Nigel Farage’s Australian tour last year was organised by two men: Damien Costas, the “porn king” and former Penthouse Australia publisher, and Joel Jammal.
Jammal is one of the people behind Turning Point Australia, a right-wing group named after the influential youth conservative group Turning Point USA. Jammal and Turning Point Australia have become increasingly common fixtures on the fringes of Australia’s conservative movement.
The group ran a climate denial event last week with One Nation NSW MP Mark Latham, former MP and United Australia Party national director Craig Kelly, and One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts hosted by Jammal. At the upcoming Church & State conference, Jammal will appear alongside Latham and Family First national director Lyle Shelton.
The pathway to Jammal’s growing ties with prominent right-wing figures, however, has included involvement with some of Australia’s most extreme fringe figures where he espoused his own anti-vaccine and conspiracy beliefs.
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Jammal did not respond to a request for comment.
Christian activist turns extreme conspiracy theorist
Jammal is an Australian of Syrian and Lebanese heritage who describes himself as a Christian journalist and conservative political commentator. In a 2020 bio on an Australian Christian news website, Jammal calls himself a “part-time political activist and lecturer for the Sydney Institute for Christian Studies”.
His first appearance in the media was as a 22-year-old supporting an unsuccessful 2019 bid to topple former NSW MLC Fred Nile as the Christian Democratic Party’s leader by 18-year-old Samraat Joshua Grewal.
After that, Jammal began posting long interviews on YouTube in 2021 with Riccardo Bosi, a serial failed election candidate and conspiracy theorist.
In these interviews, Bosi demonstrates why he is one of Australia’s most extreme conspiracy figures: he talks about why he’s anti-vaccine, why he believes COVID-19 is a hoax, questions whether Port Arthur was a false flag operation, promotes 5G conspiracies, and claims that every doctor and nurse involved in vaccination will be executed. Jammal is an active participant. He talks about why he won’t get the vaccine and wondered too whether the Port Arthur massacre was real.
While these interviews typically were viewed only a few hundred times, Bosi and Jammal emerged as players in Australia’s anti-vaccine, anti-lockdown “freedom” movement.
Jammal was an active participant in the movement’s rallies and was charged with encouraging criminal behaviour and breaching public health orders for his role at a July 2021 protest.
Around the same time, Jammal began working with other fringe Australian conservative figures. He started producing videos and social media content for Craig Kelly with Dougal Cameron, son of former Liberal MP Ross Cameron. He also volunteered with the Conservative Political Action Conference Australia, run by Andrew Cooper.
The birth of Turning Point Australia
It’s around this time that Jammal took on a role with Turning Point Australia. With Cooper and controversial former Liberal staffer Barclay McGain, he launched the Australian arm of the Turning Point franchise. In an interview alongside One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson, then Coalition MP George Christensen and McGain, Jammal shared his vision of launching a similar, youth-focused version of the group here.
“The goal of Turning Point Australia is to do a similar thing [as Turning Point USA],” he said.
However, the group has largely acted as a broader conservative group. Its website describes Turning Point Australia as a “a non-profit organisation with a mission to identify, educate, train, and organise a community movement to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government”.
When it was registered with ASIC last month, the company’s records list only Jammal as its director and secretary. Its address is listed as the Practice, a financial services firm in Parkville, Victoria. Turning Point Australia’s website is registered to WHAT WE DO PTY. LTD. The director is listed on ASIC as Mario Malik, who has appeared as a NSW correspondent for alt-right media company Rebel News.
It’s not clear whether there is any connection to Turning Point USA beyond the name; the US group does not mention Turning Point Australia on its website or on social media.
Today, both Jammal and Turning Point Australia have more than 200,000 followers across their combined Facebook, Instagram and Telegram accounts that have been built by posting (and cross-promoting) videos, links and memes that echo right-wing culture war and conspiracy theorists’ talking points. The accounts have repeatedly shared misinformation about elections and COVID-19, as well as sharing posts that target drag shows in Australia.
Jammal and Turning Point Australia’s organisation of events with high-profile right-wing figures such as Farage’s tour and the Climate & Energy 2023 forum show their ambitions — and their success — to place themselves at the centre of Australia’s mainstream political movement.
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