Andrew Landeryou
Bornc. 1969-70
Australia
OccupationBlogger, businessman
GenrePolitics
RelativesBill Landeryou (father)
Kimberley Kitching (wife)

Andrew John Clyde Landeryou (born c. 1969–70)[1] is an Australian former political blogger.[2] He is the widower of Victorian Senator Kimberley Kitching.

Early life and business career

Landeryou is the son of Bill Landeryou,[3] a former Leader of the Opposition and then the Government in the Victorian Legislative Council and a minister in the Australian Labor Party Victorian state government of John Cain. Andrew Landeryou was active in the Labor Party, and particularly the Labor Right faction.[4] He was elected as President of Melbourne University Student Union, taking office in January 1991.[5] A referendum of union members removed him after five months when he proposed commercialising the union's services.[1][6] He then became managing director of IQ Corporation, a sports statistics company, which was invested in by Solomon Lew until it went into liquidation in 2003.[7][8][9] He was also a co-owner of Marbain, a company with a contract with MUSU.[10] After he failed to answer a court summons in December 2004, Landeryou spent five months in Costa Rica.[3] In May 2005, he was arrested on his return to Australia and required to attend at a liquidator's examination of the affairs of MUSU.[11][12][13][14] Landeryou was declared bankrupt by the Federal Magistrates Court in May 2006.[15]

Blogging

In 2005, Landeryou established a weblog commenting on Australian party politics called The Other Cheek – Andrew Landeryou's Blog of Freedom.[16] Lucy Saunders, a political activist linked to the Socialist Left who had been criticised by Landeryou, wrote on ABC News Online that "The overwhelming majority of what Landeryou prints is vague rumour, personal vendettas and outright fiction. Very occasionally, though, some actual facts sneak through."[17]

He clashed with another political blogger, Stephen Mayne, in 2006 when they accused each other of being spivs.[18]

After The Other Cheek was deleted in 2008, Landeryou launched the short-lived tabloid website VEXNEWS, which closed in 2013.[19] Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun referred to Landeryou as "always entertaining"[20] and "often compelling,"[21] while The Age newspaper described the site as "dirt-dishing".[22]

VEXNEWS broke a story revealing AFL footballer Brendan Fevola's attack on a Melbourne journalist.[23] Landeryou also broke a story drawing on Liberal party sources when he revealed that the authors of an anti-Ted Baillieu website were employees of Baillieu's own party.[24]

Other front-page stories prompted by Landeryou include a Fairfax story about Australian politicians sanitising their Wikipedia articles[2] and a story about a Christian Family First candidate who had exposed himself in photographs. Landeryou declared him 'Australia's smallest loser', an epithet repeated by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann when he covered the story for US cable news.[25]

Legal issues

Vandalism conviction

Landeryou was arrested along with two other men in St Kilda at 2.40am on the morning of the 2016 federal election, with police stating that they seized box cutters from the car the men were travelling in.[26] They were charged over an alleged vandalism spree in the Melbourne electorate of Labor MP Michael Danby.[27]

At the time, Bill Shorten said “anyone in an election who is conducting vandalism deserves to have the book thrown at them”.[26] Victorian Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie told the Federal Parliament that the four men had been arrested “for allegedly vandalising Greens and Liberal polling material at multiple polling stations from Elwood to Port Melbourne” and “allegedly driving at volunteers who tried to stop them”.[27] Landeryou was reportedly charged with five counts of damaging and five counts of stealing rival Liberal and Greens campaign advertising material. On 28 April 2017 he pleaded guilty to the charges. Magistrate Ann Collins ordered Landeryou and his co-accused David Boutros-Asmar, George Droutsas and Dean Sheriff to pay $1,000 to the court and told them "You acted more like schoolboys than like adults". They were ordered to write letters of apology to people whose signs they had taken down and letters of gratitude to prosecutors who had recommended them for the court diversion program, which allows people to avoid convictions for minor crimes if they take responsibility for them.[28]

Restraining order

In 2018, Landeryou purchased the domain name davidlangsam.com, and used it to portray David Langsam – a journalist who edits Biotech Daily – as "some kind of Rene Rivkin-style tout pitching stocks without a financial services licence". Langsam, who does not offer stock tips, successfully applied for an interim intervention order against Landeryou in the Melbourne Magistrate's Court, which prohibits Landeryou from contacting him, approaching him, or writing about him. The two parties then reached an out-of-court settlement where Landeryou agreed to turn the domain over to Langsam.[29]

References

  1. ^ a b Wood, Leonie; David Elias (23 April 2005). "The tycoon, the missing husband and the millions". The Age. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  2. ^ a b Moses, Asher (25 July 2008). "Politicians' Wiki entries altered". Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  3. ^ a b Caldwell, Alison (4 May 2005). "Landeryou takes aim at enemies with blog". The World Today. ABC Radio National. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  4. ^ Wood, Leonie (4 May 2005). "Landeryou promises to tell it how it is". The Age. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on 8 November 2009. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  5. ^ Poynter, John Riddoch; Carolyn Rasmussen (1996). "Officers of the University, 1935–1995". A place apart: the University of Melbourne : decades of challenge. Melbourne University Publishing. ISBN 0-522-84584-3.
  6. ^ Davidson, Rjurik; Jolyon Campbell (1 May 1991). "'Labor Inc' alleged at Melbourne Uni". Green Left Online. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  7. ^ "IQ records vanish: was it more than a dot-bomb?". The Age. Fairfax. 14 August 2004. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  8. ^ Wood, Leonie (28 August 2004). "Battle over IQ's liquidation no longer in public view". Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  9. ^ Wood, Leonie (22 March 2005). "Lew does battle with Landeryou clan". The Age. Fairfax. Archived from the original on 22 January 2010. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  10. ^ Wood, Leonie (5 May 2005). "Landeryou disappeared 'on business'". The Age. Fairfax. Retrieved 26 February 2010.
  11. ^ Wood, Leonie (30 April 2005). "Landeryou returns and opts to stay in custody". The Age. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  12. ^ Caldwell, Alison (5 May 2005). "Landeryou appears in court". ABC News. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  13. ^ "Melbourne University Student Union Inc (in liq) v Ray [2006] VSC 205 (14 June 2006)". Supreme Court of Victoria Decisions. Australasian Legal Information Institute. 14 June 2006. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  14. ^ Elias, David; Leonie Wood (26 May 2005). "Landeryou threatened me, says liquidator". The Age. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  15. ^ "Businessman Landeryou declared bankrupt". ABC News Online. 23 May 2006. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  16. ^ Bruns, Axel; Wilson, Jason; Saunders, Barry; Kirchhoff, Lars; Nicolai, Thomas (October 2008). "Australia's Political Blogosphere in the Aftermath of 2007 Federal Election" (PDF). Internet Research 9.0 Conference. Copenhagen: Association of Internet Researchers.
  17. ^ Saunders, Lucy (23 April 2008). "The end of the free internet?". The Drum Unleashed. ABC News. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  18. ^ Powell, Sian (29 September 2006). "Bloggers brawl for votes". The Australian. News Limited. Retrieved 12 December 2009.
  19. ^ VEXNEWS (archived)
  20. ^ Bolt, Andrew (5 November 2009). "The court of Hulls' opinion". Herald Sun Andrew Bolt blog. News Limited. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  21. ^ Bolt, Andrew (12 May 2007). "Age not so White now". Herald Sun Andrew Bolt blog. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  22. ^ Jackson, Sally (11 October 2010). "Another online iconoclast emerges". The Australian. Retrieved 25 August 2011.
  23. ^ "Fevola 'harassed reporter at Brownlow'". Ninemsn. 9 October 2009. Archived from the original on 16 January 2010. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  24. ^ Campbell, James (11 May 2008). "Traitors sacked over Baillieu mud". Sunday Herald Sun. News Limited. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  25. ^ Andrew Quah International Media Mega Star Appears on MSNBC – YouTube
  26. ^ a b "Friend of Bill Shorten charged with vandalism offences at polling station". The Guardian. 29 December 2016. Retrieved 21 February 2017.
  27. ^ a b "Bill Shorten's mates miss day in court over poll damage". The Australian. 16 February 2017. Retrieved 21 February 2017.
  28. ^ "Bill Shorten allies 'acted like schoolboys' on election day, fined $1000, court hears". The Age. 28 April 2017. Archived from the original on 17 February 2018. Retrieved 17 February 2018.
  29. ^ "Andrew Landeryou slips into old habits". The Australian Financial Review. 16 July 2018. Retrieved 17 July 2018.
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