GetUp to get what’s coming, says Peter Dutton

Peter Dutton has lashed GetUp for ‘deceptive’, ‘undemocratic’ and ‘unrepresentative’ conduct.

Peter Dutton arrives with his wife Kirilly to celebrate his win in Dickson on Saturday night. Picture: AAP

Peter Dutton has lashed GetUp for “deceptive”, “undemocratic” and “unrepresentative” conduct during its failed campaign to oust him from his Queensland seat, saying he would back “parliamentary processes” to bring the activist group to heel.

The Home Affairs Minister said GetUp had spent well over $1 million in a deeply personal ­attempt to defeat him in Dickson.

He said he “absolutely” supported moves to force greater scrutiny and accountability on GetUp, which he called a “front” for Labor and the Greens.

His comments signal a potential further attempt by senior Liberals Ben Morton and Eric Abetz to have the Australian Electoral Commission define GetUp as an “associated” political entity of Labor or the Greens. Such a step would undermine GetUp’s claim to be independent, damaging its appeal to supporters.

Mr Dutton said he believed GetUp had behaved “deceptively” by “taking money on false pretences” early in the campaign when donations were sought for billboards which never appeared in the electorate.

A similar fundraising effort was launched in the campaign’s final week for a mobile billboard to be parked outside his office. That, too, never appeared, he said.

GetUp included Mr Dutton on a “hit-list” of seven Coalition MPs targeted in a multi-million-dollar effort to “remove the hard-right’s grip on power”.

Most GetUp resources were ­directed at defeating Tony Abbott in his Sydney seat of Warringah, won by independent Zali Steggall, because of his alleged “out of date” views on climate change.

Mr Dutton was next on GetUp’s hit list because of what it claimed was his “heartless” position on immigration. He told The Australian that GetUp used volunteers in Dickson to doorknock residents and give out how-to-vote cards. But he said the campaign was “counter-productive and ultimately failed” because the group could not mobilise local residents and was forced to rely on “fly-in, fly-out” workers from Sydney and Melbourne, and some from a Brisbane suburb outside his electorate.

“GetUp was certainly savage, they were personal, and they were liars,” Mr Dutton said. “Ultimately their campaign backfired spectacularly.”

He said GetUp was a propaganda machine. “It is an abomination and I think it is undemocratic, unrepresentative, and it is clearly a front for the Greens and for the Labor Party. Affiliations run deep.”

GetUp claimed credit for ousting Mr Abbott. While GetUp failed in its efforts to oust any other MPs, its national director, Paul Oosting, has claimed a partial victory in Mr Dutton’s seat by saying he had “failed to recreate” a statewide swing of 4.2 per cent, scoring instead a 2.5 per cent swing to him.

Mr Dutton said: “We haven’t finished counting yet. There are about 11,000 pre-polls and postals, which I think will bring us up over 55 per cent. But frankly those comments just smack of desperation. The fact is, their campaign, where they’ve spent well over $1m in my seat, has failed, and it failed because their model has failed.

“They can’t get volunteer workers on the ground. They talk a big game online, and Paul Oosting loves the media, but in the end I think it is more about his self-promotion than effectiveness.”

He said he would leave it to Mr Morton and Senator Abetz to pursue GetUp in the parliament’s joint select committee on electoral matters, saying he would support changes “absolutely”.

GetUp recently beat off attempts to have the AEC change its status to an associated entity. The AEC made such a preliminary finding, but retreated in its final report by saying there was insufficient evidence.