Green candidate for Higgins Jason Ball labelled a hypocrite for Holden promotion

Higgins candidate Jason Ball criticised for using Instagram to promote a Holden he was given.

Greens candidate for Higgins Jason Ball, right, pictured with Greens candidate for Kooyong Julian Burnside, left, and Greens leader Richard Di Natale. Picture: AAP

Greens candidate for Higgins Jason Ball has been labelled a “hypocrite” by Labor for using his official candidate Instagram account to promote a Holden car he was given for free as part of a marketing deal.

In at least 13 posts between June 2017 and February 2018, Mr Ball shared pictures of a Holden with the hashtags #HoldenAstra, #LetsGoThere and #collab to his 7,352 Instagram followers.

“Excited to partner with @holdenaustralia, who’ll be helping me get around to share my story wit schools and sporting clubs across the state in this amazing #HoldenAstra,” Mr Ball posted on 12 June 2017.

Other professional looking photographs of the car shared by Mr Ball were captioned “Dreaming of a weekend away in my #HoldenAstra”, “You never know what’s just around the corner while exploring Melbourne’s laneways” and “I [love heart emoji] my #HoldenAstra thiiiiiiiis much”.

In a press release from October 2017, Holden referred to Mr Ball as a “friend and collaborator”.

At the time of the Holden deal, Mr Ball’s twitter profile described him as the “Greens candidate for Higgins 2016” and he regularly uploaded photographs of himself wearing a Greens shirt while campaigning for marriage equality.

Just over a month after he stopped posting about Holden, Mr Ball was officially announced as the Greens candidate for the key battleground seat of Higgins, recently vacated by Liberal frontbencher Kelly O’Dwyer.

Mr Ball told the ABC last week: “[Holden] gave me a car and in exchange for that I had to do an Instagram post once a month and I did that for a couple of months.”

Mr Ball was a no-show at the Greens press conference in Melbourne on Monday, and did not answer questions from The Australian.

“Jason Ball is a hypocrite,” Labor’s shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus told The Australian.

“The Greens say they want to get big corporates out of politics — but Jason Ball has used his candidate Instagram account in a promotion deal with Holden cars.”

Greens politicians have repeatedly criticised Labor and the Coalition for taking money from big corporations.

“While the major parties continue to take money from big corporate interests, they will never be completely focused on what is good for our communities,” the Greens policy states.

A spokesman for Holden told The Australian it runs a number of different marketing programs to loan vehicles to people from a range of different fields from sports to popular culture.

“Under one of these programs, Mr Ball was one of 200 Australians we approached for a six month loan of one of our vehicles, due to his advocacy for diversity in sport and being named Young Australian of the Year,” the spokesman said.

Holden said the deal with Mr Ball ended in early 2018.

Mr Ball’s social media followers commented in 2017 that it looked like he was “shilling” for the car company because his posts looked “a lot like paid ads”.

But when asked on Instagram if he personally, or the Greens, had any kind of financial deal with Holden, Mr Ball replied: “That’s a no to both questions”.

According to the Australian Association of National Advertising, money doesn’t need to change hands for social media posts to be considered advertising.

Under the example of being provided a “free car”, the AANA’s Code of Ethics says: “Where the car manufacturer has a reasonable degree of control over the statements the personality may make and the car is provided on the arrangement or understanding the personality will post commentary on social media, the content is likely to be considered a marketing communication and must be clearly distinguishable as such to the relevant audience.”

Mr Dreyfus said Mr Ball has questions to answer over the Instagram posts.

“[The Greens] pretend to be policy purists but the reality is very different,” he said.

“Just like when they get into parliament, they team up with the Liberals. They can’t be trusted.”

The affluent inner-Melbourne seat is currently held by the Liberals on a margin of 7.4 per cent but internal opposition polling shows the seat is sitting on a knife’s edge.

Labor ran dead in 2016, allowing Mr Ball to finish second with 42 per cent of the vote after preferences.

Saturday’s contest looks likely to come down to a three-cornered contest between Labor candidate Fiona McLeod, Liberal Katie Allen and Mr Ball.