South West Liberal preselection hopeful targets multiculturalism, vaccines and transgender people in posts

A string of controversial tweets have been uncovered which reveal the opinions of a potential South West Upper House WA Liberal candidate, including pro-Trump and anti-transgender sentiments. After the Bunbury Herald last week revealed Nigel Irvine had put his name forward for the party’s State election preselection period, the South Western Times discovered his trove of more than 100,000 tweets, many of which share highly controversial views. It comes after the State’s Liberal party room was thrown into chaos this week when deputy leader Steve Thomas was forced to resign from his senior positions following talks with disgraced former premier Brian Burke. Mr Irvine — a long time Liberal member — spoke exclusively to the South Western Times on Wednesday at length about his views, and backed the posts, shares and retweets as correctly reflecting his personal views. They include a repost which reads: “In case you haven’t noticed, WW3 is a war of non-believers against Islam. It has already started and we are losing.” Mr Irvine added the caption: “Sad” to the post. On his X account, formerly Twitter, there are more than 103,000 posts and his biography reads “ProTrump”, “ProIsrael”, ‘ProBrexit”, “12kids” and “hetro” amongst others. He has 607 followers, including WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam and controversial former Federal MP Craig Kelly. Mr Irvine has been the Liberal’s Mandurah branch president for the past three years, after first joining the party in 1989, before a stint with the Family First Party. He rejoined the WA Liberals about six years ago. Tweets reposted by Mr Irvine feature inflammatory language regarding race, religion and gender — along with memes of a similar nature. Another repost said: “If you live in this country (Australia) then this is your flag and English is your language. That’s how it works!” Mr Irvine added the caption “100%Correct!” “We’re one nation, one flag, and I think we should celebrate it on one day,” he said. Mr Irvine is also active in posting about gender issues, claiming he is “biologically minded”. “We tie ourselves up in knots over a very, very small minority and look, they can do whatever they like but I don’t think we should be changing biology or our own concept of biology to fit in some other narratives,” he said. Mr Irvine shared a number of posts regarding transgender people, largely focusing on children transitioning. In one post to Facebook in June 2, he blamed “woke” teachers for “turning” children transgender. This was just one of many targeting the community. Mr Irvine said it was “fraught with danger” to allow children to consider transition before they were adults. “We shouldn’t be giving drugs to children that will sterilise them for life, and we shouldn’t certainly be doing major surgery on children before they’re adults, before they actually fully understand what that surgery is going to do to them,” he said. Mr Irvine also shared anti-vaccination content, described children’s vaccines as “child abuse” and said the country went “over the top” during the pandemic. “At the end of the day, the truth will come out,” he told the Times this week. “I think we’ll all look back and say ‘well, we were a bit silly, not allowing people to run on the beach and play on the playgrounds and get outside into the sun, get a bit of Vitamin D’. “You can read a lot about COVID — you can read a lot about it — but the longer we get away from hoopla, I think that the more rational people are about what actually happened.” Mr Irvine, who works as a migrant agent, also told journalists he expressed concerns that student visas were being exploited as a “backdoor” into the country, before an application for a different type of visa once they are in the country. “You think you’re just training these people up and they can go back home, but you’re not,” he said. “A lot of people see it, they do a course which they have no experience in or something else and they just use it to get in the door. I don’t know what percentage (of overall student visas) that will be, but you see people that do that.” Mr Irvine is among six other candidates for the WA Liberals’ South West Legislative Council spots along with former shadow treasurer Steve Thomas, former unsuccessful Lower House candidates Michelle Boylan and Marie O’Dea and two Bunbury City councillors. Despite his run at the seat, he said he was fully supportive of Mr Thomas. “Even after this week’s unfortunate events, I still think he is one of the hardest working politicians I know,” he said. “I will be saying it on the night that I support him at number one, so I’m gonna say that right there.” Ms Mettam’s office was contacted in regards to Mr Irvine, but requested the questions be put to the Liberal Party State director Simon Morgan. Mr Morgan told the South Western Times all party members were entitled to apply to be endorsed and the preselection process was ongoing. “Mr Irvine is not an endorsed Liberal Party candidate,” he said. “The party has a vetting process in place, with the ability to report any findings to preselectors prior to them making a decision.” Mr Morgan said he expected party members to ask Mr Irvine about his opinions “on a wide range of matters” in the lead up to and during their March 9 preselection meeting.