‘It was a charade’: preference whisperer Glenn Druery falls for Animal Justice party’s Victorian election sting

Preference whisperer Glenn Druery says the Animal Justice party pulled off the ‘most elaborate sting in minor party history’ ahead of the Victoria state election. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

It is, as victim Glenn Druery puts it, the “most elaborate sting in minor party history”. For months the Animal Justice party was “negotiating” with the so-called preference whisper to gain the support of other parties working with him – only to direct its own preferences to others at the last minute.

But for Ben Schultz, the state election manager for the Animal Justice party and its lead candidate in the southern metropolitan region, undermining Druery’s preference arrangements just minutes before group voting ticket registration closed on Sunday was a case of righting what he described as some “wrongs”.