A Victorian Liberal Candidate Has Resigned After Appearing In An Anti-Muslim Propoganda Video
The election is less than two weeks away.
The Liberal candidate for the seat of Yan Yean in Melbourne’s north has resigned less than two weeks out from the Victorian state election, after appearing in an anti-Muslim propaganda video produced by the Australian Liberty Alliance.
Meralyn Klein tendered her resignation at the request of Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy, who described parts of the video as being “grossly inappropriate” and said Klein had “gone off the rails”.
In the video, which was posted to social media on Wednesday, Klein tells right-wing activist and Australian Liberty Alliance candidate Avi Yemini that when she and her daughter ran a restaurant, they were targeted by two teenage boys from a nearby business who were “of a culture that didn’t accept white Australian women”.
Klein alleges the boys threatened to attack her and rape her daughter, and that the harassment, which she says lasted for more than a year, culminated in an assault in which she was punched, thrown to the ground and called names “along the lines that I was a dirty white whore”.
Ms. Klein does not identify the boys’ religion in the video, but the text that appears on the screen claims that they were Muslim.
As the video continues, Klein tells Yemini that Australia’s immigration policy should be reviewed.
“It’s disappointing to say, but I think there are people in this country who are not coming here to get the best out of the country and to give the best they can,” she says. “I’d like to see us look at immigration overall.”
The video ends with the hashtag #MUSLIMBAN.
Guy said on Thursday that the party sought Klein’s resignation as soon as they learnt about the video.
“When Liberal Party candidates go off the rails, we deal with it appropriately,” he said. “Meralyn made a video, some of it was grossly inappropriate and her resignation was then sought … we asked for her resignation within an hour of finding out and we got it.”
Speaking to the ABC, Klein denied that she was anti-Muslim, and said she thought the video was going to be about crime.
“That video was taken by an individual, given to the Australian Liberty Alliance, to which I have no association and they made it into something it’s not,” she said. “Nowhere in anything I said was I anti-Muslim. I am not anti-Muslim.”
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