Alleged anti-LGBTQ candidate won't sit in Victorian Liberal party room, says Opposition Leader Matthew Guy
A Liberal Party candidate all but certain to be elected to Victorian Parliament next week despite her membership to a virulently anti-LGBTQ church won't sit in the party room, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has said.
Renee Heath is a member of City Builders, a deeply conservative Pentecostal church.
An investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes found the church allegedly conducted a violent exorcism on a 12-year-old boy because he was wearing a T-shirt with a skull on it.
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Matthew Guy said Renee Heath won't sit in the party room when elected. Gus McCubbing
The church is also accused of using "deliverance prayers" to change their sexual orientation, describing homosexuality as "demonic".
Heath is the daughter of the church's senior Australian pastor, and has herself preached at City Builders.
As the top-of-the-ballot Liberal candidate in Victoria's upper house in the Eastern Victoria Region, she is near-certain to be elected.
But Guy said while it was too late to disendorse her, he could prevent her from sitting in the party room.
"She won't be in the Liberal Party room, but it's too late to disendorse candidates," he said.
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Renee Heath is all but certain to be elected as the top Liberal candidate in the Victorian upper house. Facebook
He said he spoke to Heath this morning but did not go into detail as to their conversation.
"I'm not going to go chapter and verse into it," Guy said.
"I'm not in any way going to have the Liberal Party been seen to be tacitly supporting any practices that are illegal in this state."
He said some of her views were not known to the Liberal Party when she was selected for the ticket.
He said the Liberal Party's views on LGBTQ issues needed to be "mainstream and sensible".
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Daniel Andrews is running for re-election as premier. Wayne Taylor
Premier Daniel Andrews said the issue was "a matter for the Liberal Party".
"The Liberal Party are preferencing racists, they are preferencing extremists, they are preferencing black-shirted women-haters, they are preferencing Nazis," Andrews said.
"All of it needs to be explained by the Liberal Party."
"There's no place for some of those extreme views."
Election Day is next Saturday.
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