THE National Party has been accused of playing “grubby, dirty politics” over its latest attempt to slur Member for Mildura Ali Cupper.
The Nationals-authorised letter box drop of campaign material in the region has questioned Ms Cupper’s allegiances as an independent, citing a previous partnership with Labor and her current affiliation with Fiona Patten’s Reason Party.
It neglects to mention her previous election campaign support for former Liberal Party MP Chris Crewther, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2016.
By her own admission, Ms Cupper surprisingly ousted The Nationals’ Peter Crisp as Member for Mildura in 2018 by just 254 votes to make Mildura one of the most marginal seats in Victoria.
In doing so, she became Mildura’s first female state representative.
Ms Cupper this week said the leaflet, which questioned “How is this good for Mildura?” in relation to her new coalition with Ms Patten, was reflective of a National Party that was bereft of ideas.
“I am an independent, but I have long worked with different sides,” Ms Cupper said.
“One of the parties that I have worked with and campaigned alongside that they left out is the Liberal Party, but they left them out (of the campaign material),” she said.
“I find that interesting because they probably have a bit of a sense that we kind of do get the whole value of a coalition.
“So to accuse me of forming a coalition being a fundamentally bad thing that would make them look a little bit hypocritical.”
Ms Cupper said that while it was not her place to give advice to The Nationals, resorting to “old tactics” was not the way forward.
“If they are losing seats in country areas and they are being outperformed, what they need to do is focus on developing a policy vision that is relevant and exciting for a modern regional community and recalibrate that to the 21st century,” she said.
“Focus on that rather than resorting to old tactics, which I think people are just getting sick of, which is about smearing their opponents and playing grubby, dirty politics.
“Critique me on my policies, but don’t distort the truth and don’t provide misleading information.
“If that’s how they want to roll, that’s how they roll.
“I’m just going to focus on my job, which is to continue to get the best outcome for my electorate.
“Fundamentally, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing and at the end of the four years my campaign is going to be run on my record.”
The campaign material also directs people through a QR code to the website alicupper.com, which Ms Cupper said was being used for “nefarious purposes”, as opposed to her own political domain alicupper.com.au.
“Back when I was first elected, and it was a bit of a surprise election for me, we went to set up the website when we realised that alicupper.com.au had been purchased by the National Party,” she said.
“Luckily for us, we were able to purchase that because your proprietary rights to your own name as a domain are protected by Australian law, so the .au you can get back — no thanks to the National Party.
“Alicupper.com is an international domain and there aren’t any international laws that govern that.
“Unless they agree to give that back, they can continue to own it and use it to run a grubby, dirty, misleading smear campaign against me.”
Both the hand-delivered campaign material and alicupper.com website are authorised by M. Harris, National Party of Australia-Victoria. Matthew Harris is the state director at The Nationals Victoria.
The National Party was contacted for comment and had not responded by deadline.
