Labor transport leader and rail advocate Anthony Albanese has conceded he faces a “real battle” for his seat of Grayndler at the upcoming federal election.
Albanese spoke on 2GB Radio on Tuesday, and agreed with host Alan Jones that Jim Casey, the Greens candidate contesting his seat, poses a real threat to him winning a seventh-consecutive re-election on July 2.
“I’ve got a battle from the Greens Political Party rather than the Liberal Party,” the former deputy prime minister said.
“If the Liberal Party gives the Greens Party preferences, then it will be extremely tight.”
Grayndler, in Sydney’s inner-west, has been redistributed for the 2016 election to now include all of Leichhardt Council and the Balmain Peninsula. The seat has belonged to Labor since it was created in 1949.
Albanese won 47.2% of the first preference votes in the 2013 federal election, while the Liberals won 24.7%, and the Greens 23.0%. Support from the Greens gave Albanese a 70.3% vote after preferences.
But after the latest redistribution, the ABC estimates Albanese’s 2013 first preference votes would have been just 46.2% (1.0% lower).
The Grayndler electorate now covers a pair of state electorates owned by Greens representatives: Balmain, which saw a 4.4% swing to 54.8% Greens in the 2015 state election; and Newtown, which saw a 4.8% swing to 59.3% Greens in the same election.
Jim Casey is hoping to build upon that state success with a win of his own in the federal seat, which Albanese has held since 1996.
If Casey gets more votes than Liberal candidate David van Gough on July 2, and receives a majority of Liberal preferences, he could overthrow Albanese in Grayndler. While less likely, he can also win by getting more first preference votes than Albanese, of course.
Casey, currently the head of the NSW Fire Brigade Employees Union, was targeted in a front-page Daily Telegraph article early in May campaigning readers to “Save our Albo”.
The article labelled Albanese a “true believer,” and called Casey a “Greens radical who wants to overthrow capitalism”.
Criticism continued when Fairfax shortly afterwards drew attention to a YouTube video posted by the Greens in 2014, in which Casey stated his views on the role unrest can play in social progress.
“I would prefer to see Tony Abbott returned as prime minister with a Labor movement that is growing, with an anti-war movement that was disrupting things in the streets, with a strong and vibrant women’s movement, Indigenous movement, and a climate change movement that was starting actually to disrupt the production of coal,” Casey said in the video.
“I’d prefer to see Abbott as the prime minister in that environment than Bill Shorten as prime minister without it.”
Speaking with Jones this week, Albanese elected not to attack the man, but the party instead.
He said voters should not elect a Greens candidate in Grayndler, “given that the Greens Party tend to oppose everything that happens in the electorate”.
“Some of the sporting organisations where the Greens Party have opposed,” Albanese told Jones, “upgrades of Mackey Park in Marrickville, or upgrades at Callan Park … just about all of those have been opposed by the Greens party.”
He also criticised the idea of Liberal voters giving preference to the Greens over Labor.
“I think many people who are grassroots members of the Liberal Party, I don’t think will hand out a how-to-vote that seeks to elect a Green as their local member,” he said.
Along with the three major candidates, Grayndler is also being contested by Socialist Equality Party representative Oscar Grenfell, Science Party representative Meow-Ludo Meow Meow, and Animal Justice Party candidate Emma Hurst.
