Sister no help to candidate

Describing your sister’s Labor opponent as a ‘retard’ online is not a clever campaign strategy.

Gladys Liu, the Liberal candidate for the marginal Victorian seat of Chisholm, has refused to condemn her sister after she labelled Labor’s candidate a “mental retard and idiot” on the Chinese social media forum WeChat.

Ms Liu’s sister, Connie Liu, commented on a video by Labor candidate Jennifer Yang, writing in Mandarin: “Yang nodded in the video, laughing like a mental ­retard and idiot. Disgusting!”

A spokesman for the Victorian Liberal Party said Connie Liu was not connected to Gladys Liu’s campaign and had made the ­comments on WeChat without Gladys’s knowledge.

Chisholm, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, is held by Liberal turned independent Julia Banks.

It is notionally Liberal by 3.4 per cent but sources from both major parties say they expect Labor to win the seat following a gaffe-prone campaign from Ms Liu.