South Australian Labor apologises for racist smear against Carolyn Habib

Almost seven years after running a smear campaign targeting a female Liberal candidate, the South Australian Labor Party has finally apologised.

Liberal candidate Carolyn Habib holding the offending Labor leaflet at the 2014 SA election.

Almost seven years after running a smear campaign targeting a female Liberal candidate over her Arabic surname, the South Australian Labor Party has finally apologised.

The apology came after the former Labor MP at the centre of the scandal Annabel Digance told The Weekend Australian of her remorse and disgust at the tactics used against Carolyn Habib in the 2014 SA election campaign.

Amid terror fears and after graffiti attacks on a local mosque in the Elder electorate, Labor sent a pamphlet to 16,000 homes that asked “CAN YOU TRUST HABIB?” and was designed to look like a wall from a Middle Eastern war zone.

SA ALP State secretary Reggie Martin admitted this weekend that he had signed off on the pamphlet as the state’s Labor chief at the 2014 election.

“I am sorry that the flyer we put out did cause distress,” Mr Martin told the ABC. “That was never my intention.”

However Mr Martin said he did not think the pamphlet was racist when it was presented to him.

“I looked at it, I studied it, I checked it and proofed it, and in that time it didn’t come across my mind that it had any kind of racist intention,” he said. “So I did authorise and sign off on that piece.”

The scandal has done nothing to damage the career advancement of any of the key players, with Mr Martin having won preselection to enter the SA Upper House at next year’s state election.

Labor candidate Annabel Digance says she was hung out to dry by the party. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

The former campaign manager to Ms Digance, Tim Picton, went on to work as a senior advisor to Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and is now the state secretary of the Western Australian ALP.

Mr Picton did not apologise when he spoke to The Weekend Australian saying the pamphlet “was authorised, produced and distributed by the SA Labor Party”.

He also said that Ms Digance’s comments were “potentially defamatory”, even though Ms Digance said nothing specific about his role in devising the pamphlet.

Ms Digance told The Weekend Australian that SA Labor designed the pamphlet without her knowledge, then hung her out to dry as she faced a backlash from voters in Elder and was ­denounced as a bigot in the wider community.

She blamed a Labor “boy’s club” of party apparatchiks for cooking up the pamphlet, saying she would never have supported such a “horrible” tactic.

SA ALP State Secretary Reggie Martin

“I have carried this with me for so long it has caused me deep distress,” Ms Digance said. “It saddens me that what should have been a proud time for me being elected to serve the community has instead been overshadowed by something so horrible.

“I also feel bad that after I was told not to say anything about it that I stayed silent out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to the party. It was just wrong. It should never have happened.”

“Whenever I raised anything I was belittled and bullied by the Labor boy’s club and, in the end, I think they just came to regard me as an annoyance.

Carolyn Habib — who now uses her husband’s surname, Power — ran again and defeated Ms ­Digance at the 2018 election in which the Liberals won office.

Carolyn Power (nee Habib) and her husband Brad. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

Ms Power told The Weekend Australian she remained deeply distressed by the experience and was unconvinced by Ms ­Digance’s contrition.

“She has had every opportunity in the past seven years to apologise to me privately or publicly for her appalling behaviour and the racist campaign run against me — but she hasn’t,” Ms Power said.

“We can’t rewrite history.

“It was deeply upsetting to me, and particularly to my family and dad, and it is still raw to talk about. More than that, it was offensive to anyone from a different culture, who loves Australia and has made it their home.”