GetUp chief Paul Oosting admits to mistakes made during federal election campaign

GetUp’s national director says his group adopted the strategy of targeting Coalition MPs in safe seats because they expected a Labor win.

Getup National Director Paul Oosting at the National Press Club in Canberra, ON Wednesday. Picture: AAP

GetUp national director Paul Oosting has admitted it was a mistake to target “hard-right” Coalit­ion MPs in traditionally safe seats during the election, declaring the strategy was adopted because the lobby was expecting a Labor win.

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Mr Oosting also attacked blue-collar workers sceptical about emissions action as “climate denier­s”, despite conceding more empathy needed to be shown to people living in coalmining areas.

Mr Oosting said he was “very proud” of the lobby group’s campaign­ at the May federal poll, despite spending $3.5m to unseat six conservative MPs.

Tony Abbott was the only MP GetUp targeted who lost his seat while the Coalition retained seats held by senior conservative MPs Greg Hunt, Kevin Andrews, Nic­olle Flint and Christian Porter.

Mr Oosting claimed partial success with GetUp’s campaign against Mr Dutton because the Home Affairs Minister enjoyed a smaller swing towards him than in other parts of Queensland.

“I’m certainly very proud of the campaign that our members ran together,” Mr Oosting said in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.

“We all fed in what our priorit­ies should be, what issues we should work on, who are those we wanted to focus our energies on. And we chose the hard-right faction­ of the Coalition. Many of those are in what are traditionally deemed to be safe seats.

“Where … we thought things were going to fall, that’s where we decided to work. Undoubtedly we would do things differently if we had that opportunity again.”

Paul Oosting campaigns in Warringah in the lead-up to the federal election

Mr Oosting conceded that a lesson from the election was that more empathy needed to be shown to coal workers in regional areas as the economy transitions away from fossil fuels.

“It’s absolutely one of the lessons that I have taken away from recent times, particularly the federal election campaign,” he said.

But he added that the activist group would not engage with clim­ate sceptics and people wary of clim­ate change actions because of the impact on their livelihood.

“In terms of engaging with clim­ate deniers, we don’t engage … and we encourage others to do the same,” Mr Oosting said.

He also denied that GetUp ran a negative campaign at the election, despite being forced because of a backlash to take down ads attacking­ Mr Abbott, depicting him as a lifesaver who refused to save a drowning swimmer.

“We were talking about issues. We were talking about the issues that our membership truly believe that we need to make progress on,” Mr Oosting said.

Ms Flint accused GetUp of using aggressive tactics in “a concerted attack to destroy me mentally” in its campaign against her in the Adelaide seat of Boothby.

After the election, Scott Morrison threatened to investigate the left-wing activist group’s claims it was “politically independent” and described it as a “shady group that operates in the shadows”. “They should be ashamed of what they did in Boothby,’’ the Prime Minister said in August. “Asha­med of what they did to Nicolle Flint. It was misogyny. It was bull­ying. ‘’

The Australian Electoral Commission has ruled GetUp is not an associated entity­ operating for the benefit of Labor and the Greens.