Perth Voice Interactive

A VETERAN Stirling councillor has played down her sharing of social media memes which have been criticised as having racist undertones.

Councillor Elizabeth Re is a prolific re-poster of memes, and while many are on contentious topics, one using the word “illegals” in reference to asylum seekers has put her in the spotlight.

The memes were posted to her personal Facebook page, which does not present her as a councillor nor use council iconography. 

One from the series featured an image of a British soldier and the text, “we owe illegals nothing and our veterans everything”. 

It was shared from a Facebook page called “Speak Up, Britain!”, a free-for-all page for posting political memes, many of them right wing and almost all of them blurry.

Blurry

Another featured a rural scene with all-caps text stating: “You came from there because you didn’t like it there, and now you want to change here to be like there. You are welcome here, only don’t try to make here like there. If you want to make here like there you shouldn’t have left there in the first place.”

The posts were highlighted by racial equality advocate Suresh Rajan on his own Facebook page, where he said: “The page from which she shares these posts is Speak up Britain. It is a notoriously racist page.

“I hope one of my media friends will pick up and run with this. And it is hoped that Mark Irwin mayor will do something about this rubbish,” Mr Rajan posted, tagging the mayor to alert him to the post. 

The community paper PerthNow – Stirling edition indeed picked it up and ran with it, quoting Mr Irwin as saying the posts had “racist undertones and inferred that migrants aren’t welcome.

“Cr Re’s comments do not align with city values. 

“On behalf of the city I strongly object to this message and have written to Cr Re to request that she reconsiders and apologises and/or remove these posts while the city follows any due process.”

PerthNow contacted Cr Re for comment but she was on leave.

At the December 5 council meeting’s public question time, resident and regular attendee Roland Hadley defended Cr Re’s shares: “Illegals is a term used by the media and in Parliament referencing people who come by boat to Australia. They are not migrants in this context, nor is it a racist term,” Mr Hadley.

He asked who’d tipped off the media about Cr Re’s posts, and Mr Irwin said, “you’d have to ask the media. It certainly wasn’t from myself ‚Äî you can do a [freedom of information request] on my emails”.

Cr Re, back from leave, spoke to the Voice this week but was guarded about not breaching Stirling’s restrictive communications policy.

“The only thing I can say is I will, and always have, supported veterans,” Cr Re said. “It’s about support of veterans above all else.”

Cr Re also drew a distinction that “illegals are different from migrants”, noting she herself was from a migrant family. 

The term “illegals” was popularised during former prime minister John Howard’s era but had fallen out of mainstream favour by 2010. It was revived by Scott Morrison in 2013 during his time as immigration minister, and then carried on by Peter Dutton through the late 2010s. A search of federal hansard shows Liberal MPs have eschewed the term in recent years. The last use of the word in Parliament was by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, on November 6.

by DAVID BELL