Thursday, 5 March 2026

 Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (18:05): (2390) My adjournment tonight is for the Attorney-General. We have seen Premier Jacinta Allan’s Instagram following more than triple in days, jumping from an initial 34,500 on Friday to more than 120,000 on Wednesday night. This has sparked all sorts of speculation about bots, so that is the topic of my adjournment. The Herald Sun is saying it was from a follower purchase service, and I just want to speak about bots and fake followers because there is a prominent Labor Party member and self-described community leader, Mr Deepak Vinayak JP, who has amassed a whopping 386,000 followers on Facebook. This is someone who has been awarded the inaugural Multicultural Champion award by former Minister for Multicultural Affairs Robin Scott, has an Order of Australia, is a justice of the peace, no less, and in 2018 launched Victoria’s India strategy for Daniel Andrews – an impressive resume.

Justice of the peace is a significant service and duty. It is where people have the power to attest to copies of original documents and certify that they are correct and honest. I notice some of his posts on Facebook have one like, and then another post a month later has 5000 likes but zero shares and zero comments. I am told Facebook usually averages about one comment per 10 to 50 likes. In March 2016 he was thanking his audience for achieving 500 likes, and then sometime in 2017 his follower rate jumped to over 350,000. He has also got about 60,000 Twitter followers, double that of the Premier. The code of conduct for a justice of the peace requires honesty. The action I seek from the Attorney-General is to review whether Mr Deepak Vinayak meets the threshold for removal as justice of the peace by possible breach of the code of conduct. He was chosen to speak at the launch of Victoria’s India strategy in 2018. I think, funnily enough, this particular individual also uses the credibility he appears to have gained through fake followers to influence people to vote for the Labor Party in the northern suburbs, and as I have been told, he says some pretty wild untruths about the Liberal Party within the Indian diaspora in the north. This is coming from someone who appears to have been quite untruthful about social media followers, something we have seen be particularly relevant in the news.