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April 28, 2025
Monday 28 April 2025
Mohammad Alfares
The Australian
Kooyong MP Monique Ryan has resorted to a last-minute plea for $20,000 in donations after claiming shadowy conservative forces were conspiring against her as her grip on the once-safe Liberal seat slips.
In an email to locals on Saturday, Dr Ryan accused the Liberal Party and conservative groups like Advance Australia, Australians for Prosperity and Better Australia of orchestrating “co-ordinated, well-funded” attacks designed to mislead voters.
She mentioned neo-Nazi disruptions and grassroot anti-teal campaigners “Repeal the Teals” in an attempt to rally support during the final week of the campaign.
Dr Ryan admitted she was scrambling for $20,000 to fund last-ditch digital advertising, telling supporters the seat could be decided by as few as 200 votes.
The incumbent MP, who said she was facing an electorate of 37,000 undecided voters, claimed the “conservative ecosystem” – backed by the Liberals’ $120m “Cormack Foundation war chest” – was out to get her.
“I never wanted to have to make this final financial ask, but I need to,” the email reads.
“We need to raise $20,000 in the next few days to fund critical digital advertising – so we can cut through the noise, reach undecided voters, and tell them the truth. We’ve seen a scale of attacks I never thought possible – co-ordinated, well funded, and designed to mislead voters in the final stretch.
“These attacks aren’t just coming from the Liberal Party. They’re coming from a powerful conservative ecosystem: groups like Advance Australia, Australians for Prosperity, and Better Australia.
“Neo-Nazis disrupting a Kooyong community forum and the Anzac Day service at the Shrine of Remembrance. And ‘Repeal the Teals’ campaigners spreading disinformation at pre-poll booths. On top of that, the Liberals have their $120m Cormack Foundation war chest, funding wave after wave of attack ads.”
The former pediatric neurologist turned independent climate campaigner does not publicly disclose political donations, in contrast to her teal colleague Zoe Daniel, who received $520,000 from Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 group.
Mr Holmes a Court and Climate 200 were approached for comment.
Coalition campaign spokesman James Paterson said Dr Ryan was panicking because voters were beginning to see through what he described as the “teal political scam” from the last election.
“No desperate, last-minute fundraising appeal to her rich Climate 200 backers will change the fact that voters in Kooyong feel misled by teal politicians who said one thing before the election and behaved very differently afterwards,” he said.
“They (teals) sold themselves as a kinder, softer version of the Liberal Party, but once elected, aligned themselves with the extreme Greens – in Monique Ryan’s case, on 77 per cent of votes in the parliament.
“All from someone who runs away from the media and refuses to answer basic questions about her track record, Monique Ryan has shown nothing but disdain for our democratic process this election campaign.”
Dr Ryan came under fire last week after she refused to answer questions from Sky News and The Australian about her use of social media influencers to produce campaign material and of Climate 200’s role in backing her, despite standing on a platform of transparency and integrity in politics.
In what seemed like another desperate bid to shore up votes in her Kooyong electorate after a recent redistribution of the boundaries was expanded to include about 5000 extra Jewish voters, Dr Ryan said she was a supporter of Zionism, despite having previously backed an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and voiced support for the UN Hamas-linked aid agency UNRWA.
The seat, traditionally a blue-ribbon Liberal stronghold, is expected to come down to the wire, with the addition of affluent suburbs such as Toorak, Malvern, and Armadale through electoral boundary changes likely to inject more Liberal voters into the race.
Dr Ryan and her campaign were approached for comment on Sunday but did not respond before deadline.
It’s unclear how many people in the electorate received the donation plea.
A spokesperson from the Advance Australia activist group said they were not campaigning against her or any teal incumbent.
“We challenge Dr Ryan to produce any material authorised by Advance that is directed at her. She can’t because there is none,” they said.
“We wish all the grassroots organisations campaigning against her the best of luck and hope they are celebrating her loss on Saturday night.”
In a post on X last week, Mr Holmes a Court accused the Repeal the Teal group of being “misogynistic”, saying they were installed by Scott Morrison’s former secretary Yaron Finkelstein.
The Australian has confirmed the group was privately funded and initiated by two women, Sharon Kuper from the Kooyong electorate and Simonne Whine from Goldstein.
They have no political experience or ties to the former prime minister.
Ms Whine said “The Repeal the Teal campaign was built by suburban housewives, armed with nothing but truth, grit, and a shoestring budget”.
She claimed teal volunteers had been intimidating them at booths and told voters not to listen to “third parties”.
Dr Ryan and her liberal rival, Amelia Hamer, are locked in a tight battle for Kooyong, with the teal MP holding a slim margin of 2.2 per cent in the seat she won from Josh Frydenberg in 2022.