Former Wikileaks Party social media captain Sean Bedlam – who is also a member of the Wikileaks Australian Citizens Alliance – has said that he was one of the recipients of the series of calls that led to the mass resignation of Leslie Cannold and six others (including himself), and has revealed the identity of the caller.
In a series of tweets, he has identified John Shipton – the party’s secretary and Julian Assange’s father – as the person who made the calls.
“John Shipton called me yesterday and offered to draw me in to form a small group that would go around [the Wikileaks Party’s] National Council,” he tweeted.
“Shipton made it clear he held [the] National Council in no regard and wanted me to join him in going around it. Dodgy as.”
Bedlam also says that Shipton also offered access to Assange; and that Shipton was the one who did not want the independent review promised yesterday after the preferences fiasco to be independent nor to be held before the election.
Bedlam said, in a tweet response today, that it Shipton “spat all over the plan” to conduct the independent review.
“He made it impossible to stay. He saw Council, volunteers, everyone really, as rubbish people with no depth. Rudd level ego. In a lot of ways he is The One. It’s of course more complex, but I’m not interested in attacking people who weren’t haters.” he added.
Although Shipton has not been named as the “caller” in Leslie Cannold’s resignation statement, Bedlam’s reasons to resign also match what she outlined. Cannold said that a “member of the party” made disparaging comments about the National Council, wanted to form a faction to take the party in a new direction, and the independent review would not be conducted.
“This person said that the review would be delayed until after the election and that it wouldn’t be done independently. The caller would run it,” Cannold said in her resignation statement yesterday.