Sydney Labor smears Greens with "push poll"

Sydney Labor brings out their dirty tricks

Today, a Sydney-based call-centre (Stellar) rang up a mobile phone user who lives in the Newcastle electorate saying that they were calling “on behalf of Morris Iemma and Jodi McKay” hoping that they would have the support of the recipient in Saturday’s election, and asking if the recipient was aware that “the Greens candidate, Peter Debnam” was intending to cut 20,000 positions from the NSW public service.

Wondering whether she had heard correctly, the recipient (whose family is involved in the Greens) asked the caller to repeat the script. The caller confirmed the accuracy of her initial hearing of the message. Pressed on the matter, the caller told her that she was simply reading from a script provided by Sydney Labor.

The recipient then rang the Sydney Labor head office to alert them to the misinformation, but was given no assurance that the message would be changed.

At the very least, this is yet another example of Sydney Labor’s incompetence.

At worst, you have to wonder whether this really was a “mistake”, or a deliberate tactic by Sydney Labor to smear The Greens immediately before election day and to associate us with a policy that we have strongly opposed.

Labor has used similar smear tactics against The Greens in the past.

Even without the error, this practice (called “push polling” in the PR industry) is considered highly unethical.