'This is the moment': activists warm to the task of ousting Tony Abbott

Extract from The Guardian

More than 600 people attend meeting organised by GetUp in Warringah, as a rival rightwing group announces its arrival

Anne Davies

@annefdavies

Tue 20 Nov 2018 19.38 AEDT Last modified on Tue 20 Nov 2018 21.48 AEDT

The crowd at Tuesday night’s event organised by GetUp to marshal opposition to Tony Abbott in Warringah. Photograph: Anne Davies for the Guardian

More than 600 people turned up to a GetUp information night in Tony Abbott’s Sydney seat of Warringah on Tuesday night – a sign that the former prime minister is facing a highly organised and well-supported campaign against his re-election from within his own community.
The crowd at Manly Senior Citizens club, who came to hear what they could do to unseat their MP, filled two rooms and then spilled outside.
“It feels more like a rock concert. Maybe I should say ‘HELLOO WARRINGAH!’,” GetUp organiser Shaun Murray said.
Most were from the seat, although some had travelled from other parts of Sydney. About 75 % raised their hands to say it was their first GetUp meeting. About half were over the age of 50.

A GetUp campaign director who spoke, Django Merope-Singh, said lots of people could be blamed for the lack of action on climate change, “but I hold Tony Abbott the most responsible”.
“If you don’t represent the values of your community there is no such thing as a safe seat any more,” he said to rousing applause.
But he warned it would take a big effort to defeat Abbott.
“It doesn’t matter how many people want Tony Abbott out of national politics. It only matters what you, the people of Warringah, think,’ said Colleen O’Brien, a local organiser. “We are going to do this by having conversations.”
Another organiser, who had worked on the Wentworth byelection campaign, said it was the thousands of conversations with voters that made the difference and “cut through the spin”.
“We have to start as soon as possible. This is the moment.”
GetUp plans a huge doorknock in Manly on 8 December.

Warringah has become the flashpoint for activism where a host of small groups have sprung up, including votetonyout. Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull are among those following the group’s Instagram account.

Turnbull’s son, Alex, was one of the guests at a lunchtime gathering of Voices of Warringah at the Oaks Hotel in Neutral Bay on Monday, where the economist Richard Denniss, the author of Affluenza, was the main speaker.
The group is organising kitchen table conversations throughout the electorate to encourage voters to elect a local member more aligned with their views on climate change. The disparate groups are working together to find a suitable independent candidate as an alternative to Abbott.

Defending ‘mainstream culture’

On Monday a group of millionaire business figures announced they were launching a political organisation called Advance Australia to campaign against Labor’s economic policies and to counter progressive campaigns such as GetUp’s against the most conservative sitting Liberal MPs.
The organisation plans to register as a third party body under Australian electoral laws to advance what it describes as “mainstream values”.
“We Advance Australia when mainstream values are at the core of our way of life,” its website says. “Australia has always been about a fair go. Sadly, our governments aren’t listening and powerful elites and leftwing activists currently dictate our future.”

"Sadly, our governments aren’t listening and powerful elites and leftwing activists currently dictate our future"

Advance Australia

Political correctness was out of control, the group said.
“We – mainstream Australians, believe in community expectations and standards. We don’t think the word ‘guys’ is offensive or like that businesses tell their employees not to use the terms mum and dad any more,” the website says.
It argues that “the culture of political correctness has given rise to “identity and gender politics” where people are increasingly divided and pitted against each other along racial, sexual and gender lines.
It warns that in the world of elites and leftwing activists “mainstream culture and traditional families are frowned upon, sexuality is brandished as identity, gender can be fluid with over 40 different categories, and victimhood is a badge of honour as well as a free pass”.
It is also campaigning for lower taxes, an end to subsidies, and religious freedom.
The organisation’s advisory committee includes the former ABC chairman and business executive Maurice Newman, who has been an outspoken climate change sceptic.
Other members include Dr David Adler, who is president of the Australian Jewish Association, set up a couple of years ago to advance conservative Jewish values, and Sam Kennard, head of the storage empire, who ran as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in the 2015 North Sydney byelection.
The organisation will be chaired by the wealthy Queensland publican James Power.

Newman told the Australian the time had come to challenge groups such as GetUp, as leftwing activism dominated the national debate.
“We are in the position of the battle of Stalingrad … we have retreated to such an extent we need to hold our ground somewhere and start to push back,” he said.
Advance Australia’s national director will be Gerard Benedet, who worked as a chief of staff to the former Queensland LNP treasurer Tim Nicholls and who also worked for News Corp.
Benedet said he had resigned his LNP membership and no one on the group’s advisory committee was aligned with a political party.
He said the group had already signed up 1,000 members, but it faces a daunting task to challenge GetUp, which has been operating for 12 years and boasts tens of thousands of members.