction in the Coalition – the role that people like Tony Abbott, Christian Porter, Kevin Andrews and others have played in pulling Australia in the wrong direction on issues like climate change where the majority of people want to see action,” Mr Oosting said.

“They’ve had this disproportionate impact in pulling us in the wrong direction. We worked in a range of seats, including a number of safe seats. But this election the world is a different place.

“I always think we need to do more to focus in on the issues. Politics should be about judging on the merits of what the candidates are standing for – on the ­issues, the policy issues, the ­funding issues, where they want to take the country.”

Conceding that Coalition MPs and candidates no longer engaged with GetUp’s election policy surveys, Mr Oosting said they were preparing an advertising blitz funded by more than 40,000 ­donors, who contribute on average $30 to $40.

“Our movement will spend a similar amount this election to previous ones. It’s in the ballpark of $2.7 to $3m. We believe we can have an impact. We have never and will never spend the sort of money that Clive Palmer and other big corporate interests and mining magnates will spend.”

GetUp is putting up billboards in Mr Wilson’s Melbourne seat of Goldstein, where former ABC journalist Zoe Daniel is the Climate 200 candidate, as well as ­preparing placards, TV, social media and radio advertisements, recruitment drives, phone call and SMS blitzes and on-the-ground ­direct campaigning.