The Victorian Liberal Party has preferenced Labor behind a woman who publicly called for Premier Daniel Andrews to be hanged, in a Melbourne upper-house seat.
Rebekah Spelman is the Freedom Party's second candidate for the South-East Metropolitan Region.
Ms Spelman, who unsuccessfully ran as a United Australia Party (UAP) candidate in the federal seat of Aston this year, helped organise anti-lockdown rallies in Melbourne at the height of the pandemic.
In a Twitter post from July, Ms Spelman said the premier should be "arrested, tried, found guilty and hanged".
Footage of an anti-lockdown rally earlier this year appears to show Ms Spelman saying "I want to say hang Dan Andrews … but I know that's not allowed".
The Liberals' group voting ticket – how parties allocate preferences on behalf of voters who vote above the line on the upper house ballot paper – puts Ms Spelman in 13th spot out of 56 candidates.
Freedom Party candidates are placed behind Family First, UAP and the Liberal Democrats.
The ALP is placed last.
This election, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has trumpeted a campaign to "Put Labor Last", which dictates the Coalition preferences Labor last everywhere, except in exceptional character circumstances.
Quizzed about preference flows to Ms Spelman and the Freedom Party, Mr Guy condemned the comments, but defended the Liberal Party's decision to place them so high above Labor.
"We've got more than 1,500 candidates and you can't do every single check on them,'' he told the ABC.
"We do the best we can."
Asked if the language used in Ms Spelman's post should be tolerated, Mr Guy highlighted that the Andrews government was facing multiple IBAC investigations.
"[It is] a government that needs to be defeated. There are a number of micro parties, many of them who've got their own agendas, and most of them I don't agree with, that one in particular,'' he said.
"But we need to send a message to Victorians that it's time to change the government, and micro parties who attract a half a per cent of the vote aren't our distraction, we need to focus Victorians on changing that government."
Candidate says she does not regret 'exaggerated' comments
Speaking to the ABC on Wednesday, Ms Spelman said "I don't regret saying it".
"Sometimes we need to say extreme things to get attention. Of course nobody wants him dead, but people do want him to pay and so he should,'' she said.
She blamed the government's lockdowns for driving people to the edge to say "exaggerated things" and accused the government of overreach in its pandemic response.
Ms Spelman co-founded a group which rails against COVID-19, which the group calls a Communist agenda and a "scamdemic".
Asked about Ms Spelman's post, Freedom Party leader Aidan McLindon said it was the party's view that Mr Andrews should stand trial for alleged corruption and government overreach during the pandemic response.
Mr McLindon said the party was hoping voters would elect a hung parliament on November 26.
The Freedom Party is one of 23 parties contesting this years' state election — a new record.
A Liberal Party campaign spokesperson said now the campaign had been made aware "of these specific instances", they would consider what action needed to be taken.
The spokesperson noted "there is zero chance of any Liberal preferences flowing to the second Freedom Party candidate in South East Metro".
A Labor Party campaign spokesperson said Mr Guy needed to explain the preference order to Victorians.
