Alex Turnbull donates $500 to online activist group Sleeping Giants Oz

Malcolm Turnbull’s son has donated to a group that targets mainstream media by threatening advertisers with consumer boycotts.

Alex Turnbull getting into an Uber outside his parent's Point Piper Mansion. Picture: Hollie Adams

Alex Turnbull has publicly donated to an online activist group which has been targeting mainstream media organisations by threatening their advertisers with consumer boycotts on the same day his father called for Scott Morrison to bear the brunt of the Liberal Party’s “brand damage” with an early election.

The Singapore-based hedge fund manager tweeted this afternoon that he had donated $500 to Sleeping Giants Oz, a group which aims “to make racism, bigotry, and misogyny less profitable” by calling on its supporters to publicly boycott companies who advertise with offending programs, to ultimately get those businesses to stop advertising spending during those timeslots.

Check it out! I donated to 'Sleeping Giants Advertiser App' - because I care about accountability in media advertising, you should too https://t.co/dvcmREBIGY via @gofundme

— Alex Turnbull (@alexbhturnbull) December 3, 2018

This year, Sleeping Giants Oz has targeted companies to stop advertising on Sky News programs including Outsiders and The Bolt Report, as well as Alan Jones’ radio broadcasts, and have pressured advertisers including Woolworths, BMW, McDonald’s and the Labor Party.

Linking to the crowd-funding campaign for Sleeping Giants’ new app, Mr Turnbull said he had made the donation “because I care about accountability in media advertising”, and urged his Twitter followers to follow suit.

Mr Turnbull made a name for himself during October’s Wentworth by-election campaign when he called for his followers on Twitter to vote against the Liberal candidate in the poll triggered by his father’s resignation from politics.

“If you want to send a signal as to which way the Liberal Party is going, and your displeasure with where it’s going, then this is your opportunity,” he said.

“We need to send a message on climate change. This time, don’t give the Liberals your vote,” he tweeted.

His father has also been stridently critical of the mainstream media. In his farewell speech as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attacked “outside forces in the media’’ as one of catalysts for his demise.

Run anonymously, Sleeping Giants Oz is the Australian wing of the original Sleeping Giants in the US, a group that started after Donald Trump’s election in 2016 to place pressure on companies that advertised with pro-Trump news site Breitbart.

NSW Liberal senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells has raised Sleeping Giants Oz in parliament, challenging the group’s claim that it has “no political allegiances”.

The crowd-funding campaign had raised $2,582 of its $6,000 goal on Monday evening.