Former federal opposition leader Bill Shorten says he wants to know “what forces were at play” during the 2019 federal election, after Steve Bannon purportedly claimed he was behind a $60m advertising strategy that damaged Labor’s campaign.
In text messages released by the US Department of Justice linked to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Bannon, an American far-right political strategist, claimed he had influenced Australian billionaire Clive Palmer’s advertising.
“I had Clive Palmer do the $60 million anti china and climate change ads,” Bannon told an unidentified person, who appears to be Epstein, two days after the May 2019 federal election.
The claim purportedly made by Bannon is untested and was dismissed as “bullshit” by Palmer’s spokesperson on Sunday. Bannon has been contacted for comment.
Palmer spent more than $60m on election advertisements for his United Australia Party, but later said he had pivoted his strategy in the final weeks of the campaign “to polarise the electorate” and damage Labor’s chances of winning.
Shorten had been leading in published polls and was broadly expected to lead Labor to an election victory. The party’s post-mortem came to the conclusion that the ads had “a significant negative effect” on Labor’s primary vote and Shorten’s standing in the electorate.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Shorten told Guardian Australia on Monday he considered Bannon’s claims “a badge of honour”.
“I think Churchill once said if you have enemies you’ve stood up for something, some time in your life,” Shorten said.
“I worked hard but didn’t realise that our ambitious reform agenda resonated across the Pacific. If Steve Bannon wanted to stop Labor from winning government I must have been doing something right.”
Shorten said he wanted to know what had occurred.
“An important principle is to know what forces were at play, and to protect our system in the future.”
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald during the campaign – about a week before Palmer pivoted his advertising spend – Bannon described the campaign as dull, and that he was surprised at the lack of reference to China.
“There should be a really intense debate about this,” he said.
“They are trying to hold the election on national security, and it should be tied to China. The insurgent parties should be generating the intensity, and they’re not.”
During the campaign, Palmer ran a two-minute advertisement attacking Labor that made claims that “communist China” was attempting “a clandestine takeover of our country”.
Labor’s election review cited the “bizarre” claims in concluding that Palmer’s advertising had “a significant negative effect on [Labor leader] Bill Shorten’s popularity and on Labor’s primary vote”.
“Following a preference deal with the Coalition, Clive Palmer dovetailed his $70 million advertising spend with the Liberal Party’s in the final two weeks of the campaign, moving his attack to Bill Shorten as ‘Shifty Shorten’ and, in Western Australia, to a bizarre claim the McGowan Government sold an airport to China for $1.00,” the election review said.
“Palmer’s advertising blitz strongly amplified the Coalition’s anti-Labor message to economically insecure, low-income voters. In focus groups of soft voters, Palmer was described in the most derogatory terms, helping explain the poor vote he and his party received, but his blitz against Shorten took its toll on Shorten’s leadership standing.”
Palmer’s media spokesperson, Andrew Crook, responded to Bannon’s purported claims of involvement via text message on Sunday.
“This is made up. Just bullshit,” he said.
