Viral footage has captured WA Labor’s Secret Harbour candidate, Georgia Tree, refusing to answer questions from an anti-gas journalist.
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Jesse Noakes, who runs the Instagram page ‘Last Place on Earth’, posted the one-sided exchange online, where it attracted more than 16,000 likes. Ms Tree, who is running for the state seat of Secret Harbour at the upcoming by-election, declined to address queries about her ties to the gas industry.
“Did you personally lobby against the gas tax?” he asked, to no response.
“Georgia, are you being sent to Parliament by the gas industry to lobby on their behalf?” he followed.
Speaking to Youth Jam’s Isaac Mulcrone, Noakes said the candidate’s silence was telling.
“I think, for a lot of people who saw that exchange when we posted a version of it onto social media yesterday, the silence spoke volumes. A lot of people took that as a sign of where things stand in WA Labor,” he told Newsflash listeners.
Noakes questioned whether avoiding journalists was a deliberate party strategy, suggesting Labor had issued directives to its MPs and Ms Tree.
He argued that while Labor may believe everyday Western Australians are indifferent to political connections with gas corporations, the public reaction suggests otherwise.
“It’s like they don’t think people mind when we see these corporate lobbyists go back and forth, through this revolving door between Parliament and the big buildings on St Georges Terrace, but I think what you’ll see in the comment sections of my videos, what you see online, what you see when you go and speak to people on the streets or on the doors, is people actually do mind,” he said.
Regarding One Nation, Noakes suggested that former Labor voters are supporting the party as a form of protest, hoping to send a message to the state government.
“It’s not as though people are likely to get a respite at a policy level if they pick One Nation instead of Labor, but I think most people are thinking ‘how can this get any worse?’ They’re just fed up and it’s a protest vote,” he said.
