Australian election 2025: Anthony Albanese claims far right ‘takeover’ of Liberal Party after candidate dumped

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the Liberal Party is being “taken over by the far right”, after a NSW candidate who said women should not serve in the ADF was dumped overnight. Benjamin Britton was disendorsed as a Liberal candidate for the NSW seat of Whitlam it emerged he had expressed “views inconsistent with the party’s position”, a Liberal Party spokesperson said. Prior to his preselection in December last year, Mr Britton, a former United Australia Party candidate, had said the Australian Defence Force needed “to remove females from combat corps” in order to “fix” the military. “Their hips are being destroyed because they can’t cope with the carrying of the heavy loads and the heavy impacts that’s required for doing combat-related jobs,” Mr Britton said. “Why would you want to send your beautiful women? Your females, the ones that are the backbone of your society. Your society only exists because of women. Why would you want to sacrifice them in war, on the altar?” Mr Britton also blamed “diversity and equity quotas, and these woke Marxist ideologies” for weakening Australia’s defence, with his Facebook account “Ben Britton for Whitlam” having since been deactivated or deleted. Speaking from Melbourne, Mr Albanese said he thought “women will be asking themselves, what is going on when Peter Dutton can endorse a bloke who has the views that he put forward over a long period of time.” “This is a part of the takeover of the Liberal Party by the hard right,” he said on Monday. Mr Albanese also said right wing backbencher Alex Antic, who was a guest on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s podcast, had been put number one on the South Australian senate ticket ahead of frontbencher Anne Ruston. “I would have some policy disagreements with on (Senator Ruston) Medicare, but she’s a shadow health minister. She’s been a senior minister in the government, dumped for Alex Antic in South Australia,” Mr Albanese said. “In Victoria, here you have a rump taking over. I mean, the (Premier Jacinta Allan’s) opponent (state opposition leader Brad Battin) got hunted down by the right wing of the Victorian Liberal Party. “You’ve got in WA all sorts of strange people with some very far right views who had to get dumped. There was a candidate every week going out. “Goodness knows who they’re running in the federal election.”