The independent candidate for the seat of Ballina has attracted condemnation for comments he made over domestic violence at a public forum last week.
Kevin Loughrey received unprecedented levels of booing from the live audience at last week’s Ballina: Meet the Candidates broadcast forum in the Byron Theatre compared to previous similar broadcast forums.
Mr Loughrey referred to domestic violence as the result of poverty during his five minute campaign introductory speech.
Domestic violence happens when men lose their jobs and wives stress them out, says Loughrey
‘The non-thinking idiots will say, “oh, we won’t tolerate domestic violence,”’ Mr Loughrey said, ‘what they’re saying is that they’re gonna go in and beat up the husband and throw him in jail’.
Mr Loughrey said domestic violence happened when ‘people’, before referring only to men, ‘lost their jobs’ and ‘when the wife is extremely worried for the welfare of children’.
‘The husband gets depressed, he hits the grog,’ Mr Loughrey said, ‘and then the wife keeps on talking to him and stressing to him that he’s gotta straighten up and he’s gotta get a job and he lashes out’.
The stunned crowd used the brief pause to boo, with one member calling ‘get this man out!’ before Mr Loughrey continued.
Charity worker debunks independent’s DV theory
Byron Community Centre General Manager Louise O’Connell later posed a question to Ballina candidates concerning funding for the Fletcher Street Cottage, which includes services for domestic violence survivors.
Ms O’Connell preceded her question by telling Mr Loughrey she was a domestic violence survivor at the hands of a fully employed husband.
‘This is why I do this job,’ Ms O’Connell said, before listing a long list of services provided without government support at the BCC’s Fletcher Street Cottage.
The cottage was ‘the only dedicated space to support our homeless community in Byron Bay,’ Ms O’Connell said, adding that the service cost a million dollars each year to run.
Mr Loughrey’s comments on domestic violence come alongside denials of climate change and indigenous massacres in Australia during colonisation.
The independent ran for the federal senate in last year’s election as the last candidate on a list of six for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party.
Mr Loughrey won 640 above-the-line votes out of around 4.8 million formal votes, or 0.01%, while Mr Palmer’s party failed to win a seat despite the flamboyant Queensland businessman famously investing a lot of money in the campaign.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
