The disendorsed candidate for Lyons says she warned the party about her ‘strong opinions’ on social media

Dumped Tasmanian Liberal candidate Jessica Whelan has denied she lied to Scott Morrison about anti-Muslim Facebook posts and said she warned the party about her “strong opinions” on social media before she was pre-selected.

Whelan resigned as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Lyons on Friday after the party made clear she would be disendorsed for posts attacking Muslims and Muslim immigration.

She has denied responsibility for a post suggesting feminists who support Islam should have their genitalia mutilated.

But she has admitted making other comments attributed to her, including calling for Muslims to be refused entry to Australia and saying in response to a story on refugees fleeing war zones in Syria and Iraq: “Don’t bloody send them to Tasmania. We don’t want them.”

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Morrison backed Whelan when the allegedly fake post became public, saying it was not hard to believe an image could be doctored, but the party withdrew its support on Friday after more comments came to light. Frontbencher and party spokesman Simon Birmingham said the party was “not going to tolerate racist comments”. Asked if he felt he had been lied to, the prime minister said “yes”.

Whelan told Guardian Australia she had not lied to anyone. “As soon as I heard [Morrison’s comment] I thought, ‘What?’ I haven’t had a conversation with him. He refused to pick up the phone and talk to me,” she said. “I spoke to the Liberal party but what information they relayed I don’t know.”

Whelan is one of several Liberal candidates who have resigned or been dumped during the campaign for anti-Muslim, homophobic and sexist comments, prompting internal frustration and calls for tougher procedures for vetting candidates.

Labor and minor parties have also been hit with the ALP losing their candidate for Melbourne, Luke Creasey, over Facebook posts in 2012.

Whelan said suggestions from the Liberal party that she did not raise her social media use before being pre-selected were not true. She said she told officials she had been outspoken, including posting on the Facebook page of the state Labor leader, Rebecca White, but that she had deleted material from her profile before she was confirmed as a candidate in January.

“I had a very brief discussion with [Liberal state director] Sam McQuestin about it. I said I had posted on Labor pages and news articles and that I’d had a strong opinion,” she said.

A Liberal spokesman told News Corp the party was unaware of the posts until contacted by the media. The party’s state office did not respond to a request for further comment before publication.

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Whelan’s disendorsement has changed the complexion of the race for Lyons, which is held by Labor’s Brian Mitchell by just 3.8%. Though no longer running for the party, Whelan still appears on ballots as the Liberal candidate. The Nationals candidate, Deanna Hutchinson, has been rebranded online as a “Liberal and Nationals” candidate but posters describing Whelan as the Liberal representative are still up across the electorate.

Asked by News Corp when Whelan’s remaining posters would come down, McQuestin said they would be removed “in a timely manner”.

Labor had been widely expected to hold Lyons and the Liberal party had focused its Tasmanian campaign on the northern electorates of Braddon and Bass. But the former Liberal MP and federal speaker Peter Slipper, now a barrister in Hobart, told ABC radio he believed Whelan’s comments and dumping could help her win the sprawling rural seat, which runs from Hobart’s outer northern suburbs to south of Launceston and along the east coast.

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Whelan said internal polling suggested she had a chance and said she was running to win as a Liberal-leaning independent. She denied she was racist and said her comments had been “ill-informed and inappropriate”. “I take responsibility for them. They are certainly not something I would talk about now,” she said.

A federal police spokeswoman said it received a complaint about the allegedly fake Facebook post on Friday and was investigating. Whelan said she spoke with Tasmania police on Sunday about the post and threatening phone messages she had received. She said she planned to contact federal police on Monday.