Independent member for the key seat of Hillarys, Rob Johnson, has thrown such persistent and damning shade at the WA Liberal Party, from which he resigned last year, that “escalation” has started to feel like the wrong word — it’s become business as usual.  After years of feuding with Premier Colin Barnett, most publicly about his belief the WA Liberal Party is being taken over by evangelical Christians, he announced his resignation from the party in April 2016 by noting his lack of respect for his party leader and his “serious concerns in relation to this Government’s commitment to honesty, integrity, openness and accountability”. In October of last year, he was thrown out of Parliament for calling Barnett a “disgraceful turd” over his opposition to a bill removing the six-year limit on civil action for child abuse survivors.

But in the dying days of the state election, he keeps finding things to condemn about his former employer. On Tuesday evening he took to Facebook to fire off a litany of accusations — many of which was already on the public record. The accusation that the Libs “hacked” Google received coverage on the ABC last year, with state Liberal Party director Andrew Cox admitting at the time that someone had changed the details when Johnson quit, helpfully pointing out that Johnson could simply change them back. But new and interesting is the assertion that the WA Liberals had robo-called Hillarys voters and identified Johnson as a Labor candidate rather than an independent. Johnson told Crikey constituents of his had called him to check after receiving the call, set up as a poll. We can’t verify if that’s true, or just a misunderstanding on the part of the callers, and Johnson doesn’t have a recording.

Have any of our readers in Hillarys received this call? Drop us a line.

Peter Kastambanis, the Liberal candidate running against Johnson in Hillarys, was contacted for comment, but did not get back to us before deadline.