The Liberal Party has dumped its candidate in a surprise election battleground over his use of an anonymised Facebook account to share racist tropes about “half-breed” and “full-blood” Indigenous Australians.
Paul Lindemann, who joined the party last year and became the candidate for Williamstown , has a Facebook account under the name Biddy Hu Biddy Hu which he has used to espouse extreme political views.
The account – named after Lindemann’s yacht, the Biddy Hu II – features photos of the real estate agent and his family, and lists the same school and university he attended.
Under this alias, Lindemann commented on a discussion about the proposed Voice to Parliament by saying Indigenous Australians were “never civilised” and were “the most primitive homo sapiens on Earth”.
In another post in the Facebook group, he claimed that Aboriginal people want “more rights than the others that followed”, and said that if this logic were applied to recent immigrants, they would also be fully indebted to third-generation Australians like himself.
“And any half-breed should fore go [sic] indigenous statis [sic], they are no longer indigenous they have foreign blood, hence as indigenous as me,” he said. “How many full bloods are still in our community?”
Lindemann separately said he had respect for some Indigenous people, but went on to say that applied to “generally the full bloods”.
“It’s when you get the half casts involved, no tradition, no respect, no hierarchy, just greed and hatred, all about $$$ and what they can extract from the government.”
The term half-caste is a racist trope that appeared in Victorian legislation in 1886 that allowed the government of the day to expel people of mixed descent from Aboriginal reserves and exert control and different rules over children if they weren’t “full bloods”.
It is now widely regarded as offensive and symbolic of now-condemned assimilation policies from the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the forced removal of children from parents and separation of so-called “full bloods”.
On Wednesday night, in response to questions from The Age, the Liberal Party withdrew its endorsement of Lindemann. A spokesperson said the party was not previously aware of his comments about Indigenous Australians.
“These comments are offensive, unacceptable and inconsistent with the values and standards expected of Liberal candidates,” the spokesperson said. “All candidates are expected to treat Australians with dignity and respect. Mr Lindemann’s comments fell short of that standard.”
In other posts, Lindemann referred to a supporter of the Voice to Parliament as a “pig”, and described backers of federal Coalition frontbencher Jacinta Nampijinpa Price as “progressive aboriginals” compared with “the ones who complain and sit around waiting for the next handouts”.
Commenting on a photo of Aboriginal soldiers from 1940, he said it was when “aboriginal people could be proud of their origins, when they contributed to society. Now?”
Using the Biddy Hu Biddy Hu account, Lindemann also commented on a video about the far-right National Workers Alliance, when its members gatecrashed an event held by independent Kooyong MP Monique Ryan.
In the video, the group said they asked Ryan “about the correlation between immigration and crime”. Lindemann said: “A few serious facts here.”
Older posts included Lindemann arguing about the merits of the COVID vaccine, describing it as an “experimental syrum [sic]”, and a picture depicting Daniel Andrews in the uniform of a Nazi solder.
In December last year, on a separate Facebook page under his own name, Lindemann pondered whether the death penalty should be brought back in Australia for people who commit heinous crimes.
The Age revealed earlier on Wednesday that Lindemann last year served a six-week suspension as a junior basketball coach for bringing the game into disrepute. He was alleged to have called an under 14s player “crap” and mocked her during the game.
Lindemann apologised for his actions in a statement to this masthead, which included following the opposition player up and down the court, clapping and cheering sarcastically when she made a mistake.
But the Liberal candidate said he acted on his “first instinct” to protect one of his players, who he said was “thrown to the ground behind the play”.
In response to those revelations, Sports Minister Steve Dimopoulos said the candidate should be disendorsed.
“Every Victorian deserves to play community sport in a way that is safe and free from intimidation,” the Labor frontbencher said. “You have to be very bad to be found guilty of bringing community basketball into disrepute.”
Williamstown has been held by Labor for all but four years since 1889. Government minister Melissa Horne retained the seat four years ago with a two-party-preferred margin of 13.4 per cent.
She acknowledged last month, however, that she was “up against it” ahead of the state election, with the Liberals and other candidates believing they had a shot of winning the seat.
While the Liberal Party has now disendorsed Lindemann, his name will remain on the ballot, and the party cannot replace him, as nominations for the election closed earlier this week.
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