New South Wales Premier Domonic Perrottet has dumped Matthew Squires as the Liberal party’s candidate for Wyong in the upcoming state election after The Australian highlighted his history of homophobic and racists social media posts.
Warning: This story has details of homophobic and racist comments which might be distressing to some readers. For 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For Australia-wide LGBTQI peer support call QLife on 1800 184 527 or webchat.
Max Maddison, NSW Political Correspondent at The Australian, discovered a series of posts that the newspaper has labeled as “gay hate posts”.
Alongside derogatory comments about LGBTIQA+ people which included comparison to terrorists and labels of “perversion” and “serving evil ideologies” Squires also shared anti-vax comments and Islamaphobia.
OUTinPerth also highlighted to the NSW Liberal party comments relating to Indigenous Australians where he appeared to propose a return to 1950’s style assimilation policies. In a post to Twitter from 2017 Squires appeared to support a return to the doctrine of assimilation, which argued that Indigenous culture was inferior to Western culture and values.
Hours after the posts were highlighted to the party, they announced he was no longer their endorsed representative.
“Those comments are completely unacceptable and I support the action taken by the Party.” NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said in a statement. Later in an interview with Sydney radio station 2GB the Premier added ““Those views have no place in our party.”
A spokesperson for the party confirmed the disendorsement.
“The NSW Liberal Party expects high standards from our candidates. The comments made by the candidate for Wyong are offensive and unacceptable. Having failed to make appropriate disclosures to the party during the nomination process he had been disendorsed.”
Squires, who works in the business development field for a range of healthcare companies, was only chosen to be the party’s candidate at the last minute, which has once again brought into question to party’s processes for completing adequate background checks on candidates.
During the 2022 federal election the party said they were unaware of Warringah candidate Katherine Deves extensive social media posts and public comments about people who are transgender, despite them being well known within the LGBTIQA+ communities and easily found online.
Squires had been a regular commentator on a Facebook discussion group called Australian Liberty Forum. Here, in 2019, he responded to a comment about calls to ban conversion therapy saying “Some ppl are always going to recognise homosexuality for what it is – perversion.”
In another post from May 2021, he compared LGBTIQA+ rights to terrorists.
“The homosexuality activists and the Palestinian terrorists are aligned because they are both serving evil ideologies. Some of you are sympathetic to both cause because you are too! Great way to test yourself.”
While in 2018 he compared incest and necrophilia to homosexuality writing, “Incest and necrophilia affect us all because it severely degrades our common humanity. Legal restrictions limit (just like sodomy laws used to limit homosexuality).”
Squires confirmed to The Australian that he had written the comments, but declined to say if he still held those views.
OIP Staff
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