Victorian election: #NotSoIndependent: how teals revealed they ‘stand with Dan’

The teal independent seeking to quash a Liberal comeback in the key seat of Hawthorn lavished Daniel Andrews with praise for ‘looking after’ Victorians at the height of the pandemic.

Melissa Lowe, a teal independent candidate, campaigning in Hawthorn on Wednesday. Picture: Valeriu Campan

The teal independent seeking to quash a Liberal comeback in the key Victorian seat of Hawthorn lavished Daniel Andrews with praise for “looking after” Victorians at the height of the pandemic.

Hawthorn candidate Melissa Lowe – who could hold the balance of power after Saturday’s state election – also sent the Victorian Premier her public good wishes for a speedy recovery following his back injury last year, tweeting to him: “we need decent humans in power”.

Details of Ms Lowe’s approval of Mr Andrews come as The Australian can also reveal similar support in a closely linked campaign. Sophie Torney is a fellow Climate 200-backed candidate in the neighbouring seat of Kew. The director of her campaign, Hayden O’Connor, is the instigator of hundreds of viral tweets using the hashtags #IstandwithDan and #ThisIsNotJournalism, and he attacked journalists, including the ABC’s Leigh Sales, over questions asked of the Premier.

Hawthorn and Kew overlap with the affluent federal seat of Kooyong in Melbourne’s east, where Climate 200-backed independent Monique Ryan ousted Liberal then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg in May.

Monique Ryan, Hayden O'Connor and Sophie Torney. Picture: Twitter

Dr Ryan, and many members of her campaign team, including Mr O’Connor, are helping the state candidates, as are around 500 volunteers in each seat.

In Hawthorn, former Liberal frontbencher John Pesutto – widely regarded within the party as a future leader – is vying to regain power after unexpectedly losing to retired school principal and Labor candidate John Kennedy by 521 votes in 2018.

While Mr Kennedy is recontesting, he is doing so with limited assistance from his party.

He told The Australian on Thursday a victory for Ms Lowe with the help of his preferences would be a “lovely consolation prize” should he lose Saturday’s state election.

Currently on leave from her role as manager of student equity at Swinburne University, Ms Lowe issued her tweets via an account linked to her previous role as equity and diversity team leader at Deakin University.

Melissa Lowe’s pro-Dan tweets.

“Thanks Dan Andrews for looking after Victorian’s (sic) #dantheman,” @melissalowedea1 tweeted in May 2020.

Almost a year later, after the Premier slipped and broke his back in March 2021, Ms Lowe tweeted to Mr Andrews: “Take care of yourself like you took care of us. Get well soon Dan. We need decent humans in power.”

Asked in an interview at her campaign headquarters on Thursday whether they were her tweets, Ms Lowe said: “Oh, ‘take care of yourself because you‘re sick’. That sounds like me. I do care about people.”

Asked whether she saw Mr Andrews as a “decent human”, Ms Lowe said: “At the time maybe I thought that.”

“I think he’s captured … I think politicians are captured and they’re not doing the right thing by us at all, and I think I was probably hopeful that there was a change, but there isn’t,” she said.

“I mean, the fact that they’re doing this (native forest) logging. That’s not great. I mean, there’s issues in integrity in both parties. Serious issues.”

Asked who or what had “captured” Mr Andrews, Ms Lowe nominated: “whoever’s allowing us to log”.

The Liberal Party candidate for Hawthorn John Pesutto. Picture: Valeriu Campan

Asked whether that was ultimately the Premier’s decision, she said: “I would think so.”

Asked what she would say to constituents who may be concerned about her capacity to hold an Andrews Labor government to account, Ms Lowe said: “They don’t know me. Give me a chance.

“I’m absolutely here 100 per cent to stand up for this community, and deeply, strongly believe in what this community believes in,” she said.

“I’m fiercely independent, and I’m nobody’s stooge, and I’ve been called both a Liberal and a Labor stooge, and a Greens stooge … I’m not. I’m a community independent, and some of the stuff that community likes, might lean one way and it might lean another and it might stay in the middle.

“It’s actually about making decisions for the community, not decisions on party lines.”

Ms Lowe confirmed she had been an ALP member in her 20s, but left the party when the Health Workers’ Union, for which she was an official, made her redundant while on maternity leave.

Her @melissalowedea1 account follows just four public figures: Mr Andrews, Victorian chief health officer Brett Sutton and Albanese government ministers Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong.

Mr O’Connor’s tweets include accusing then 7.30 anchor Leigh Sales of being “flat out misleading” when she reported on the ABC’s flagship program that no member of the Andrews government or bureaucracy had taken responsibility for the use of private security, rather than ADF personnel, in hotel quarantine in 2020.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

In April, he tweeted that Sales was “an absolute disgrace” following her interview with then prime minister Scott Morrison.

“Tell your friends, family and strangers about the horrors of this government because the media has no interest in doing so,” Mr O’Connor tweeted.

He also accused The Age of writing a “cowardly and disgusting” editorial, when the newspaper opined amid Victoria’s sixth lockdown in September 2021 that: “The Age believes … the damage caused by the harshest and longest lockdowns in the country needs to be more seriously factored in.”

Mr O’Connor did not provide a response to questions asked of him, but did provide comment from Ms Torney, who said he was a “valued member” of her campaign team.

“The views expressed on his social media posts and in his journalism were his personal views, not mine,” Ms Torney said.

“As a community independent, I will always treat all issues on their own merit, without fear or favour. Neither Hayden nor myself has ever been a member of the Australian Labor Party.”