Charlie Kirk’s influence on Joel Jammal and Australian conservative Christian politics

Joel Jammal’s first foray into political battle was during his university days, when the self-described Christian conservative rallied against a policy to withhold his final results until he completed mandatory sexual consent training.

The then-21-year-old stared down the University of Technology Sydney and won, graduating with a degree in property economics without touching the training. His next target? A political party.

Jammal and his young mate, 18-year-old Samraat Grewal, were so incensed with alleged nepotism and mismanagement within the Christian Democrats, led by the long-serving NSW MP Fred Nile, that the pair orchestrated a revolt to take over their fractured party.

Their audacious bid was not successful but the party ultimately folded and Nile retired from parliament, after 40 years in politics. The once strong conservative Christian political force in NSW was no more.

Jammal is now behind Turning Point Australia, a right-wing chapter of the influential youth conservative group Turning Point USA – which was started by Charlie Kirk, the American conservative activist who was shot dead this week at an event at Utah Valley University.

On Friday night Jammal hosted a vigil for Kirk in Sydney’s Hyde Park to “respect a life well lived and one taken away too soon”. He told the gathering of about 300 mourners “there will not be another man like Charlie Kirk”.

Jammal deeply admired Kirk but does not want to be described as Australia’s version of the activist, stressing that the 31-year-old was a tour de force in his own right.

“I am proud of what I have done but I don’t feel comfortable being compared to Charlie,” Jammal said. “Charlie Kirk was his own beast, in a realm of his own. Even the Americans are saying no one can fill Charlie’s shoes.”

In 2022 Jammal organised the Australian tour of Nigel Farage, now leader of Reform UK. Farage connected Jammal to Kirk and Turning Point USA, which was launched 13 years ago to advocate for conservative politics on high school and university campuses.

Jammal says Kirk never studied at university but was determined to encourage a contest of ideas on US campuses. While the pair were not firm friends, Jammal says Kirk and his organisation were instrumental in helping him establish Turning Force Australia four years ago.

There were plans under way to bring Kirk and his wife Erika on an Australian tour.

“We were looking forward to bringing him out on tour because he was widely admired for his Christian values, a family man winning a noble fight to reconnect with politics,” Jammal said.

Turning Point Australia, according to its website, was “born out of the resistance to the COVID-19 lockdowns imposed by state governments across Australia”. “These lockdowns took away our basic human freedoms from everyday Australians with no regard for our lives or livelihoods,” the site says.

Jammal, like Kirk, has become an increasingly common fixture on the fringes of the conservative movement. Jammal works with right-wing candidates on elections and he says he provided 250,000 electronic how-to-vote cards via the Turning Point Australia website during the federal election.

He hosts a podcast called The Ark, where he debates Australian politics, freedom of speech, social issues and international affairs with his guests. Jammal’s first interviewees on his podcast were regional paramedic John Larter, who lost a legal challenge over vaccine mandates, and fellow anti-COVID-19 vaccine activist and former Qantas pilot Graham Hood.

Larter and Hood joined Jammal at Kirk’s vigil.

In recent months Jammal says the number of followers on Turning Point Australia social accounts has soared, and while the organisation once relied on donations it now has significant funding streams from advertising revenue as well as gold and cryptocurrency brokers.

Jammal, who lost his job in construction during COVID-19 lockdowns, has found his new calling, which he says was kick-started by his bold bid many years ago to topple the then-giant of Christian politics, Nile.

“Samraat and I were just young people who were uncompromising in our principles, much like Charlie,” Jammal said.

With Kayla Olaya

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