Liberal MP Sarah Henderson the target of troll hate campaign

Liberal MP Sarah Henderson has been targeted in a long-running online campaign that has escalated ahead of the election.

Corangamite MP Sarah Henderson. Picture: Alan Barber

Liberal MP Sarah Henderson has been targeted in a long-running online campaign that has escalated ahead of the election, amid separate attacks on her campaign signs that have led her to hire a private security company.

Since 2016, a person operating an anonymous Twitter account called SarahendersonMPNoWay has been doctoring videos of her, overdubbing them “so that they show (her) making crude, critical or damaging remarks about her campaign”, according to social media intelligence firm Storyful.

“The account has been active since June 2016 and has been targeting Henderson and sharing the edited videos for at least two years,” said the firm, owned by News Corp, The Australian’s parent company.

The person behind the videos has doctored them to portray Ms Henderson as mocking public school students, criticising the government’s policies and making fun of Scott Morrison’s religious beliefs.

Even yesterday, after it emerged that Ms Henderson had engaged a private security firm to protect her signs, the same ­account was sharing criticism of her actions to address the vandalism.

The Twitter account is one of the examples of often anonymous or fringe groups trying to influence the election campaign identified by Storyful.

As revealed in The Australian yesterday, the firm also found anonymous far-right groups ­engaging in co-ordinated activity across online platforms to sway voters — including five “Australian” Facebook pages.

Ms Henderson yesterday said she was driven to call in a security firm after a graffiti “spree” that targeted about 60 of her signs.

“We’re now (also) in the process of putting keyhole cameras into many of our key signage ­locations because we’ve had a terrible and shocking spree of systematic organised crime where our signs have been defaced,” she told 3AW.

“It really is just shocking. We’ve never seen this before. It’s been ­reported to police.”

In some cases, signs were ­stolen. Ms Henderson said political opponents were behind the campaign.

“We know that they are climate activists because they are putting climate-related stickers all over my signs,” she said.

It comes after Treasurer Josh Frydenberg slammed those who daubed his campaign signs over the weekend with Hitler moustaches, devil horns and the words “right wing facist (sic)”.

“The latest act of vandalism in Kooyong using Nazi symbols on a billboard of mine is an insult to every victim of the Holocaust and Australian servicemen and women who fought against Nazi tyranny,” he said.