Victorian Election Campaign 2022

Despite limited resources, time constraints and opposition by suppliers, Right to Life Australia delivered an intensive campaign in October/November 2022 leading up to the 26 November 2022 Victorian election. Although we are disappointed at the overall results of the Victorian election, we believe our work in the electorates of Caulfield and Sandringham influenced the results in these seats.

We based our campaign on a similar Victorian campaign in 2010, which was successful in 7 of the 9 seats targeted.bit.ly/2r1ogWx.

We concentrated on 3 key electorates - Mulgrave, Sandringham and Caulfield - sending educational brochures to each electorate using Australia Post deliveries. Altogether 130,000 brochures, printed by our supplier Wightons Printers, were delivered.

Although the seat of Mulgrave was retained by Daniel Andrews, he suffered a first preference swing against him of -8.5%!

Sandringham was retained by Brad Roswell (LIB) with a swing towards him of +3.9%.

The electorate of Caulfield had been held by David Southwick (LIB) by a wafer-thin margin estimated to be 0.04% after a boundary change, equivalent to be about only 100 votes. David has always voted in the Victorian Parliament to protect the unborn and against euthanasia.

A strong campaign against him was waged by Nomi Kaltmann [IND]. Kaltmann is the founder of JOFA - Australia's Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance which has links to the US pro-abortion group Jofa www.jofa.org. RTLA worked very hard in this electorate and was delighted the seat was retained by David Southwick.

The core message used in our campaign was VOTE LABOR LAST (used in Caulfield and Sandringham) and VOTE ANDREWS LAST.

NEWSPAPER AND DIGITAL ADVERTISING

In the electorate of Caulfield, we used traditional news and digital advertising in the Australian Jewish News www.australianjewishnews.com.

MOBILE BILLBOARD

A highly visible mobile billboard was transported through different electorates in the state for six days. Our message was that over 4000 late term abortions and counting have been performed in Victoria -VOTE LABOR LAST. This number is since the passage of the Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 [when Dan Andrews was Health Minister]. The main electorates where the truck visited were Mulgrave, Caulfield and Sandringham. In the last week of the election we expanded the route to include 3 marginal electorates (Croydon, Brighton and Pakenham) which each ran an EMILY's List candidate.

ELECTION DISCLOSURE LAWS

Victoria's strict new campaign funding laws [VEC guidelines] which applied to the 2022 state election directed individual donations above $1,080 (and caps on cumulative donations) must be disclosed to the Victorian Electoral Commission. Both RTLA and our donors were required to individually disclose these donations which are then published on a public VEC site.