A Greens spokeswoman told SBS that a female volunteer was bitten on the hand late last night in an altercation at the Armidale Primary School voting booth in the electorate of Higgins.
Incumbent Liberal MP Kelly O'Dwyer is facing off against Jason Ball from the Greens and Carl Katter from Labor in the Melbourne seat.
Two Greens volunteers were keeping watch in a car overnight to make sure posters weren’t ripped down when they saw two men replacing their posters with Liberal material, the Greens say.
The volunteers asked the men to stop, and when a female Greens volunteer began to film the two men, one came over and grabbed her arm to stop her, the volunteers allege. In the altercation the woman was bitten on the hand, the Greens say.
Greens campaign posters the party claims were torn down after an alleged biting incident. Source: SBS
It’s not the first time poster wars have been an issue for the Greens in Victoria, footage of a former Labor MP removing and replacing posters has also been made public.
A Liberal party spokesman expressed surprise at the incident, telling SBS that media reports were the first they’d heard of the altercation.
“At this stage we received no reports from any of our volunteers who have conducted themselves in that way,” he said. “Like everything, if there’s evidence we’ll investigate.”
The Greens say the incident was reported to police, and that the woman still has a sore thumb.
“They were quite shaken by it, they didn’t expect that as part of the Democratic process,” State Director for the Victorian Greens Larissa Brown told SBS.
“Violence has no part in our democracy. We call on O’Dywer to run a clean campaign,” she said.
It’s not the first incident in the traditionally safe Liberal seat this election, Greens candidate Jason Ball recently gave an emotional response to homophobic graffiti which was scrawled across his campaign posters.
