Labor MP’s dad in homophobic outburst at polling booth
Warning: this story contains strong language of an explicit sexual nature.
A Labor MP in one of the country’s tightest election battles has been forced to apologise after his father made homophobic comments towards a Liberal Party volunteer.
Bennelong MP Jerome Laxale (right) and his father Alain.
Laxale’s father Alain was captured on film, seen by this masthead, turning to a man handing out Liberal pamphlets at a voting booth in Bennelong on Wednesday and asking, “How’s your boyfriend?”
The man replied: “I’m not gay, buddy.”
Alain Laxale then said: “How’s your bum? How’s your bum, sore today?”
“Excuse me?” the volunteer fired back.
Alain appeared to be responding to taunts inspired by a 2022 Daily Telegraph story about his son’s personal life, in which a woman complained the then newly elected MP had kept intimate photos of her.
No suggestion was made that Laxale had inappropriately shared the images, and he denied the complaint.
Volunteers at the Bennelong polling booth were photographed holding posters on Wednesday that said: “What are you hiding on your phone, Jerome?”
Jerome Laxale told this masthead in a statement: “I love my Dad, but the things he said were deeply offensive and completely unacceptable. He should not have said them. I’ve spoken to him and he regrets them, and apologises unreservedly.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton at a campaign event for Liberal’s Bennelong candidate Scott Yung, with Senate candidate Jessica Collins.Credit: James Brickwood
A letter from Labor assistant secretary Jen Light sent to the AEC on Wednesday said the party was considering referring Heart Party volunteers to police.
“At least three volunteers for ‘the Heart Party’ followed the local Labor MP, Jerome Laxale, around the area outside the PPVC – brandishing signs, making inappropriate comments and generally obstructing the movements of Mr Laxale and people who wished to engage with Mr Laxale,” the letter stated. “This may extend to seeking to interfere with Mr Laxale speaking to voters by harassing him, including standing over him and following him.”
Laxale, known as one of the best marginal seat campaigners in the government, won the seat from the Liberal Party in 2022, but a redrawing of boundaries means the seat is notionally Liberal with a wafer-thin margin of 0.04 per cent.
Liberal candidate Scott Yung’s character has also come under scrutiny after a series of stories in this masthead probed his campaign finance record during his 2019 state election run, and his ties to a Chinese Communist Party-linked casino high roller.
“I think it’s borderline racism,” Yung said in a recent podcast, referring to the stories. “Just because I’ve got an Asian face, my parents have come from China and Hong Kong, they call me a communist.”
