THEIR website says they’re independent and driven by values, not politics. Yet in just over a week, the activist group GetUp! has raised almost $200,000 in a bid to oust Immigration Minister Peter Dutton from his marginal Brisbane seat of Dickson.
Short on well-performing ministers, this is a worry for the Turnbull government.
It’s also a worry for the rest of us who want to see a fair and transparent political system because GetUp! is not what it says it is.
What began 12 years ago as a campaigning outfit to fight for leftist causes — environmental justice, human rights, economic fairness (their words not mine) — is now a political player that exists to fight conservatives.
The usual rules that police political parties — disclosure on all donations, lodged returns and transparency — don’t apply to GetUp! because of the manufactured fiction they’re above politics.
“GetUp! is, and always has been, an independent organisation”, or so says their website, but let’s look at the facts.
At last year’s federal election, GetUp! played its politics as hard as any mainstream party and boasted it had “pursued a strategy of targeting the right-wing of the Coalition who block action on global warming, renewable energy, and funding for schools and hospitals”.
Four of the GetUp!-targeted MPs lost their seats — Jamie Briggs, Russell Matheson, Andrew Nikolic and Louise Markus — with swings ranging from seven to 18 per cent.
A particular target then, as now, was the Immigration Minister, who just held on, but with a 6 per cent swing against him.
GetUp!’s national director said in a statement at the time that “GetUp! members mobilised to target Peter Dutton, seeing a huge swing against the Immigration Minister who reverted to dog-whistling and attacking immigrants to get himself elected”.
Those of us who feel safe with Peter Dutton in charge of our borders — deporting outlaw bikies, illicit drug-dealers and frauds who lie on their visa applications — should rail against GetUp!’s tactics.
They’re underhand, they’re not in the best interests of democracy and, as is patently obvious after recent events, they’re little more than a Leftist front.
Seriously, where does GetUp! get off pretending it’s independent?
As the whole political spectrum moves to the left, it’s time to shine a great big spotlight on this very professional and very well-funded US-style activist organisation.
Since it was set up to fight against the Howard government, GetUp! has gone from strength to strength as an online mobiliser of young people against anything that might be described as right-of-centre.
It’s making Labor stronger and the Coalition weaker.
Right now the Labor Party has the unions as its organisational wing, the Greens as its reliable parliamentary ally, and GetUp! as its community arm enlisting people to campaign against positions and candidates that all happen to be Liberal ones.
In the Tasmanian seat of Bass, GetUp! targeted the former brigadier Andrew Nikolic. For a decorated army man who represented his constituents as well as he fought for his country, Nikolic’s only crime as far as GetUp! was concerned was his support for conservative values.
This wasn’t a fair and upfront contest.
They flew in a number of paid operatives to Tasmania and — by their own reports — mobilised members to have more than 18,000 conversations with voters, funded widespread advertising and digital communications, and handed out how-to-votes at 22 polling booths.
That’s right, a so-called independent organisation handing out how-to-vote cards to direct support away from the Liberal Party.
As the final votes were still being counted, GetUp!’s national director said: “The next government, whoever forms it, needs to be run by a leader, not someone who panders to global warming deniers, homophobes and racists.”
If their campaigning didn’t show their bias, these words do because it is always the left who are quick to resort to the “you’re a racist” jibe, as well as the rest.
Let’s be very clear.
GetUp! are not fighting for activist causes, they’re waging a campaign to purge conservatives from the Liberal Party because of their strong stand on issues such as immigration, Islamic terrorism and values, just to name a few.
In the last financial year, GetUp!’s reported revenue was just on $10 million.
That compares well with what it takes to run the Liberal Party’s federal outfit.
And with its mastery of online, low-value-high-volume fundraising, this revenue figure will only grow.
Despite its vociferous campaign against political parties accepting foreign donations, it was recently revealed that GetUp! had accepted more than $300,000 in overseas donations over the past two years.
Not only are their claims of independence false, but GetUp! is rich in hypocrisy too.
Amazingly, the Australian Electoral Commission does not treat GetUp! as an arm of the Labor Party even though everything it does has the effect of helping Labor to win.
Unlike the unions, GetUp! is not classified as an associated entity, and unlike political parties, it is not required to disclose all donations, only those that directly relate to election campaigning.
Regardless of what it might claim, the reality is that GetUp! always campaigns against the Liberal Party and that means it is always campaigning for the Labor Party.
It’s about time it was treated as a political party.
The AEC is not doing its job properly while it expects less of GetUp! than of declared politically aligned bodies.
Along with the normal Labor campaign and the unions’ collective and individual efforts, this — and more — is what the Coalition will be up against next time, and with the campaign against the immigration minister starting now, they mean business.
When he was national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, Bill Shorten was on the GetUp! board.
GetUp!’s current chair is a former union official. Its other directors, with one possible exception, are all refugee and environmental activists.
Its first national director went on to become a Greens Senate candidate.
On Thursday, GetUp!’s deputy chair Carla McGrath was appointed to the Australian Press Council to adjudicate media complaints in a move that sparked widespread criticism within media and political circles.
So far no conservative or centre-right movement has had the focus or the savvy to rival GetUp!
That must change.
So too must the electoral rules that allow GetUp! to avoid the scrutiny that every other political player gets.
Until then everyone who values a fair and transparent democracy needs to see GetUp! for what it is.
