The Aporia · One Nation candidate for Melbourne resigns over offensive tweets

One Nation candidate for Melbourne resigns over offensive tweets

Read the original at The Sydney Morning Herald ↗

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Campbell, E. (2026, October 31). One Nation candidate for Melbourne resigns over offensive tweets. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/one-nation-candidate-for-melbourne-resigns-over-offensive-tweets-20261031-p61aab.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

Dated from the outlet's own feed. Check the original for its byline.

Quick Summary

Matthew Collins, One Nation’s candidate for Melbourne, resigned after offensive and sexualized tweets were revealed. The tweets included claims of never asking for consent and promoting anti-Muslim rhetoric and COVID-19 conspiracy theories. In response to media inquiries, Collins apologized but shut down his X (Twitter) account shortly thereafter. A One Nation spokesperson confirmed the party had accepted Collins’ resignation due to the offensive nature of his posts.

Written by AI on 2026-11-01, from this article's own text only (the story summary below draws on all the coverage).

AI analysis

Story summary

On October 31, Matthew Collins, a candidate from the One Nation party for the Melbourne seat in the upcoming Victorian state election, resigned after offensive tweets were revealed. The 35-year-old had previously shared posts suggesting he did not ask women for consent, arguing it was "all implied by a woman's actions and attraction levels." He apologized for these past comments, which included describing asking for sexual consent as “cringe,” saying they no longer reflect his current beliefs. One Nation has yet to announce who will replace Collins ahead of the November 28 election.

Written for “Matthew Collins Resigns Over Tweets” on 2026-11-01, grounded in this article and the 2 other(s) covering the same event.

Why this leaning score

The model judged this article politically coded and scored it -0.35, but all 3 of its quote(s) are attributed speech - words the article quotes from someone, not the article's own narration, so the score is not published.

Written under an earlier scoring contract, which gave a paragraph rather than checkable quotes. Re-analysing this article replaces it.

Leaning score withheld for article 119571: attributed speech only · logged 2026-11-01

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How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

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Claims extracted

sentences that state something as happening or true

Uncertain

30%

3 of 10 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")

Leaning

withheld

no quote in the article backed the model's score

Publisher signals

61/100

The Sydney Morning Herald's corrections and hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.

Outlets on this story

Politics

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articles that frame the event the way this one does

Analyzed 2026-11-01 · how these are computed

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Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

The Sydney Morning Herald · 5709 article(s) · 15 correction(s) detected

Running correction rate · 15 correction(s)

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Who wrote this

Eleanor Campbell

8 article(s) here · 1 carrying a prediction

🔮 According to a series of X (Twitter) posts obtained by this masthead before Collins shut down his account, and before he was selected as a candidate, he posted in February 2020: “I’ve never once asked any woman for any form of consent, ever,” “It’s all implied by a woman’s actions and attraction levels which any astute man will be paying attention to.”

2026-10-31 · mixed framing · One Nation candidate for Melbourne resigns over offensive tweets

🔮 “It’s never happened before, we couldn’t sleep the whole night.”

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2026-10-15 · assertive framing · The Age dominates nominations as Walkley Awards finalists revealed

🔮 “It is extremely out of character for him to be out of contact, and if he could manage to, he would know how worried we all are and make every effort to get a message across,” Anita said.

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Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.

All 8 articles by Eleanor Campbell →

Topics

Melbourne One Nation One Nation’s Twitter anti-Muslim

Subjects

Collins PERSON · 7× One Nation ORG · 2× Christian NORP · 1× Matthew Collins PERSON · 1× Melbourne GPE · 1× Muslim NORP · 1× Muslims NORP · 1× One Nation’s ORG · 1× Twitter ORG · 1× anti-Muslim NORP · 1×

Narrative

Matthew Collins, who has previously promoted anti-Muslim rhetoric and COVID-19 conspiracy theories online, withdrew his candidacy on Friday after it was revealed he had shared pornographic jokes and offensive statements on social media. In a statement provided to this masthead, the 35-year-old apologised for his past comments and described them as “unacceptable”. “They are not reflective of who I am as a person now, and I deeply regret ever having made them,” Collins said.

framing: mixed · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-11-01

2026-11-01 · The Sydney Morning Herald

One Nation candidate for Melbourne resigns over offensive tweets · mixed framing

Claims (10 extracted, 3 hedged)

One Nation’s candidate for Melbourne has resigned over a series of highly sexualised and offensive tweets, including one in which he claimed to have never asked a woman for “any form” of sexual consent. asserted

he → resign → consent

Collins → promote → them

According to a series of X (Twitter) posts obtained by this masthead before Collins shut down his account, and before he was selected as a candidate, he posted in February 2020: “I’ve never once asked any woman for any form of consent, ever,” “It’s all implied by a woman’s actions and attraction levels which any astute man will be paying attention to.” uncertain

man → accord → attention

In another post, Collins suggested sexual consent was “cringe” and joked about the number of times he had previously asked a woman for consent. uncertain

he → suggest → consent

Another X post features a lewd comment about a woman’s body parts and a reference by Collins about his sexual activities during the pandemic. asserted

post → feature → pandemic

Collins’ social media posts have also previously called to “decolonise” parts of the Muslim world and referenced Christian military campaigns against Muslims in parts of what is now Europe. asserted

what → call → parts

A One Nation spokesperson said the party had been made aware of a number of “offensive comments” posted on social media by Collins and had accepted his resignation. “Our party does not condone these comments,” the spokesperson said. asserted

spokesperson → say → comments

According to the party’s candidate profile for Collins, he is newly married and works in sales. uncertain

he → accord → sales

He was running as a candidate Greens-held seat to restore community safety and ease cost-of-living pressures. asserted

He → run → pressures

The latest Resolve Political Monitor conducted for this masthead shows that One Nation was currently polling at a 23 per cent primary vote, suggesting that the party will for the first time have a significant presence in the next Victorian parliament. asserted

party → conduct → parliament