(Image: Twitter)

Advance Australia, the conservative “anti-GetUp”, is back making headlines for the wrong reasons.

Since the start of the election campaign, the shadowy but well-endowed right-wing activist group has gained attention for provocative billboards. Most recently, it’s drawn threats of legal action from the Australian Olympic Committee and Swimming Australia over billboards featuring professional swimmers in a campaign against trans women in sport.

Before that, a truck with an image of Chinese President Xi Jinping casting a vote for the ALP, with the words “CCP SAYS VOTE LABOR” has been spotted everywhere from Canberra to Perth. At one point it was parked outside Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan’s house.

Also doing the rounds is a corflute attacking independent ACT Senate candidate and former Wallabies captain David Pocock by claiming he is a secret Green.

Beyond billboards

But billboards don’t win elections. Instead they tell a story of how a cash-strapped conservative lobby group with big ambitions of bringing culture wars to the forefront of election campaigns failed to really make a dent.

In 2019, a year after the group was founded, its greatest gift to an election where it focused on trying unsuccessfully to keep Tony Abbott in Warringah was “Captain GetUp” — a man in an orange superhero suit who wandered around making rude gestures at Zali Steggall.

In the intervening three years, it has managed to amass plenty of additional funding, despite losing key personnel. In the 2020-21 financial year, Advance got $1.3 million, including the second- and third-largest political donations. 

As Crikey reported, much of that money came from financier Simon Fenwick and companies linked to the moneyed O’Neill family. In the same cycle, Advance spent $2 million on political ads, mostly on social media.

Since January it has been the 11th biggest Facebook ad spender on social, political and electoral issues — ahead of Climate 200 and the Liberals (who don’t even crack the top 20). The ads show the group remains weirdly obsessed with Steggall, with posts claiming the independent MP is, like Pocock, a secret Green. 

Other ads allege a Labor government will put the Greens in power, which could unleash all manner of ills — from new taxes and weak national security to the loss of Australia Day. 

But is the group having any effective political cut-through?

The focus on Steggall — who many Liberals privately conceded months ago would win Warringah — and Pocock — running in the progressive bubble of Canberra — looks strategically odd. Advance claims it will spend $1 million going after Steggall and other independent candidates, as well as sandbagging under-threat Coalition seats. It also says it has 300,000 supporters and 10,000 donors.

Behind the scenes

Despite this, Advance appears to lack a seemingly effective or coherent electoral strategy. This could reflect changes that have come through at the top. Its founding director, Gerard Benedet, a former Liberal staffer, quit to work for the Pharmacy Guild. His successor, Zed Seselja staffer and Sky News regular Liz Storer, seems to be gone.

Now the joint is run by Matthew Sheahan, a man with no real public profile, beyond backing a few anti-same-sex marriage petitions on Facebook in 2017. Advance did not respond to requests for comment.

One recent addition at the top is former ACT Liberal MLA Vicki Dunne, who joined the group as a director last month, days after ending ties with her local party branch. Dunne, a Canberra Liberal elder stateswoman, describes herself on LinkedIn as a “retired political nerd interested in democratic institutions and political rights”.

Advance’s all important Facebook page is jointly managed with two other organisations. One is Whitestone Strategic, a conservative political consultancy founded by former Australian Christian Lobby comms director David Hutt and ex-Seselja chief of staff Stephen Doyle.

The other — more strangely — is RJ Dunham and Co, a Texan political consultancy for conservative religious groups. Dunham works mainly for American church organisations, as well as the ACL, and has an Australian HQ it shares with a Christian radio station in Sydney’s Hills district.

None of that influence, foreign or domestic, seems conducive to political success. Unless Advance and its money can find a way to make Katherine Deves great again.