Election 2022: Liberals gunning for ‘fake independents’

The Libs have launched a website attacking ‘fake independents’ linked to Climate 200.

Scott Morrison with Holly the black cockatoo during a visit to the Cairns Zoo & Wildlife Dome on Tuesday. Picture: Brendan Radke

The Liberal Party has launched a website attacking “fake independents” linked to Climate 200, accusing the candidates of being linked to Labor, having extreme views and lacking transparency.

The website, headlined ­“beware of fake independents”, accuses the independent candidates of being disingenuous in claiming they are not aligned to a political party. Liberal strategists will highlight the website through the party’s social media accounts during the election campaign.

“A well-funded, co-ordinated network of so-called ‘independents’ are targeting Liberals, while deceiving voters,” the website says. “They are being put forward by the ‘Voices of…’ movement, which is only targeting government MPs, despite claiming to be nonpartisan.

“Recent media reports note a number of activists behind the ‘Voices of’ movement are active in extreme groups like Extinction Rebellion. Others have expressed fringe views, like comparing mining (‘ecocide’) with the Holocaust. Despite campaigning on transparency, these ‘independent’ candidates refuse to reveal who they’d support in a hung parliament.”

The website includes a collation of news reports backing up the claims.

Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court, who is supporting more than a dozen candidates trying to unseat Liberals, is aiming to raise $20m ahead of the May election. The independents are mostly running in affluent Liberal-held seats in Sydney and Melbourne, including Wentworth, North Sydney, Goldstein and Josh Frydenberg’s seat of Kooyong.

On Tuesday, Scott Morrison took his pre-election campaign to the electorate of Leichhardt and pledged $15m for tourism marketing for far north Queensland. The Prime Minister talked up the government’s record as an economic manager, in a pitch Coalition strategists hope will ward off ­advances from independents and Labor.

“You don’t get knee-jerk reactions from this government. You get carefully thought through ­responsible policies that perform to their task,” Mr Morrison said in Cains. “That’s what Job­Keeper did.”

Superannuation Minister Jane Hume said the Climate 200-backed independents “have Labor connections and opaque funding sources”.

“Governing involves detailed policy, but beyond a few platitudes on a few issues, no one knows what these independents’ policies are,” Senator Hume said.

“In many cases, they don’t know. And they can’t explain how they’d decide. They won’t even say who they’d support in a hung parliament.

“In uncertain times, the last thing we need is a Labor-Greens-independent hung parliament. “Yet this is what their biggest backer says he wants.”

Senator Hume said if the independents were nonpartisan they would also be targeting Labor. “Despite claiming to be progressive, they’re targeting moderates, including Australia’s first ever openly gay MP, Victoria’s first openly gay MP and our first MP of Indian origin,” she said.

“We intend to hold these so-called independents to the same level of scrutiny that they demand of others.”