Andrew Laming: Liberal MP’s Facebook page removed after he downplayed apology

Liberal MP Andrew Laming’s Facebook page is offline after he downplayed his apology for allegedly bullying constituents.

Laming apologised on Thursday after allegedly harassing two prominent women from his federal electorate in eastern Brisbane over several years.

His statement in parliament came after the prime minister reprimanded the backbencher’s “disgraceful” behaviour.

However, the MP later downplayed his offering in a post on Facebook on Thursday night.

“In this climate – I willingly apologise – I didn’t even know what for at 4pm when I did it,” Laming wrote, following it up with three tongue sticking-out emojis and a heart eyes emoji.

The Morrison government holds a slender one-seat majority in the House of Representatives.

Laming’s page had disappeared from Facebook on Saturday morning.

Queensland Labor MP Don Brown suggested Laming should be dumped.

“If you aren’t fit for Facebook, you are definitely not fit for Parliament,” he tweeted.

It comes after a state Labor MP came forward with more allegations of online harassment from Laming on Friday.

Kim Richards, whose state seat of Redlands overlaps with Laming’s federal seat of Bowman in Queensland, told the Guardian that Laming had published a photo of her accompanied with a slur that she had “no reason to be in a kids’ park”, as part of an ongoing campaign against her.

Richards also called into question the sincerity of Laming’s apology, especially considering the long history of his constituents complaining of online abuse from Laming.

She said that Laming had sent her a handwritten note, promising to target her government, rather than her “personally” after her election in 2017.

But she said that he had hadn’t relented since, engaging in a “long-running” campaign of “bullying and harassing” behaviour.

Since his apology in parliament, the Guardian has seen Facebook messages from Laming where he says he was “actually surprised by the response” to the Channel Nine story.

Channel Nine news first revealed that Laming had been accused of online harassment on Thursday, detailing how he accused a woman of misappropriating charity funds, leading to her contemplating taking her own life.

The report also detailed another woman’s allegations, with Sheena Hewlett, and her husband Lance, a local councillor, saying Laming had targeted her for six years with online abuse that she said had left her fearful and distressed.

Laming had expressed “regret and deep apologies for the hurt and the distress that communication may have caused,” before the report aired, he also apologised to his constituents for not meeting their expectations of an MP.

“To any person who has received correspondence from me which fell short of what they expect from an MP, that I intend to own that failure and apologise without hesitation.”

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, was expected to enforce a “zero tolerance” approach to the rogue backbencher, who has been regularly criticised for his behaviour.

“He is very clear about my expectations,” the prime minister said on Friday.

But the federal opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, said Laming had been let off lightly.

“One again Scott Morrison has got out the feather against a Liberal MP in Andrew Laming,” he told reporters on Friday. “Quite frankly, the prime minister’s response is totally inadequate, as it always is.”

Albanese said: “In my view, Andrew Laming isn’t fit to continue as a member of parliament.

“And if the Liberal party want to continue to associate themselves with him, then I look forward to campaigning with the Labor candidate in that seat.”

The episode is the latest in a crisis which has engulfed the Morrison government and started a wider debate about sexual discrimination, harassment and abuse.

The prime minister is seeking a circuit-breaker after being criticised for his tone-deaf response to a wider debate about sexual discrimination, harassment and abuse, sparked by former staffer Brittany Higgins coming forward last month to allege she was raped by a colleague in 2019.