Victorian Liberal state secretary Stuart Smith has resigned over text messages he sent to a staff group chat making fun of the party’s women’s council and mocking a female MP.<\/p>\n
“In the best interests of the party, I have tendered my resignation to minimise distractions from the important task of winning the next election,” Mr Smith said.<\/p>\n
“I regret the comments and have apologised for them.<\/p>\n
“I thank the party for the opportunity and wish the team well.”<\/p>\n
The text messages from Mr Smith to his Liberal head office colleagues were reportedly disparaging of the women’s council and, in separate comments, ridiculed 76-year-old Liberal MP Beverley McArthur.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Member for the Western Victorian region Beverley McArthur. (ABC News: Rudy De Santis)<\/p>\n
Ms McArthur said on Thursday morning Mr Smith’s resignation was “the only acceptable course of action”.<\/p>\n
“There’s probably some others that need to consider their position,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But, you know, despite my demure, diminutive demeanour, I’m a big girl and I can take this.<\/p>\n
“Trashing of women is just not acceptable.”<\/p>\n
‘Right thing to do’, Battin says<\/p>\n
Opposition leader Brad Battin said Mr Smith resigning was “the right thing to do”.<\/p>\n
“His comments were unacceptable and do not reflect the standards of professionalism, integrity, and inclusion that we all expect of each other,” he said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“I lead a team that aspires to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity and inclusion.<\/p>\n
“My focus, and the focus of every one of my MPs, is to deliver real solutions for every Victorian \u2014 safer communities, better services, and cost of living relief.”<\/p>\n
Liberal MP Evan Mulholland said it was a “good thing” Mr Smith had resigned.<\/p>\n
“Those kinds of comments about a colleague are completely unacceptable. We’ve moved on, the party has made the right call, and we’re focused on the next election,” he said.<\/p>\n
Liberal MP David Southwick said Mr Smith’s comments were “inappropriate” and the party had acted swiftly.<\/p>\n
“The matter’s been handled and we’re moving on,” he said.<\/p>\n
Executive director of the Liberal-aligned Hilma’s Network, Charlotte Mortlock, told the ABC she welcomed Mr Smith’s resignation.<\/p>\n
His departure comes a few days before the party’s next state council meeting this weekend, where the position of state party president is up for election, and former president Greg Mirabella is expected to challenge incumbent Phil Davis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victorian Liberal state secretary Stuart Smith has resigned over text messages he sent to a staff group chat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,59645,92646,68293,92645],"class_list":["post-134249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-resignation","tag-state-secretary","tag-stuart-smith","tag-victorian-liberal-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}