GetUp links of activist targeting Frydenberg

Michael Staindl, the climate activist targeting Josh Frydenberg, campaigned alongside GetUp.

Michael Staindl outside his home in Hawthorn, Melbourne. Picture: David Geraghty/The Australian

Michael Staindl, the climate activist challenging Josh Frydenberg’s eligibility to sit in parliament, donated money to GetUp and campaigned alongside the left-leaning group ahead of the federal election.

A week after GetUp ­denounced as “offensive” Mr Staindl’s High Court challenge on the grounds of dual citizenship, The Australian can reveal Mr Staindl appeared outside the Treasurer’s Kooyong office in February wearing an orange GetUp shirt.

The senior member of the green activist group Lighter Footprints, who has worked with the organisation since 2008, has publicly endorsed Oliver Yates’s fund set up to pursue Mr Frydenberg in the High Court over separate claims that Liberal Chinese-­language signs misled voters.

He wrote a letter to The Age newspaper in 2017, under the headline “Time to PayUp”, in which he spoke of his support for GetUp. “I love GetUp for their transparency in so regularly surveying members as to what issues they (I) want action on, and then acting on those issues,” he wrote. “I’ve donated regularly in the past. As a result of the government’s current attacks I’m trebling my contributions, effective immediately.”

At the pre-election rally in front of Mr Frydenberg’s office, the Hawthorn resident said the Liberal deputy leader had “betrayed us” over climate change. The Australian understands Mr Staindl and Lighter Footprints members regularly met the Treasurer in the past, including at a 2013 lunch in Mr Frydenberg’s office with Greg Hunt, previously the Coalition’s climate action and environment spokesman.

Mr Staindl, who was escorted from the MCG by police after taking part in an Extinction ­Rebellion protest in July, has filed a High Court challenge testing Mr Frydenberg’s eligibility to represent the eastern Melbourne seat of Kooyong.

The challenge, aimed at establishing whether Mr Frydenberg has Hungarian citizenship through his mother, Erica, who fled the Holocaust, was lodged by Vanessa Bleyer of Bleyer Lawyers, who unsuccessfully ran for the Tasmanian parliament as a Greens candidate and tried to replace former Greens leader Christine Milne in the Senate.

Mr Yates, who won 8.98 per cent of the primary vote in his attempt to unseat Mr Frydenberg at the May 18 election, is running a separate legal challenge through the Court of Disputed Returns.

The former chief executive of the Clean Energy ­Finance Corporation yesterday said he did not “believe” Mr Staindl, who follows him on social media, supported his campaign or that he was a member of his Kooyong Independents Group.

Mr Staindl told The Australian he was unable to comment.

“I had several hundred volunteers throughout the election campaign and have several thousand followers on various forms of social media,” Mr Yates said.

On May 25, Mr Staindl shared a link to Mr Yates’s “Code Purple Integrity Fighting Fund”, set up to support his legal challenge, which was lodged last week. As of yesterday, only $21,955 of a $100,000 target had been raised.

Referring to Mr Frydenberg’s citizenship status, Mr Yates yesterday said he was surprised the government had not sought to clarify the issue. “It surprises me that the government, and indeed the parliament, are not seeking urgent court clarity,” he said.

“The consequences of being ineligible are not insignificant. Candidates that are ineligible could change election results for certain seats, render elections void and, even if they don’t win, might be obtaining taxpayer electoral funding from the AEC.”

On Monday, Mr Yates distanced himself from Mr Staindl’s High Court petition, saying: “I’m challenging based upon the signs — it’s particularly inconvenient and unfortunate it’s come up at the same time.”

When pressed, Mr Yates said he thought it would be a “waste of time” and didn’t support it. But an email from Mr Yates to members of the Kooyong Independents Group — of which he is director — shows he tried to enlist supporters to help investigate electoral issues such as parliamentary ineligibility.

The email, seen by The Australian, was sent weeks after the election and shows Mr Yates inviting supporters to join one of three subcommittees — including an eligibility review — with the purpose of specifically investigating section 44 disclosures.

“It appears … many candidates in the last election failed to provide enough information in their S44 disclosures to enable voters to ­determine their eligibility to stand as candidates,” the email from June 14 reads. “This Eligibility Review team has already started to review disclosures. If thought appropriate, they will recommend candidates for referral to the High Court to obtain clarity. This has started in Higgins, Kooyong and Chisholm.”

The other two subcommittees included a “purple signs review” to “gather evidence” regarding the Chinese-language signs and a “tactics review” to investigate tactics deployed by the Liberal Party to “deliberately mislead voters”.

The email also called on “technologically magical” people to “dig up deleted and historic records and conversations” on ­social media to help the teams.

GetUp, which last week said it opposed Mr Staindl’s section 44 action against Mr Frydenberg on the grounds “no one should be denied a place in parliament because their family was forced to flee the Holocaust”, yesterday would not confirm, because of its privacy policy, whether Mr Staindl was a member.

A spokeswoman said there had been no internal or external engagement with Mr Staindl in relation to his Section 44 challenge. “The stance we’ve taken on this provision of the Constitution, including the specific challenge to Frydenberg, is pretty clear — it’s outdated and discriminatory.”