Latest news with #MatthewSheahan
The Guardian
19-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Advance director says ‘bed-wetting anonymous Liberals' trying to blame others after bitter election defeat
Several senior Liberal sources have questioned the impact of Advance Australia, with some arguing the rightwing advocacy group made 'no difference at all' to the election result and others warning it 'undermined' the party and cost it votes. The criticism has sparked a bitter blame game, with Advance's executive director, Matthew Sheahan, accusing 'bed-wetting anonymous Liberals' of 'looking to blame everyone but themselves', and adding that Advance 'does not exist to get hopeless Liberals elected'. Advance claimed its federal election campaign – bankrolled by $15.6m in donations during the 2023-24 financial year – to be a 'success' that 'destroyed the Greens' and led to 'terminal declines in their primary votes'. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email But one senior Liberal MP said that while Advance may have damaged the Greens, this ultimately benefited Labor, which won the seats of Melbourne, Brisbane and Griffith. They said Liberal preferences ultimately determined this outcome, not Advance. A NSW Liberal party source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, accused Advance's campaign material of alienating some undecided voters in target seats. They described the groups's campaign material as 'extreme'. 'It plays to the Liberal base or to voters further to the right of the Liberals, but it can distract and undermine our own messaging,' said the Liberal source. 'I wouldn't say on balance that it aided the Liberal campaign.' Another senior Liberal source said Advance inadvertently 'undermined the Liberal campaign' in seats held by teal incumbents. 'Their advertising focused on attacking the Greens, but all that did was drive up the teal vote,' said the senior source, who also declined to be named so they could speak freely. 'Their messaging also confused voters and led people to put the teals and Greens equal last which meant Liberal votes could not be counted [as the ballot was invalid]. Their poor judgment in their campaign strategy might be the difference between winning Bradfield, or not.' Late on Monday, the independent candidate for Bradfield, Nicolette Boele, overtook her Liberal rival, Gisele Kapterian, with a narrow lead of 40 votes. Sheahan said Advance did not distribute material in Bradfield and did not campaign in Goldstein or Kooyong. He said the outcome in those three seats had nothing to do with Advance and that suggestions otherwise were 'just wrong'. 'The Liberal party would do better to focus on how they managed to lose 11 seats to Labor rather than on the three seats Labor took from the Greens,' Sheahan said. 'All of this shows that many Liberals have learned absolutely nothing from their worst ever defeat. Fresh out of a shocking campaign, they are looking to blame everyone but themselves.' In Victoria, Advance was bankrolled by a $500,000 donation from the state branch's nominated entity, the Cormack Foundation. The foundation also allocated $1m to the Liberals in the same year. While one Liberal MP said Advance made 'honestly no difference at all' to the election result, a former MP said the party would ultimately realise the group was not a sustainable campaign affiliate. They cited the group's embrace of 'populist' culture war issues, suggesting they only appealed to a small subsection of voters. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'They are taking a lot of money from a lot of people who are being hoodwinked,' they said. 'They are not spending it [effectively], and what they spend it on is high-profile, low-impact campaigns that splinter our electoral coalition.' 'While it may be difficult to get that through to Liberal party members and supporters because of the Sky After Dark effect, ultimately, the truth wins out.' In response, Sheahan said he wasn't surprised some Liberal voters had adopted Advance's campaign material, claiming 'their own campaign didn't have any'. 'No one should be surprised that bed-wetting anonymous Liberals are backgrounding against Advance and don't have the guts to stand by their comments publicly, I wouldn't put my name to their campaign either,' he said. 'The truth is that Advance does not exist to get hopeless Liberals elected, it instead campaigns to promote and defend Australia's freedom, security and prosperity.' Advance claims to have delivered 'millions' of broadcast ads and flyers during the campaign and splashed its messages on billboards, bus shelters and trucks. Analysis of public data indicated the group spent $1.7m on social media ads with $239,300 targeted at key seats. The group paid to promote the slogan 'weak woke and sending us broke: Anthony Albanese has got to go'. It also campaigned for an end to public funding for welcome to country ceremonies before Peter Dutton's public comments on the issue – which were criticised by former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull as 'pure culture-war stuff' that 'turns a lot of people off'.
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Rightwing lobby group Advance says it makes ‘no apology' for support given to anti-Greens groups
The rightwing advocacy group Advance has acknowledged it is paying for election materials attacking the Greens to be used by third-party groups during the election campaign. 'Advance is working with hundreds of volunteers from dozens of community groups to defeat Greens candidates and we make no apology,' a spokesperson said. The spokesperson said Advance did not fund groups directly but 'we absolutely pay for anti-Greens campaign material to be at the disposal of volunteers'. 'This includes 2m flyers and thousands of T-shirts and corflutes. 'Again, we make no apologies.' The group's plan to focus its election campaign on reducing the Greens vote has been no secret. Advance's executive director, Matthew Sheahan, claimed in a February email to supporters it had already raised $7.6m to 'smash the Greens' and about $2m to target Labor. The group has spent more than $200,000 in the past week to promote posts from Facebook pages with names such as 'Greens Truth'. But it has not previously talked publicly about the extent of its support for other groups hostile to the Greens, including those that take exception to the party's position on the Israel-Gaza war or on renewable energy. The type of assistance Advance has on offer was revealed by two Jewish advocacy groups in a recent forum hosted by the Australian Jewish Association (AJA). Simonne Whine of J-United, which campaigned against the Greens in the recent Prahran byelection in Victoria, said her group reached out to Advance to get its campaign started. 'They were fantastic, efficient, strategic, well resourced,' she said. 'They supplied the flyers, the T-shirts and the corflutes, and shipped everything to Melbourne, helping us hit the ground running.' Advance even paid for a picnic to thank volunteers, Whine said. During last year's Queensland state election, the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJC) also focused on the Greens vote in Brisbane seats such as Maiwar and Moggill. One of the group's directors, Roz Mendelle, told the AJA forum QJC spoke with Advance after seeing its work during the campaign against the Indigenous voice to parliament. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter 'When time came … to do something against the Greens here in Brisbane, I knew who to turn to,' Mendelle said, claiming that they kept 'a healthy distance' while the campaign was under way. According to an event invitation seen by Guardian Australia, QJC held a volunteer event with Advance in February. Mendelle is a co-director of a new group, Minority Impact Coalition (MIC), which has started a billboard campaign against Labor and the Greens in multiple states. During the AJA briefing, Mendelle showed an image of a billboard paid for by QJC that read: 'The Greens: They've changed for the worse'. 'This is also inspired by the Advance messaging,' she said. 'But from there, we gained our footing, and we decided to just speak our truth.' MIC is using the same mobile billboard provider as Advance in Queensland, NSW and Victoria – STT Advertising. In return, Advance has also used content from groups such as J-United on social media, sharing pictures of its 'local grassroots community members' on its Greens Truth Facebook page. The likely electoral impact of the anti-Greens strategy remains somewhat elusive. The Greens hold only four seats in the lower house, of which the three they won in Brisbane at the last election appear vulnerable. They have six senators up for re-election. By contrast, six new teal independent MPs were elected in 2022 – if they hold those seats or even increase their numbers, they might be expected to have a greater say in the event of a hung parliament. Sign up to Afternoon Update: Election 2025 Our Australian afternoon update breaks down the key election campaign stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'They've clearly worked out how to get conservative people fired up enough to throw money at them, and the way to do that is by attacking the Greens,' said Peter Lewis, the executive director of Essential, which is conducting qualitative research for the ALP. 'But it's not going to do anything to help the Liberals win back teal seats.' The Advance spokesperson said: 'Our campaign against the Greens won't defeat teals because it was never meant to. We have been crystal clear for the past 18 months that our focus is on the Greens this election.' However, Sheahan told an Australian Jewish Association forum in 2024: 'Our goal is to just expose the Greens policies so that people don't vote for them … A partial benefit will be that we think that will also reduce the teal vote.' His logic for that claim was unclear. Advance has also focused on the anti-renewables movement, appearing at 'energy forums' across the country and events held by groups set up to oppose the rollout of offshore wind and solar energy. As Guardian Australia has previously documented, the Facebook account for Advance spokesperson Sandra Bourke is active in dozens of local Facebook groups and pages opposing renewable projects in places such as Lake Borumba and Mount Fox in Queensland, regularly sharing Advance content. Bourke is a regular speaker at these rallies and events – unusually for the outfit, which generally avoids a public-facing presence. Grant Piper is the former chair of the National Rational Energy Network (NRen), which brought together community groups opposed to renewable energy projects and hosted events including the Reckless Renewables rally in Canberra last year. That's where Piper first met Advance. 'We didn't tie any formal knots, but we could tell we were pushing after the same thing when it comes to renewables,' Piper said. NRen, which has recently rebranded as Let's Rethink Renewables, has had discussions with Advance 'all the way through', he said, although it has remained independent. Bourke, one of NRen's original members, is now Advance's spokesperson and the face of its campaign against the Greens. According to Piper – who appeared in Advance's anti-renewables Dollars & Destruction video series – the organisation is a natural ally for groups that feel they are mostly excluded from the conversation taking place in parliament and the media. 'Advance is helping get publicity for the grassroots people who have been shut out of everything,' he said. Others who have teamed up for the Greens Truth campaign include groups that emerged from the anti-lockdown movement, the Freedom party and Reignite Democracy Australia – which makes clear to prospective volunteers that their details will be shared with Advance. Another NRen member and former One Nation candidate, Katy McCallum, was the MC at a 'Goodbye Greens Rally' in Brisbane in late March, where QJC also appeared. Along with other event backers such as the Libertarian candidate Jim Willmott, she thanked Bourke and Advance for their help at the event. 'If our other good mate Sandra Bourke … from Advance hadn't have jumped on, this would not be happening today,' she said. Do you know more? Contact
