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March 24, 2025
The Coalition says independent teal MP Monique Ryan has more questions to answer after her husband Peter Jordan was caught on camera removing a campaign poster for Ryan’s Liberal opponent Amelia Hamer.
The video obtained by The Australian Financial Review showed Jordan being chased down the street carrying a poster for the 31-year-old Hamer, who was preselected early last year to run for the Melbourne electorate of Kooyong.
Ryan issued an apology after the video surfaced on Monday, saying Jordan’s actions should never have happened. In the same statement, Jordan said he “unreservedly” apologised for his actions, which were a “mistake”.
“I believed the sign was illegally placed, but I should have reported my concerns to council,” he said in a brief two-line statement issued by Ryan’s office.
Coalition home affairs spokesman and Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson said Ryan needed to front up and answer further questions.
“Dozen of Liberal Party signs in Kooyong have been defaced or vandalised and have been stolen, and I think Monique should say [if this instance] is the only time her husband has taken it upon himself to enforce council bylaws and remove a sign, or has he done it on other occasions?” Paterson said.
“And are there any other members of her team who behaved like this or engaged in any other untoward behaviour in recent weeks?”
The spat over signage shows tensions are running high ahead of the election as the Liberals aim to wrest back the blue ribbon seat, which takes in suburbs such as Hawthorn, Kew and Balwyn.
Ryan won Kooyong from former treasurer Josh Frydenberg in 2022, breaking the Liberal party’s almost 100-year hold on the electorate. She holds Kooyong on a slim notional margin of 3.5 per cent after boundary changes are taken into consideration.
The former paediatric neurologist was one of six female independents who won seats from the Liberal Party at the last election, helped by backing by fundraising vehicle Climate 200.
The video, filmed about 3pm on Saturday, shows Jordan being asked by the camera operator what he is doing, to which he replies: “I am taking the sign down.”
“It’s on public land,” he says when asked why. He refuses to give his name on multiple occasions.
“Are you a Monique Ryan supporter ripping down people’s signs are you?” the camera operator asks again. “That belongs to me. You can take it off my property, but it belongs to me.”
Jordan hands back the sign but says that “if it goes back up it will be taken down again”.
“It’s [an] illegally put up sign, anyone can take it down because it’s illegal,” he says, adding “I am not acting on behalf of anyone, mate.”
In a statement Ryan apologised and said her husband should never have done what he did. “All concerns around signage should be reported to council,” she said.
The person filming the altercation was the son of the property owner, who asked Hamer’s campaign team for the sign to be erected. The son, who asked not to be named to avoid a backlash, told the Financial Review a noise outside prompted him to investigate what was happening.
“I just heard some noises out the front. I poked my head out the door and saw this fellow,” he said, adding that the sign was erected on the nature strip, not the fence, which meant it was on public land.
“We’d already requested it be replaced,” he said.