The Victorian Greens have accused Labor of running “a desperate and dirty” campaign by using billboards and flyers in a key battleground seat that accuse the party having a culture of bullying, discrimination, sexual assault and transphobia.
The claims are being disseminated across the electorate of Northcote, where the contest between Labor MP Kat Theophanous and Greens candidate Campbell Gome is expected to come down to the wire on Saturday.
The campaign material includes a website, flyers, an advertisement at the Palace Cinema in Westgarth and several billboards listing the Green’s internal controversies going back to 2011.
Articles from major media outlets, including Guardian Australia, the Age and the ABC, outlining internal controversies have been quoted, including reports about federal Greens senator Lidia Thorpe’s undisclosed relationship with an ex-bikie and the internal fighting earlier this year around trans rights.
The Victorian Greens leader, Samantha Ratnam, denied that the party had any ongoing cultural problems and said the issues raised had been resolved.
“All [the material] that they’ve put on the website has been issues we’ve responded to,” she told Guardian Australia.
“It smacks of a desperate strategy from Labor.”
Thorpe stood down as leader in the senate and has referred herself to the privileges committee for possible investigation, while Linda Gale, who co-authored a “transphobic” paper in 2019, had her position as party convener overturned. Gale has strongly denied the paper was transphobic or that she holds transphobic views.
“We know when Labor gets desperate, they get dirty,” Ratnam said.
“They refuse to take us on policy, on climate action, on housing affordability; instead they resort to these desperate and outdated tactics.”
She said when one of the advertisements played recently before a film at the Palace cinema, the audience laughed.
“I think it’s having an opposite effect, people see right through it,” Ratnam said.
“They’ve said to me: ‘Is Labor that desperate, that they have to resort to these types of ads?’”
A spokesperson for the Labor campaign said the culture within the Greens was a matter for their party.
“The behaviour of members of the Greens political party is a matter for them – it’s up to them to explain why they stood by and tolerated bullying, transphobia, discrimination and sexual assault,” the spokesperson said.
Andrea Carson, a professor of political communication at La Trobe University, said research was divided on if negative campaigning did work in general, but it could have an impact if it was targeted at the right voters.
“It works better coming from a third party – in this case, it’s endorsed by the ALP,” Carson said.
“There has been effort here to not look like a piece of ALP political communication. Using the news headlines is an attempt to show a degree of objectivity: ‘look, it is not us saying it, it’s already been established’.”
Labor is targeting the electorate because it sits on a 1.7% margin and may come down to a few hundred votes. It is the fifth most marginal seat in the state, and Labor need to win it on first preference votes, Carson said.
“Let’s be frank, all sides of politics do this, including the Greens,” Carson said.
“This is politics with the sleeves rolled up. We’re seeing it now because we’re at the pointy end and the stakes are high. Losing the seat of Northcote would be a blow.
“Campaigns get dirty – they all do it. They do it in a high-stakes game; this is a seat Labor doesn’t want to lose.”
On Tuesday, Labor took the Darebin council to the supreme court for allegedly removing candidate billboards in what it called a politically motivated attack from the “Greens-dominated” council.
A council spokesperson said councillors had nothing to do with signage in the area.
In Northcote, concerns have also been raised about how-to-vote cards that look as if they come from the Liberal party and include quotes from Matthew Guy, which suggest voters preference the Greens behind Labor.
The Liberals are actually directing voters to preference the Greens above Labor in Northcote.
• This article was amended on 24 November 2022 to clarify that the reference to Linda Gale’s 2019 paper as “transphobic” was how it has been labelled by critics, and to include Gale’s denial that it included transphobic content.
