Part V — The Stairs

27 min readOct 31, 2021

“An escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. You should never see an ‘escalator temporarily out of order’ sign, just ‘escalator temporarily stairs, sorry for the inconvenience’

- Mitch Hedberg

Nobody knows for sure who was behind the creation of Qanon. There’s been much written about who could have been controlling the account over it’s last year or so but we know that it started off being controlled by one entity and changed hands at some point. There is not much focus on who was behind it at it’s creation and I would be putting my money on Cambridge Analytica. For several reason, most obviously because they were Trumps PR team and specialize in that kind of thing or at least have contractors that do. Not to mention the whistleblowers basically laying out exactly how it was done and then the appearance of the same tactics spreading the same conspiracy theories here coming from the same subsection of politics as in the US. Now with hindsight we actually have a copy of a memorandum of understanding between Cambridge Analytica and a company called ‘PsyGroup’ (now known as Whiteknight) who specialize in this kind of online public image manipulation and information spreading, signed in the months before Qanon was started. PsyGroup, while technically an Israeli company (even though it was based in Cyprus) was actually founded by an Australian man named Joel Zamel, the son of Gary Zamel, a coal mining millionaire.

Just on an interesting side note, in 2005 Gary Zamel and his wife purchased a $20,000,000 ‘mega-mansion’ with harbor views in Sydney from Lachlan Murdoch which they sold 10 years later for almost double the price.

There has been some good research done on the links between SCL and PsyGroup and it seems they are fairly intertwined, but I digress.

We also have the involvement of Michael Flynn who is a major figure in the Qanon world these days. A former military general and advisor for Cambridge Analytica who in the past has spoken of needing to recruit ’1 million digital soldiers’ and since the figure at the middle of the conspiracy, a man simply known as Q, appears to have disappeared as soon as the election was over Michael Flynn almost appears to be working his way in to Q’s place, especially after taking the ‘digital soldiers oath’, which is ‘Where we go one we go all’ or #WWG1WGA.

Then of course you have Michael Flynn’s Aussie counterpart, Riccardo Bosi, doing his best to replicate his work here.

After the 2020 US elections when allegations of voter fraud were running rampant online it seemed as if it caught the social media companies and governments by surprise. I don’t know how as just from monitoring these groups I feel like I knew more than them.

Think back to the election last November, do you recall the videos that were doing the rounds of people ‘catching’ people on camera doing things like breaking in to mail boxes and taking out trump votes or changing votes, etc? It was all over Sky News as they tried to drum up the anger and belief that the election had been rigged.

For a brief moment in time, October 2020 to be exact, the Wikipedia entry for Qanon said this

And it seems they did, with support from the usual network of Conservative/Libertarian ‘opinion’ dressed up as news.

This resulted in the purge of ‘all’ (read as: about half of) Qanon and anti-vax related content from Facebook and Twitter. It resulted in the removal of many groups from our little anti-lockdown/vax network as well.

In theory this seems like a good move, but really it was the worst thing that could happen because it was only instantaneous for a handful of large groups and the vast majority of groups were slowly shut down over the course of a few months, giving them all plenty of time to establish other hidden, more private groups through other platforms and move the bulk of people over.

It’s curious that Lisa here is a moderator for the Dictator Dan group, is involved in groups both here and in the UK and appears to live in Sydney.

In that little snapshot of her small friends list we can also see profile overlays relating to Victoria Forward, Re-ignite Democracy, Digital Warfare and the Freedom Rallies.

Some of the groups lost in this process were Reignite Democracies Facebook group, Australians vs The Agenda, Fanos Panayides and it culminated in the removal of our friends David Brodders and David Leonard along with their entire group Dictator Dan: Divulging his Deceptions, Disasters and Deaths in December. Poetic.

David must have received a ban for a month or two but it didn’t take long for a new version of the group to pop up. It underwent a whole host of tweaks to the angry and articulate alliteration assault (thank you) before resting on it’s current name Dictator Dan — Demonic Deceptions, Deaths and Devastating Victoria. (update — It is now called Dictator Dan — Destroyed Lives & Deaths. Sounds fun)

But this time they created a whole network of groups with slightly different themes, presumably to safeguard against another FB crackdown.

Those other groups include -

- Labor Disasters, Deaths, Deception, Debt and Declining Lifestyles.

- FIGJAM Dan — Killed 800+ and Destroyed Victoria, Never Forget.

- Exposing Leftist Propaganda, Climate Socialism and Anarchy.

- Exposing Woke and Leftist Lies. HOW DARE YOU!

- Draining the Swamp — Exposing the swamp slime

- Leftist Illusions and Political Religions Destroyed — How Dare You!

- Where the Grass is Greener — Defending Country Life, Freedoms and Traditions

- The Drums of War — Exposing Chinese Aggression.

- Lies. Dan’s Lies and statistics.

- Good Old Collingwood Forever

As I go to link them all it seems every name has changed and I really can’t be bothered chasing them all down but you get the drift.

The groups in this network that link to the other groups in the network all also link to Daniel Andrews Resignation.

Curiously, there are some other groups linked that are completely unrelated to the running themes.

This time the groups were much better organized with one of the admins regularly writing a lengthy hot take on current affairs. The main admin of these groups is what appears to be a young Indonesian boy named ‘Lenny David’.

The Admins of these groups switched around a bunch of times and new groups with the same name or a slightly different name were created and then people were directed there and the old group was shut down, I guess to make them harder to find and weed out the unwanted members.

Initially there was only a couple of admins. Seeing as Lenny here appeared to be a fresh account I thought i’d go through his page likes and see if I can find any clues as to where he comes from because I have a feeling it isn’t South East Asia.

That’s basically his entire list of page likes, minus about 15 extra Collingwood FC pages. I think it tells us plenty, not just from the overwhelming support of Collingwood but even with that aside we have a very interesting mix of pages I already suspect to be a part of this network and some even dating back to the Tony Abbot days. No politicians, usually these accounts at least follow Tim Smith or Bernie Finn, but interestingly the IPA and IPA media associates plus several anti-ABC pages.

Maybe it’s just because he is a fan of Tony Abbot and Tony Abbot is a ‘Distinguished Fellow’ of the IPA. That’s probably it. An impressionable young Indonesian guy who is a rabbid Abbot fan and runs a whole host of fiercely anti-Labor and anti-China Facebook groups who often takes the time to write a lengthy piece about the evils of Dan Andrews to his Facebook groups.

What stands out though amongst all these on-theme pages however is 3 different pages that seem to be for the same auction house in Bentleigh. Curious, because the related groups that seemed random are for antiques and art deco collectables, which is what this auction house seems to specialize in.

These new groups initially were just a whole bunch suspicious accounts talking to each other in this very disingenuous, on-topic way. Not unlike the accounts initially commenting in the original DDDDDD group.

There was a new common theme — Credlin.

Coincidently, right in the middle of all this Steve Price happened to be sitting in a pub watching Victorian Liberals Tim Smith and Matthew Guy from afar and thinking ‘How could the Liberals possibly win the next election with O’Brien leading the charge and these two clowns the only alternatives’ when a light bulb went on in his head.

Peter Credlin should be premier of Victoria!

It was genius, so genius he decided to write about it in the Herald Sun.

The hashtag #credlin is still used in the admins daily write ups.

Let’s take a minute to speak about two of these names above posting this stuff. They are not admins of the group but these two, Era Goberman and Vesna Dmitrovic, are in the other groups and are frequent posters. Vesna posts like a normal everyday member of the group, but she is just way too involved across multiple groups and the old DDDDDD group for a normal person.

She has also been there from the start, becoming a member of the new incarnation of DDDDDD on the day it was created.

This is taken from Reignite Democracies Facebook page in October 2020. I think it could be safe to say this means she has more of a role here than just a regular anti-Andrews citizen.

A look at her Linkedin page shows that she worked as a Team Leader at Foxtel for nearly 20 years.

Newscorp.. Interesting.

The other person, Era Goberman, is also curious.

Joined the group 3 days after its creation. Unlike Vesna, Era doesn’t post like a normal member of the group, she posts like an Admin across multiple groups. Nothing going on on the account aside from that one profile photo, an image that is the Hebrew symbol for Chai. It lists her as being from Israel and residing in Melbourne.

If this was a sock puppet account I think it would be safe to presume only someone who is Jewish would use a seemingly obscure Hebrew symbol as well as listing their home town as in Israel. Maybe not, but so far there is nothing to indicate that if a bunch of these accounts were not legitimate they would have the foresight to go as far as to make themselves seem Jewish. They would make themselves seem like a woman, but probably not Jewish. Not when that Indonesian boy David Lenny follows ‘Liberal Friends of Israel Political Organization’ for some reason.

So I find this an interesting addition. Relatively, there is not many Israelis around so should help narrow things down at some point.

Is it Avi? He’s the only Jewish person featured so far that I am aware of. Not Israeli though, half Polish and half Yemini. I know his name suggests he is full Yemini but he is not, so his stage name or whatever is actually a lie in itself. There is no limit to the bullshit that comes from that guy. He should really be called Avi Pole-Yemini.

Or Halfi Yemini.

Sorry.

From observing these groups over a couple of months it seems clear to me that the 3 main accounts involved between groups are Lenny David, Era Goberman and Donald Blake. They post like admins and speak to each other like admins.

In April, Brodders came back! Was great to see him again, this time he had a new hat. I thought it might be handy to see what his page likes look like considering he was a fresh new account.

He only lasted a month or so and he was gone again.

He came back as a few different versions of himself but eventually Lenny David changed his name to David Smith and old mate Brodders was back as his profile image.

The groups had some nice references to past stunts and Mel Ann featuring a fair bit trying to stay relevant.

Curiously, amongst all the various suspicious accounts running these new groups one other name stood out, a real account that was a name I hadn’t seen before in the old group.

A real David, one who’s name was vaguely familiar. We met him back when we looked at the creation of Donald Blake amongst the curious bunch of people liking his posts.

His place of work is the Desirable Objects Gallery in Bentleigh. That’s that place that Lenny David followed.

Very interesting development.

So obviously it’s just a coincidence that this friend of Donald Blake that just happens to also be called David and works at the auction house that Lenny David follows for some reason has taken over as admin, to make sure the group stays on the straight and narrow I guess. Lenny David is definitely not David Leonard, even though he now has the same profile picture.

Lucky, because if that weren’t the case it would really seem like to avoid losing this group again David Brodders, David Leonard and Lenny David have had to create it with their actual account so it seems legit.

That would make this guy very much responsible for deliberately leading people down the conspiracy rabbit hole and into the Qanon world while introducing them to this network of conspiracy theorist political activists and commentators that happened to all come together, out of nowhere, around this group and it’s related pages, leading the charge on spreading disinformation relating to Covid outbreaks, the police, the state government, other Victorians and just doing everything he possibly can to undermine the response and spread distrust from the comfort of his Black Rock home.

But obviously that is not the case here.

I think we need to have a little zoom in on this fellow.

Curious about this Auction House, I had a look through their Instagram account and was greeted with this.

4th of March and he was at the Black Rock Liberal Party annual dinner.

Brad Rowswell was the second politician to be interviewed by Reignite Democracy.

Just after the breadcrumbs had been laid out in the Dictator Dan group.

Unlike the previous iteration of this group these versions left out the Qanon stuff and had no breadcrumbs laid out leading members to a ready-made conspiracy theory. One would presume this was the real reason behind the removal of the original group.

Definitely wasn’t death threats toward Dan Andrews, seems like that’s perfectly fine.

Presumably this didn’t get them the traction they desired initially. If only something drastic could happen that they could turn into a new conspiracy theory. Something a bit more relatable than communist police enforcing an endless lockdown while Trump saves us all from pedophiles. Something tangible that they could easily twist the narrative of and bring some more people into the fold.

Even the Americans were getting in on the Anti-Andrews fun.

And their prayers were answered.

9th of March, Daniel Andrews announces he has fallen down the stairs, sustaining serious injuries and will be taking leave until he has recovered.

It didn’t take long for the network to swing in to action.

Conspiracy theories around the fall were jumped on by most of the media pretty late in the game once the rumors were already well established, especially after a state Liberal MP, the shadow treasurer Louise Staley, demanded that Andrews proves that he actually fell, claiming we have a right to know.

The Herald Sun was questioning it from the start. The Daily Mail was also helping to raise awareness of the theory using not-provocative-at-all headlines like Before Dan Andrews slipped and suffered serious injury, he was one Australia’s most prominent politicians. But he’s only been seen TWICE since… and it’s fueling sinister conspiracies about what REALLY happened.

On the 11th of June the Guardian published a piece outlining how the conspiracy spread. They wrote:

“A 9 March post by prominent anti-lockdown group Reignite Democracy Australia, run by former reality television contestant Monica Smit, noted a “strange trend” and fuelled a baseless rumour the MPs had all suffered adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccination. So too did a post by the far-right actor Blair Cottrell on the same day.

The next day, the first mentions of trucking tycoon Lindsay Fox in relation to the fall were made by a user in an anti-lockdown group known as Melbourne Freedom Rally. The Guardian has previously revealed links between the group’s leader and a number of far-right organisations. The post, which claimed Andrews had been at Fox’s home when he fell, was followed by a series of users advancing QAnon-flavoured claims he had “the shit kicked out of him” and been “taught a lesson”.

Outside of Telegram, however, the unfounded claims that Andrews’ fall was the subject of a cover-up were first aired by an obscure Queensland blog which also pushes Port Arthur massacre conspiracies, QAnon theories and baseless claims that Covid-19 is a “psyop”. On 11 March — the day after the first Telegram posts — the website posted an article under the headline “Who bashed Dan Andrews?”. It claimed, again without basis, that the injuries suffered by the premier were “consistent with having been kicked while prone on the ground”.

The website followed its first Andrews article with a series of similar posts pushing theories that photos of Andrews in hospital had been “doctored”, as well as linking both Fox and Sayers to the incident.

These articles — which are wrong — set out the basic infrastructure of the conspiracy theories which have dominated social media since: one pushing the idea Andrews was with Fox at the time of the accident, the other suggesting he had been assaulted.

Since their publication, they have been widely circulated on the same conspiratorial Telegram groups which pushed the initial rumours around Andrews’ accident, as well as on a series of Facebook pages associated with anti-lockdown protests and far-right ecosystems in Australia.”

The blog they are referring to was Cairns News. We can get more of a picture the rumors took shape if we look at this crew.

Initially they were definitely trying to steer the narrative toward being about a vaccine reaction.

This stuff was doing the rounds in the groups on the 11th also.

By the 12th the idea was gathering a bit more steam.

Then on the 13th Andrews released this image from the
hospital, which was immediately jumped on by these people.

Louise here is a member of 6 of these groups.

I’m coming across a lot of ‘studied at Monash University’. She clearly didn’t study graphic design and surely it doesn’t mean anything but it is odd to me that so many well educated people seem to make weird cameos throughout this.

I’ll mention as well that she is from the same Bayside electorate as David and Donald here.

That same day the Herald Sun also started asking some questions.

Then on the 14th this random member of the group, not a new member but has not contributed to the group before or after this, posts this series of images.

2 days later on the 16th, this was reported on Cairns News.

The Guardian article goes on to say:

“An analysis of the Facebook posts by Queensland University of Technology lecturer Timothy Graham showed that while they were not widely shared outside of online communities linked to conspiracy content, it appeared the Queensland website was “very much the originating vectors of this narrative and its sub-narratives”.

Less clear, though, is how these theories spread from social media’s backwaters, but Graham said it was likely that examining the spread of the articles on social media was showing only “the shadow” of the way the conspiracy had spread.

“It’s operating in this weird space in the information ecology where you have these fringe actors mixing with the political elite,” he said.”

Full respect to Timothy Graham, I am super grateful for the work he has done on this stuff over the last 18 months, but I do wonder if he holds back on just how mixed with the political elite these fringe actors are.

Straight away all across the network of different Facebook pages they started pumping out content asking questions about the fall and kept a steady stream of doubt going the entirety of his absence from public.

The one from Toby Mitchell was shared by The Quiet Australian

Teresa here, although it is unclear exactly where she is from, she says ‘we’ as if she is from some kind of group. A visit to her profile shows sharing of many posts from Reignite Democracy, Clive Palmer and just a torrent of just really mind numbingly stupid conspiracy theory content.

I tried to find out for myself if it did in fact say it the photo was taken in 2017 and I wasn’t able to find any dates.

Also, amongst this narrative being pushed from all the regular crew in these groups there was an influx of sock puppet accounts asking questions.

It seems apparent to me that these groups and pages signify one portion of this movement, which also has overlap with the Reignite Democracy crew. I plotted all the details published in The Age about the factions within the Liberal Party into an excel spreadsheet to see if there is any factional correlation between any members of the federal LNP that we have come across. Michael Sukkar and Kevin Andrews are in the National Right, headed by Peter Dutton. But they also belong to the ‘Frydenberg’s ambition subfaction’. Tim Wilson though, he is aligned with the moderates.

Maybe Wikipedia can tell us more.

Of course, the IPA. Duh.

I was kicking myself for not even thinking about this earlier, even though the connections have been everywhere. The Abbot support, the synergy between these groups, The Herald Sun and Sky News as well as questionable reporting from The Age and even the ABC. The IPA has people everywhere.

This has to be why the same bots were pushing #arsonemergency over the summer during the fires and then #dicatordan and #danliedpeopledied when this all started.

It would also explain why Jeff Kennets name keeps appearing everywhere, also Michael Kroger’s little protégé Marcus Bastiaan.

John Menadue’s website Pearls and Irritations last year listed the current members of federal Parliament that are part of the IPA or their affiliates.

These names include Josh Frydenberg, Scott Morrison and George Christensen amongst many others.

This is from their Wikipedia entry but taken from a thesis written in 1989 titled ‘A History of the Institute of Public Affairs’

The IPA Victoria was founded as an apolitical organisation, and rejected the IPA NSW’s strategy of “direct short term political action to defeat the Labor Party with an emphasis on propaganda”. However, the IPA Victoria acted as a finance committee for non-Labor parties in its first year, and the IPA Treasurer at the time reportedly said that much of the IPA Victoria’s funding was conditional on it being spent to “fight socialism at the coming election” (the 1943 Australian federal election).[44] Its Publicity and Research Bureau wrote political broadcasters, provided speakers’ notes to all endorsed United Australia Party and United Country Party candidates and producing advertisements.[44]

The IPA Victoria’s direct involvement in federal politics was reappraised after the 1943 election, and the organisation handed over responsibility for fundraising to the extra-parliamentary wing of the United Australia Party. The IPA Victoria remained involved in non-Labor politics, including financing by-election candidates and participating in the foundation of the Liberal Party of Australia.[44]

If you are scratching your head wonder why they would be endorsing Clive Palmers party in 1943, the United Australia Party was the Liberal Party before the Liberal Party. They re-formed the party as the Liberals under Robert Menzies because everyone knew the United Australia Party only served big business and they couldn’t beat the Labor Party. There’s more to that but we’ll get to it at a later date.

A piece about the IPA in 2019 on Crikey mentions that they are part of the Atlas Network and, well, of course they’re part of the bloody Atlas Network.

The following is from an article written for The Guardian UK at the end of 2019 in reference to the Brexit Vote.

Thinktanks — non-governmental organisations that research policies with the aim of shaping government — have long been influential in British politics, too, on both left and right, but the sheer number of connections between Johnson’s cabinet and ultra free market thinktanks was something new. In the period immediately before the Brexit referendum and in the years since, a stream of prominent British politicians and campaigners, including Johnson, Michael Gove, Nigel Farage and Arron Banks, have flown to the US to meet with thinktanks such as the AEI and the Heritage Foundation, often at the expense of those thinktanks, seeking out ideas, support and networking opportunities. Meanwhile, US thinktanks and their affiliates, which are largely funded by rightwing American billionaires and corporate donations, have teamed up with British politicians and London-based counterparts such as the IEA, the Legatum Institute and the Initiative for Free Trade, to help write detailed proposals for what the UK’s departure from the EU, and its future relationships with both the EU and the US, should look like, raising questions about foreign influence on British politics.

The organisations involved in this collaboration between the US and UK radical right are partners in a global coalition of more than 450 thinktanks and campaign groups called the Atlas Network, which has its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Members of the network operate independently but also cooperate closely in fighting for their shared vision of ultra free markets and limited government. They call themselves the “worldwide freedom movement”, collectively they have multimillion-dollar budgets, and many of their donors, board members, trustees and researchers overlap.

Brad Lips, the chief executive of Atlas, has said that his organisation takes inspiration from monetarist economist Milton Friedman’s famous insight that “only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

“When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around”

Yeah there’s alot to take in there. I’ll add that the man who got Boris Johnson election, not only as Prime Minister but as Mayor of London in the years before, was none other than the Liberal Parties own Sir Lynton Crosby of Crosby — Textor, now known as C|T Group here in Australia or CTF Partners in the UK. Now that I think about it, there is more of a crossover between C|T Group and the IPA than just politics, both places represent the same industries. Crosby also came out of the Howard era Liberal Party, Howard being part of the IPA.

On SourceWatch the IPA has a fairly thorough write up.

At the bottom of the page they have a list of members of the IPA. I don’t know if it is a current list, it states that as of 2011 the IPA website lists the board of directors (page now removed) but I think that is referring to the board of directors only. The list looks like this.

There’s plenty going on there as well. I can confirm John Roskam is still Director that’s no secret and Louise Stanley is now the shadow Treasurer from the Victorian Liberals. The one that issued the media release demanding Dan Andrews answer questions regarding his fall.

But what stands out here the most to me is Ted Lapkin, Director of the IPA Freedom Project.

Gee, that sounds like it could be relevant.

There is nothing else out there about the IPA Freedom Project outside of this and maybe it’s old news, but that doesn’t mean it’s not ongoing. Maybe we can get an idea of what it is if we learn more about this bloke and see if anything I can dig up lines up with our story here. So I went on yet another deep dive.

Turns out he is a former policy advisor for Kevin Andrews. An article about him in the Sydney Morning Herald states:

An Israeli war veteran who once fought Hezbollah and has also worked for Republican congressman Rick Lazio is now the key adviser overseeing Kevin Andrews’ controversial push to abolish the charities commission.

Ted Lapkin, a former research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, was hired by the Abbott government in January as a policy adviser on the non-profit sector.

OK, just in that first paragraph alone there is so much there. So firstly I just want to point out that the IPA is a registered charity. He is an ex-IDF, ex-Republican, ex-LNP policy advisor running something ominous called the IPA Freedom Project. There’s just parallels all over that. Another random co-incidence I suppose, but I think we need to dig deeper.

There’s not too much out there outside of things written about the charities commission stuff from 2014, but I did find this event from October last year which is a live interview with Lapkin by Andrew Hastie, the Liberal MP from WA. It doesn’t introduce him as Kevin Andrews former policy advisor or as a fellow of the IPA, it refers to him as the author of ‘Righteous Kill’.

You can’t hear the interview as it was a ticketed event, so I searched around for ‘Righteous Kill’ and came across this book review in the Jerusalem Post. It describes the book in the first paragraph.

‘The basic premise of Righteous Kill, the debut novel of Ted Lapkin, is a staple of science fiction. Physics professor Gerhard Hoffmann invents a time machine. He wants to send Special Forces, equipped with 21st century technology and weaponry, to kill Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, and most of the Wehrmacht High Command before June 1941, thereby creating a power vacuum filled by German generals who have no ideological impetus to invade the Soviet Union. Their cancellation of Project Barbarossa, Prof. Hoffmann believes, “means no orchestrated Final Solution.”’

Right. I guess yeah he is Jewish so this is probably a concept he’s been toying with for a while. Also im not gonna criticize someone for being creative, you do you Teddy, it’s the first line of the next paragraph that is relevant to us.

‘To this premise, Lapkin, a former combat intelligence officer in the Golani Infantry Brigade, who now runs a consulting firm specializing in strategic communications and government relations, adds an interesting wrinkle.’

A consulting firm specializing in Strategic Communications and Government Relations?

We need to have a look at this.

So I searched and searched and it was not easy at all, couldn’t tell you how I ended up finding it but eventually I did.

This is Alesia Public Affairs.

From the website:

‘Almost 200 years ago Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz famously wrote that “war is an extension of politics, but by other means.” But here at Alesia we’ve turned Clausewitz on his head because we think it’s precisely the other way around. Our operational philosophy dictates that ‘politics are an extension of war, but by other means’. And those “other means” entail a battle of ideas waged with words and images within the framework of our liberal parliamentary democracy.

By definition, politics are an adversarial process that begins with a clash of contending philosophies and ends with a vote on the floor of parliament or at the ballot box. Whether it’s a contested piece of legislation or an election campaign, at the end of the day politics are a zero-sum contest. In the final equation — when those votes are counted and ballots are tallied — only one side will win.

At Alesia, not only do we recognise this zero-sum reality, but we positively embrace it. And we’ve pretty much seen it all while serving in political, media and policy advisor roles to Cabinet Ministers in Canberra and the Republican Congressional Leadership in Washington D.C. The razor-sharp political nous we’ve developed along the way will help you to emerge as the victor rather than the vanquished.’

Sounds very similar to the work that a certain Strategic Communications Lab does.

In May, on the anniversary of Scott Morrisons miracle election win, David Frauman shared a post from 2 years ago.

So I clicked through to his profile and he had shared another image that I couldn’t see, but it had some comments on it.

Stephen Kerdel is another one of the names we found on Donald Blakes account.

Looking at the comments on these posts.

So obviously this crew campaigned for Tim Wilson but also Elsa here looks very much like the person in this image I saw on the Instagram page for Davids auction house.