By Luke Voogt
Allegations of encouraging lamb theft have embroiled the campaign of Geelong’s six Animal Justice Party candidates.
Posts emerged online this week of the candidates’ media contact Gary Hall appearing to encourage theft on a private social media page.
“As far as farmers go … just march in and take it if its mother is nowhere to be found or it’s obviously suffering already,” Mr Hall posted earlier this year.
“Most often it’s the places that are far away from the farmer’s house.”
Victorian Farmers Federation Bellarine secretary Fiona Conroy slammed the posts, which appeared on the Exposing the Animal Justice Party Facebook page.
“I think it’s a disgrace,” she said.
“It’s beyond comprehension how irresponsible it is to encourage behaviour like that.”
But Mr Hall described the posts as a ruse to oust a fake profile and said no party member would steal livestock.
“We thought a lady was infiltrating our group – I was, basically, lining her up.”
The Victorian Farmers Federation had recorded cases of livestock thefts in the Geelong area, Ms Conroy said.
“It’s trespassing, it’s breaching the farmer’s biosecurity and it’s theft,” she said.
“Farmers don’t know if they’re people who mean well or if they have malicious intent and they intend to steal stock.”
Often ewes left lambs by themselves after suckling to graze, before returning, Ms Conroy said.
“Just because it’s sitting there by itself doesn’t mean it’s abandoned by its mother,” she said.
Thieves could introduce diseases from one flock to another, she said.
“Please contact the farmer. You can cause a lot of distress to animals if you go taking calves and lambs from farms.”
But Mr Hall, who is in charge of the party’s local social media, described suggestions that members would steal sheep as “ridiculous”.
“We’re vegan, what would we even do with sheep?” he said.
He said he posted the comments to weed out a fake profile on the party’s Western Victoria Campaign Group page.
“I knew she was watching because we talking about the issue of 15 million lambs dying in Australia each year,” he said.
Mr Hall deleted the comments shortly after, but not before a member of the Geelong farming community screenshotted them.
He accused the Exposing the Animal Justice Party page of attempting to sabotage the party’s council campaign.
“They’ve screenshotted what they wanted,” he said.
Fellow party member and former Federal candidate Andy Meddick said Mr Hall acted without the party’s knowledge.
“They put up some false information to see if they would take the bait.
“They’ve since decided that was not a good idea.”
Members of the circus, duck hunting and greyhound communities set up the hate page which posted Mr Hall’s posts, because of protests by the Animal Justice Party, he said.
