Advertising agency WPP has reponded to reports a key figure in one of its businesses has made public comments in support of a Liberal candidate's stateements on transgender people and sport.
Former political figure Grahame Morris, chair of WPP-owned government relations and lobbying firm Barton Deakin, made the comments on the ABC and Ten's The Project about Liberal candidate Katherine Deves .
“I think Katherine Deves, if she was anything but a Liberal candidate, all the women around the country would be cheering her on because she’s trying to save women’s sport at a time when we’re all getting really interested in it.”
Deves, in now deleted posts on social media, compared the fight to stop transgender athletes (whom she described as being "surgically mutilated and sterilised") competing in women's sports to standing up against Nazis in the Holocaust.
WPP said: "We do not agree with Mr Morris’s comments."
Morris was chief of staff to Liberal prime minister John Howard.
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