UAP’s Yodie Batzke, who is running for the Senate in Queensland, has deleted Facebook post saying abortion rates are ‘Australia’s great shame’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A prominent Clive Palmer candidate posted pictures of a heavily pregnant woman with a noose around her belly and a warning that abortion rates were “Australia’s great shame”.

The post, and another comparing anti-abortionists to gun control campaigners, appears to have been scrubbed from the Facebook page of Yodie Batzke, a Queensland pastor and United Australia party Senate candidate for Queensland. They were posted in late January and February, before Batzke announced her candidacy in April.

Batzke and the UAP did not respond to questions about why the posts were removed, whether Batzke was acting under party direction, and what the party’s policy on abortion is.

Question mark over eligibility of at least 19 Clive Palmer candidates Read more

The UAP has made Batzke one of its more prominent faces in its big-spending ad campaign, even though she is third on the Queensland ticket and has little chance of being elected.

Full-page ads picturing Batzke appeared in the NT News this week. She is also in three paid Facebook ads, and the UAP’s website describes her a “political advocate, theology teacher, minister of religion and adjunct lecturer”.

On Wednesday another UAP candidate came under fire for his views on immunisation. Alexander Stewart, running in the NSW seat of Cowper, was criticised for a Facebook post, also now deleted, that falsely claimed there was no evidence the benefits of vaccines outweighed the risks to children, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age reported.

Stewart told the newspapers he was “a vaccination questioner”, and a spokesman for the party said the UAP’s position on vaccines was not “finalised”.

The UAP has emerged as a possible contender in the Senate because of Palmer’s expensive advertising campaign, estimated at up to $60m.

This week’s Newspoll gave it 4% of the primary vote, down from 5% the week before. The party is running candidates in all lower house seats and across all states for the Senate.

Guardian Australia revealed last week that 40% of UAP candidates do not live in the seats in which they are standing. In some cases they live more than 1,000km from their electorates, including two who live in Cairns but are running for seats in Sydney and southern NSW.

The party is also fielding more than a dozen candidates whose eligibility is under a cloud over dual citizenship.

The Coalition has been forced to defend its preference deal with the UAP, and has said it was the least worst option.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said Labor and the Greens were a “bigger threat to the economy” than UAP, and the Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, said the UAP was “far closer” to the government’s supporters than Labor or the Greens.