An upper house Liberal candidate in Victoria, Australia will not sit in the party room if elected at next week’s state election over her links to the City Builders Church.
Opposition leader Matthew Guy said some of Renee Heath’s views were not uncovered through the party’s candidate preselection review process.
Heath is a member of the City Builders Church, which has been accused of promoting gay-conversion therapy and being opposed to gay, transgender, and reproductive rights.
She was preselected at the top of the party’s ballot for the Eastern Victorian Region, almost guaranteeing her a spot in the state’s upper house.
In the marginal Liberal-held seat of Hastings, the opposition leader said it was too late to disendorse her as a candidate but said she would not sit in the party room if successful at the Nov. 26 poll.
“I haven’t got the ability ... to expel someone from the Liberal Party. That’s a process in the Liberal Party,” he told reporters on Saturday.
Her connections to the Church, within which her father has preached against abortion and same-sex marriage, were reported in the lead up to the election by The Age newspaper.
It alleged Heath endorsed comments by Malaysian pastor and City Builders global leader Jonathan David.
The pastor has directed followers to pursue “dominion in every domain,” suggesting the Pentecostal church had ambitions to infiltrate and influence politics and social institutions.
There is no mention of religion on Heath’s candidate profile, but she has previously voiced her belief in the separation of church and state.
“I am not my father. To suggest that I am is offensive, as it belittles me,” Heath said in a previous statement.
Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam said the Liberal Party must have been aware of her ties to the church.
“They can’t play ignorance because they’ve been told for months that the anti-abortion, transphobic religious right has been attempting to take over their party,” she said.
It comes after the Liberals accused the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) of election interference after referring its probe into the party’s donor scandal to the corruption watchdog.
Guy would not be drawn on the party’s official complaint about the VEC’s commentary around the case, which centres on his former chief of staff Mitch Catlin asking a billionaire Liberal donor to make more than $100,000 in payments to his private marketing company.
“I’m not going to go and re-read the whole thing again ... that’s for you to read, not me,” Guy said.
