GetUp! national director Paul Oosting with campaign director Kelsey Cooke at their Sydney headquarters Picture: JAMES CROUCHER
GETUP! national director Paul Oosting could not have hoped for greater publicity after the federal election.
What better advertising than to have a string of commentators and high-profile Liberals, including Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz, publicly decrying the left-wing activist group?
The organisation spent $140,000 just on TV and newspaper ads, mail-outs and billboards aimed at ousting conservative Liberal MP Andrew Nikolic from the northern Tasmanian seat of Bass.
The free advertising the group garnered in return was priceless.
After the July 2 poll, Oosting and his colleagues gleefully took to Twitter and Facebook, welcoming the fury directed their way over the defeat of the Liberals’ self-proclaimed Three Amigos – Nikolic in Bass, Brett Whiteley in Braddon and Eric Hutchinson in Lyons.
With Coalition conservatives also pointing the finger at GetUp! over Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s near-loss and the unseating of South Australian Liberal Jamie Briggs, Oosting is being depicted as one of the most influential players in Australian politics.
Others have rejected the Liberals’ attack on GetUp! as scapegoating, but it suits Oosting just fine to be portrayed as a force to be reckoned with.
Read more HERE
Sally Glaetzer, Mercury
