Older people and men the prime targets of Facebook campaigns to save women’s sport

The controversial Liberal-linked lobby group used Facebook ads and mobile digital billboards to highlight an answer Ms Steggall gave during an interview on Sky News about transgender people playing women’s sport.  

The interview came shortly after her main rival for the Sydney seat of Warringah, Liberal Katherine Deves, apologised for her own previous statements on the issue.

These included a comment where her appeared to compare her fight to stop transgender people competing in women's sport to those who spoke out against the transportation of Jews to the Nazi death camps in World War II.

Ms Steggall was asked about the issue on Sky News on April 18. 

“This is about creating division, I think this is a bit of a dead cat strategy you put something very controversial on the table and that distracts away from other issues,” she said.

“Saying that parents will be concerned is just repeating a transphobia line.”

Advance Australia - which has been in trouble with both the Australian and South Australian electoral commissions this year over its election campaign materials, including for a different campaign against Ms Steggall -  seized on this last comment.

In an ad run on Facebook, it stated: “Have a concern about this issue? Well that makes you a transphobe according to Zali. Sounds like a Green.”

Data from the Facebook Ad Library shows Advance Australia has spent between $2000 and $2500 on these ads on the platform, garnering between 45,000 and 50,000 impressions. They ran from April 27 to May 9 inclusive and were shown only in New South Wales. 

The demographic breakdown shows that more than half the people who saw this ad were aged 55 or over. 

Only eight per cent of people who saw the ad were in the under 35 age bracket, which is the group most professional athletes fall into.

Men were slightly more likely to see the ad (53 per cent).

Binary Australia, another lobby group concerned about the same issue, has also targeted older people with its Save Women’s Sport campaign in recent months.

These ads have been shown around the country. Facebook’s Ad Library does not allow analysis to reveal whether particular electorates were targeted with the ads.

Binary Australia is operated by Gender Awareness Australia, whose directors include Kirralie Smith and Tio Faulkner.

Ms Smith is a former anti-halal campaigner who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate with the Australian Liberty Alliance in 2016 and nominated again with the Australian Conservatives in 2019.

Mr Faulkner is a former “right hand man” to Coalition Senator Zed Seselja, who has a number of connections to Advance Australia, as RMIT FactLab found. 

Unverified screenshots shared with RMIT FactLab appear to show that the Binary Australia accidentally posted a comment to an Advance Australia Facebook post that was intended to be posted from the Advance Australia account, suggesting the two groups are closely connected.

Ms Deves has also been embroiled in controversy during the federal election campaign for claims she has made about transgender people and reassignment surgery, which RMIT FactLab looked into previously.