Karina Okotel

Karina Okotel is a federal vice president of the Liberal Party.[1] She was an unsuccessful senate candidate for Victoria in the 2016 Australian federal election. She was one of the leaders of the unsuccessful "No" campaign in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey.

Early life and education

Karina Okotel was born in 1980. She is of Sri Lankan descent and a daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who worked menial jobs before becoming owners of a liquor store.[2] She studied arts/law at Melbourne University and then worked at an orphanage on the Thai/Myanmar border. She completed her articles as a solicitor and then travelled to Uganda with Baptist World Aid, working on goat rearing projects and peanut farming. Her other roles included working for the Tenants' Union, the Mental Health Legal Centre and the Barwon Community Legal Centre. In these roles she advocated left wing politics.[3]

Career and political activities

Okotel joined the Liberal Party in 2010 after the party's success at the Victorian state election. In 2012, she was elected as councillor for the Rosstown ward of the Glen Eira City Council, and later became deputy mayor.[4] During 2016, she resigned from the Glen Eira Council to run for the Australian Senate.[5] She was in the sixth place on the Liberal Party ticket and was unsuccessful.[6] She was elected as federal Liberal Party vice-president in June 2017.[7]

Since 2015, Okotel has been a leading opponent of legalising gay marriage in Australia. In September 2017, she decided to come out of maternity leave to support the Coalition for Marriage.[8] She wrote an opinion piece for The Australian describing her fears for the freedom of speech, religion and association if same-sex marriage was legalised.[9] On 12 September, she debated Christine Forster on ABC Radio National.[10] On 13 September, she spoke at the National Press Club, alongside Lyle Shelton, for the campaign against same sex marriage.[11] On 23 September, she was a panellist on the ABC Q&A same-sex marriage debate.[12]

In 2020, she was revealed to have worked since 2015 to create and control a Christian bloc within the Victorian Liberal Party:

"The Liberal Party's great religious unravelling started at 5:13pm on April 30 in 2015. [...]

Complete with a detailed document on how to use religion to bolster the organisation's numbers, the vigorous opponent of Safe Schools, same-sex marriage and lots in between outlined her plan to use churches as Liberal membership recruiting hubs.

Okotel, who is driven by a narrow, fundamentalist approach to the Bible and interpretation of the work of Jesus, today controls an estimated 10 per cent of the Victorian Liberal Party [...]

Today Okotel's controversial existence in the party is destabilising state Liberal leader Michael O'Brien, two of the party's most influential MPs this week calling for Okotel's expulsion after it was revealed she had penned a scurrilous dirt sheet on seven Liberal MPs.

The Australian revealed on Friday that Okotel had been suspended from the Victorian Liberal Party's local government committee pending an internal investigation into her activities. [...]

Okotel has privately claimed that it was notes from a factional meeting.

The document, seen by The Weekend Australian, is not note taking but a two-page character assassination of the MPs that is built into a four-column strategy to kill their careers." [13]

Personal life

Okotel met her husband, David, a Ugandan, during her time working for Baptist World Aid. The pair went on to make a documentary about Uganda's internally displaced people and child soldiers. The couple married in Uganda in 2010 and have three children.[7]

References
  1. Crowe, Maher. "We're the party of freedom: Turnbull tries to rally Liberals". The Australian.
  2. Maley, Jacqueline (20 September 2017). "Karina Okotel, the 'bleeding heart' lawyer who opposes same-sex marriage". The Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20140214214108/https://www.ag.gov.au/Consultations/Documents/Publicsubmissionsonthedraftbaselinestudy/BarwonCommunityLegalService.doc
  4. "Results for Glen Eira City Council Elections 2012". Victorian Electoral Commission. Archived from the original on 13 November 2017. Retrieved 13 November 2017.
  5. "Glen Eira councillor apologises for linking same-sex marriage to bestiality". Heraldsun.com.au. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  6. Soraghan, Kerrie (23 April 2013). "Making a difference: Karina Okotel, civil lawyer, Frankston". Legalaid.vic.gov.au. Archived from the original on 13 November 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  7. Maley, Jacqueline (19 September 2017). "Karina Okotel, the 'bleeding heart' lawyer who opposes same-sex marriage". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  8. "Unlikely face of No campaign: The lawyer who 'cares'". News.com.au. Archived from the original on 23 November 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  9. Okotel, Karina (1 September 2017). "Why I'll vote for freedom in the same-sex marriage debate". The Australian. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  10. "'That is inequality at its very basic level': Forster". Radio National. 12 September 2017. Archived from the original on 14 May 2018. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  11. "Lyle Shelton & Karina Okotel - National Press Club of Australia". Npc.org.au. Archived from the original on 13 November 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  12. "Karina Okotel and Magda Szubanski clash over the consequences of same-sex marriage on Q&A". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 30 October 2017. Archived from the original on 23 November 2017. Retrieved 24 November 2017.
  13. Ferguson, John (29 August 2020). "Christian soldier's crusade to conquer Libs". The Australian. Retrieved 1 September 2020.


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