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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-31 Daily Xml
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Racist Publication, Australian Labor Party

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (15:32): Thank you, Mr Acting President; it's wonderful to see you in the chair. Today, for probably the seventh or eighth time in the last seven years, I would like to ventilate issues around the 2014 Elder campaign. Earlier this week, I was surprised to hear the former member for Elder, Annabel Digance, talk about how she did not know about the infamous 'You can't trust Habib' flyer that the Labor Party distributed in the 2014 election.

Some seven years on, the former member says she did not know about it and, in fact, when she wanted to talk about it she was bullied, intimidated and harassed by the faceless men in the Labor Party, who she claims are the ones who put the flyer out without her knowledge.

Last weekend at the Labor Party conference, we heard the current party secretary, Mr Reggie Martin, who I know is hoping to be elected into this place at the next election, say that he approved it, he had proofread it and he did not think it was racist and was happy to approve it.

A large number of people responded when that flyer hit the ground: senior journalists such as Matthew Abraham, David Bevan, David Penberthy, Sarah Martin and Graham Archer, and senior members of parliament such as Mark Butler, George Brandis, Ed Husic and others condemned it. Nick Xenophon said it was blatant racist dog whistling and, of course, Tom Richardson also had some very strong critical words to say about this particular piece of information when it was dropped some seven years ago. Again today, Mr Richardson has written an excellent article outlining some of the flaws in Ms Digance's statement that she did not know about it.

Let's explore what happens in these campaigns. The first drop arrived in mailboxes on the Tuesday before the election. In most cases, as members in this place would know with election campaigns, you have to lodge material with Australia Post usually eight days before, so on the Monday prior. In most cases, you can get it printed over the weekend, but it was probably printed late the week before, therefore Mr Martin would have proofread and signed off on it some two weeks before it hit the mailboxes.

It was not really consistent with standard ALP branding for that particular electorate, and, as we know, there was a poster that was to be used on election day and the ALP have since admitted they had another piece to go out, and volunteers told me on the Friday night before the election that it had not gone all that well and they had to cut the end off the poster. So this was not just a piece of election material, this was clearly a part of the local campaign designed to attack a quality young woman who was running for the Liberal Party. Often in this place, members of the Labor Party have said we do not have enough women in parliament, yet they attack them in such ways.

Ms Digance says she did not know about it, but her husband, Mr Greg Digance, was up to his armpits in all of the intimidation in that electorate. He was constantly telling our volunteers prior to election day, 'We have got some stuff on your candidate. We are going to fix her. We are going to beat her.' Clearly, he would have known about it. The former member for Elder obviously lives in the same house as him, I assume shares a bed with him, and shares meals with him. The fact that she claims that she did not know is just not believable.

Mr Digance was clearly taunting our volunteers right the way through that campaign. It continued on election day with some of the behaviour. In fact, I was so concerned at the tension in the electorate that I called the senior sergeant at the Sturt Police Station on the Friday to say, 'Can I send you a list of the polling booths because I think something is going to happen.' Well, blow me down, before dark on the Friday night, Mr Digance had alleged that one of our volunteers had assaulted one of their volunteers. We got the CCTV footage after the election and no such assault ever happened.

During that campaign on that particular day, we saw our volunteers' bra straps being twinged and comments like—and this is unparliamentary—'Why don't you come outside for a beer and a root behind the shed.' Some of our young female volunteers were verbally abused in the most unpleasant way.

Finally, I would like to put on the record that during the 2018 election campaign, in front of the Muslim mosque on the day before the election, Mr Digance was telling Ms Habib, 'You had a breakdown last election, you cried and we are going to break you again tomorrow, and you are going to cry again.' The way that Mrs Digance can fix this is to come and appear before the select committee in the House of Assembly and name those faceless men.

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