The CEO of Guide Dogs Victoria Karen Hayes has been officially stood down after she endorsed Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on campaign flyers. Talk shit, get puppy privileges revoked I guess.
ICYMI Frydenberg’s team distributed election flyers in his seat of Kooyong in Victoria. The flyers included endorsements including one from Hayes.
“Hi, I’m Karen and I’ve known Josh for over a decade and I could not have asked for a better local Federal Member for Kooyong than Josh Frydenberg,” the lengthy, lengthy endorsement started.
Hayes said Frydenberg had been an “enthusiastic and committed supporter” of one of Guide Dogs Victoria’s campuses and highlighted his “genuine care” for the charity.
But then Guide Dogs Chair Iain Edwards said the charity’s board didn’t know Hayes would be appearing in the flyers and that it didn’t endorse the move. It also asked Frydenberg to stop distributing the flyer ‘cos charities aren’t supposed to back political candidates or parties before an election.
Yikes! The girls are fighting!
Guide Dogs Victoria then launched an investigation into the whole affair. Messier than a puppy before it’s been house-trained, if you ask me.
Josh Frydenberg called the criticisms of the ads “confected outrage” and blamed “fake independents” for the backlash.
“It’s an inconvenient truth for these fake independents that I’m receiving public recognition from community organisations that I’ve helped substantially over more than a decade,” he said during a press conference last week.
Weird flex but okay. Frydenberg then said he’d stop circulating the flyers, as per The Guardian.
Now Guide Dogs Victoria confirmed Karen Hayes has been stood down over the whole sitch.
It highlighted the “distribution of political materials that included comments from the CEO purporting to be on behalf of Guide Dogs Victoria and publicly endorsing a political candidate,” in a statement as per the ABC.
“The independent investigation is underway and is ongoing. The purpose of the investigation is to understand what happened and ensure it never happens again.”
The charity said it’d be “inappropriate to comment to comment further” while the investigation is still underway. Plus the timing couldn’t be any better: Wednesday 27 April is literally International Guide Dog Day. A big hearty yikes right there.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that maybe if you’re the CEO of a widely respected and well-known charity, don’t randomly decide to smack your face on a political ad. Just a thought!
Anyway, now the drama is recapped please enjoy this pic of a guide dog puppy doing a Wordle.
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