Rightwing political group Advance mounts ‘unprecedented’ campaign against Labor in Dunkley

aThe rightwing political group Advance is running a third-party campaign “unprecedented” for an Australian electoral contest, outspending the Liberal party on social media ads in an effort to wrestle the seat of Dunkley from Labor.

The strategy, being orchestrated by the team behind the referendum’s no vote, is focused on criticising Anthony Albanese over the cost-of-living crisis and community safety. Labor believes it may be among the biggest push mounted by an activist group in a single seat outside a general election.

Dunkley is Advance’s first electoral project since the voice, with the mortgage belt seat a field test of whether its brand of populist, incendiary campaigning honed in the during the voice can have an impact in a standard ballot rather than the binary choice of a referendum.

The group’s rolling billboards – which it calls “truth trucks” – circle the Victorian electorate, imploring voters to “put Labor last”. But despite Advance’s deep links with – and prior work for – the Liberal party, it is not explicitly campaigning for the Coalition candidate, Nathan Conroy, as much it is campaigning heavily against the government. The group plans on “hammering letterboxes” with anti-Labor flyers; it ran full-page ads in Victorian newspapers about asylum seekers; and its paid social media ads are targeted solely at Dunkley.

Senior Labor sources remain confident of retaining the seat, held previously by the late Peta Murphy, but are wary of Advance’s novel tactics in a live electoral contest – especially since the absence of One Nation and United Australia party candidates could hand the Liberals a greater share of the rightwing vote.

Advance’s controversial referendum campaign – which drew criticisms of racism and misinformation from opponents and some Liberal MPs – has Labor alive to the challenge, with no less than the party’s national president, Wayne Swan, and secretary, Paul Erickson, continually emailing supporters, asking for donations to “fight Advance”.

Albanese claimed the group wants to “frighten” people with its messaging about crime and asylum seekers. “This group is certainly very partisan,” he told 3AW on Thursday. “They spread a whole lot of misinformation.”

Sophisticated digital operation

Advance reported $5.2m in donations in 2022-23, double its takings for the previous year. It also declared $4.5m on election expenditure in the year to July 2023, before the main period of official referendum campaigning.

They’re not going to stop until they’ve bought the seat of Dunkley for the LiberalsPaul Erickson, Labor party

Guardian Australia’s investigations throughout the referendum campaign highlighted Advance’s sophisticated digital operation, including a network of Facebook pages highlighting different criticisms of the Indigenous voice, as well as a “Referendum News” page which portrayed itself as a neutral news source. That page rebranded as “Election News” shortly after the byelection date was confirmed, posting only content related to Victoria and Dunkley.

Analysis of Meta’s ad library, which tracks ads across Facebook and Instagram, shows Advance is outspending the Liberal party but splashing far less than Labor in Dunkley.

In the 30 days to 22 February, Advance’s main page and Election News combined spent about $25,000 boosting its Dunkley-related posts. Ads boosted by Conroy and the Victorian Liberal party came to only $20,600.

Meanwhile, Labor spent closer to $50,000 on Dunkley ads on its national Facebook page, according to ad library. Candidate Jodie Belyea spent $7,200 boosting ads.

Advance’s ads, targeted at Dunkley postcodes, have garnered between 1.37m and 1.64m impressions, according to Meta’s ad library tool (which gives a range, rather than a specific number).

Anthony Albanese with Jodie Belyea, the ALP candidate for Dunkley, at Frankston Bowling Club last month. Photograph: Diego Fedele/AAPByelection ‘a referendum on the prime minister’

Advance is almost entirely focused on criticising Labor to galvanise a “protest vote” in Dunkley. Its Facebook messaging targets concerns about rising prices and the release of asylum seekers from indefinite detention. “How many in Dunkley?” the online and newspaper ads read, demanding the government reveal if any of the detainees freed after a high court ruling live in the electorate.

Asked about the ad on 3AW, Albanese defended his government’s response. “I think people will have a look at that ad, which is designed to frighten and scare people, and see it for what it is,” he said. “It’s unfortunate because I don’t want to see Australia go down the American road, where there’s so much polarisation.”

Asked for response to the comments from Albanese and Labor, an Advance spokesperson replied that the prime minister “didn’t answer the question” on 3AW, and shrugged off his criticisms.

In an email to supporters on 2 March, Advance’s director, Matthew Sheahan, claimed that the byelection was “a referendum on the prime minister”, urging “hard-working Aussies who live in Dunkley” to “fire a warning shot across the prime minister’s bow”.

“If we convince voters in this one seat to put Labor last on March 2, the pressure will pile on Anthony Albanese in ways he can’t imagine,” he wrote. “It will be a political earthquake.”

In a 14 February email, Sheahan spruiked a “brutal shock and awe political campaign in Dunkley”. He said Advance was seeking $275,000 in donations to finance social media advertising, “rolling truth trucks out on to every major road in Dunkley”, and “hammering letterboxes with eye-catching leaflets”.

Sources on the ground in Dunkley say the trucks are a constant presence on main thoroughfares, with a black-and-white photo of a grumpy looking Albanese as people stand in a kitchen, looking over bills and appearing stressed. “We’ve all had enough,” the signage reads.

“This is more than just a byelection: it’s a chance to rearrange the political landscape,” Advance’s donations page claims.

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Wayne Swan ‘concerned’ about rise of Advance

After Guardian Australia reported on Advance’s fundraising drive, Labor’s president, Wayne Swan, put his name on an email to party supporters accusing Advance of “trying to import a permanent Trumpist style culture war” and “using the politics of race, gender and identity”.

Swan said he was “concerned” about Advance being “one of the fastest growing campaign organisations in the country”, calling it a “nasty organisation”. The email asked for donations to “fight Advance”.

Labor’s vice-president, Mich-Elle Myers, sent a similar fundraising email, claiming Advance was “trying to buy Dunkley for Peter Dutton”.

Advance, in turn, used it as a fundraising opportunity of their own. In an email on Wednesday, Sheahan claimed “Albo has hit the panic button” and was “running scared”.

“They’re so rattled, former federal treasurer Wayne Swan has written to all Labor members. He warned them that your powerful ADVANCE campaign in Dunkley is about to overwhelm them.”

On Thursday Erickson – a mastermind of Labor’s 2022 election triumph – sent his own donations email, blasting Advance’s mobile billboards as a “truck of lies”.

“They’re not going to stop until they’ve bought the seat of Dunkley for the Liberals,” he claimed, requesting cash to “fight Advance”.

Advance campaign spend ‘unprecedented’

Advance has operated in several election campaigns, to little success, since launching in 2019 with plans to be the “rightwing GetUp”. Its 2019 campaign to save Tony Abbott in Warringah failed, as did its 2022 campaigns against the Labor party, and the independents David Pocock and Zali Steggall, all of whom were elected.

But Advance’s 2023 referendum campaign, portraying the Indigenous voice as an elitist and complicated proposal saw the group emerge as a powerful third-party force in Australian politics, despite the protests of voice supporters, who branded some parts of their campaign a “lie”.

Advance’s campaign has differed from its referendum push but still retains some flavours of its first major success. The group homed in on comments from Labor’s candidate, Jodie Belyea, after last year’s referendum, when she called the no result “the display of what I can only describe as the worst of white privilege in this country”.

Dunkley voted no by a margin of 56% to 44%.

Advance posted several links to Belyea’s comments on social media, writing: “Labor thinks you voted No to the Voice of Division because of your ‘white privilege’. Does Albo’s cost of living crisis make you feel ‘privileged’? What a joke.”

It also dusted off and rebranded its Referendum News page, which lay dormant for months after its last post on 13 October, the day before the referendum vote. Its next online activity wouldn’t be until 29 January, when the page name was changed to Election News – 10 days after the Dunkley byelection date was announced, and the same day the writs for the poll were issued.

Advance posted four articles in quick succession about cost-of-living issues in Victoria: rising electricity bills, housing issues, a spike in shoplifting cases linked to the cost of living, and economic pressures facing families. All four articles were weeks or months old – the latest had been published in December 2023, the oldest in May 2023, about eight months before Advance posted it. A fifth article was also posted on 29 January, critical of the Albanese government’s handling of asylum seekers freed from indefinite detention.

Since the beginning of 2024, Election News has targeted every one of its posts solely at people living in the Frankston area, specifically blanketing postcodes and suburbs in the Dunkley electorate.

Labor sources said they were surprised, however, that Advance hadn’t leaned more heavily into Google and YouTube advertising. The ALP has strongly utilised the platforms, while Advance has only boosted Google ads with less than $1,000 in spending.

Labor sources say it is “unprecedented” for Advance to outspend the Liberals on advertising, as appears to be the case. Some question whether GetUp – which has run focused campaigns against Peter Dutton in Dickson and Abbott in Warringah at general elections – had ever poured such substantial resources into a byelection.

Veteran campaign experts say it’s unknown how effective a group like Advance might be in a normal electoral contest but that its large campaign war chest, as well as techniques and supporter lists refined through the referendum, combine to make a formidable political machine.