Has Labor done a dodgy deal with the Liberals in Macnamara, or is it just another case of another Tory in Labor clothing? Peter Wicks writes.
“I like fighting Tories. That's what I do.”
These were the famous words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
A dozen or so years later and that heartfelt statement seems a distant memory.
The Labor Party portrays itself as the party of the worker — this is why it relies on the union movement both for its support and funding.
The flip side of the political coin is the Liberal Party. The Liberals are the enemy of the union movement, the buddy of the billionaire and the burden on the backs of the working class.
In Australia, the only other major political party indicating support for the union movement and workers is The Greens.
Many Labor voters have voiced disappointment in the Albanese Government, claiming it panders to the Right more than it does to its own rank-and-file membership. One only needs to consider the watering down of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) at the behest of the Liberal Party, rather than a willingness to work with the crossbench, to see a prime example. Labor promised a tough watchdog, then delivered an impotent pup more intent on chasing its own tail.
Perhaps the best example of where the priorities of the Labor Party currently lie may be seen in the recent State By-election in the Victorian seat of Prahran. This not only provides an interesting display of Labor’s slide to the Right, but it also highlights the betrayal of workers, union members, union supporters and progressive voters by Labor Member for Macnamara and the Zionists who appear to back him.
Traditionally, Labor's how-to-vote cards direct preferences to The Greens. This shows that Labor is a left-leaning party, and if it gave preferences to the Liberals, it would cause outrage and justified anger amongst Labor members.
So, when former Prahran Labor MP Tony Lupton decided to run again and put the Liberal Party at number two on his how-to-vote card, it's little wonder many were scratching their heads.
It turns out that the Labor Party, at the behest of an internal faction of Zionists, decided that the most important issue in the election was not the rights of workers or the union movement, the environment or even the cost of living — you know, the things they tell us they care about. Instead, the most critical issue was removing a supporter of Palestinian human rights from the Victorian Parliament.
If this would be accomplished by replacing a pro-union Green with a union-hating, worker-bashing, environmental vandal-backing Liberal, so be it.
In the lead-up to the Prahran By-election, the Victorian Labor Executive voted and made the controversial decision not to run a candidate. Controversial, as it was a seat held by the Left; controversial as it was a seat previously held by Labor; controversial, as it is primarily represented by the Labor-held Federal Division of Higgins and controversial, because ultimately the complete and utter betrayal of your local party members and voters always is.
The decision to betray Labor’s membership happened when a pro-Zionist faction within the Victorian Labor Executive was backed by members from the Party’s Left.
The faction then got behind Lupton, who ran as an Independent, in a staged façade to ensure the Labor-aligned voters had a candidate running. Then, in what was always going to be a tight contest, Lupton directed voters on his campaign material to preference the Liberal Party. Not only that, he penned a column for The Australian, slagging off the Labor Party.
Nevertheless, Lupton’s campaign manager came from Labor’s Prahran branch, having previously managed the campaign of pro-Zionist Member for Higgins, Michelle Ananda-Rajah. An email was sent out to Labor branch members to help “evict the Greens” on behalf of a candidate preferencing the Liberals.
In backing this traitor, the Zionist faction within Labor had ensured not only that the Greens wouldn’t benefit from traditional Labor preferences, but that the Liberals would.
The final result saw the Liberals winning the seat over The Greens by a narrow margin after preference flows.
The motive for this betrayal was two-fold. Ensure someone Israel-friendly took the seat of a previous anti-genocide MP and take resources away from The Greens campaign in Macnamara during the Federal Election campaign — as after a redistribution, Macnamara now takes in part a large chunk of the Prahran State Electorate.
While the member for Macnamara, Josh Burns, may have tried to keep himself distant from this betrayal of Labor voters, there are direct links to him and his office.
One of Lupton’s loudest online supporters was former Labor MP Philip Dalidakis, an outspoken Zionist known now for defending Israel’s continuing war crimes. Dalidakis was the backer of Josh Burns’ nomination and pre-selection for the Seat of Macnamara, looking to ensure the seat went to a Jewish man rather than a popular woman who had also been nominated.
Perhaps Dalidakis supported Lupton after hearing about a meeting of the conservative lobby group, Advance, that Lupton admitted to attending.
We live in a democracy, so let's not belittle Advance — maybe it’s a good thing that neo-Nazis and racists have a choice of parties, not just One Nation to vote for.
You’d think Josh Burns would keep away from the Luptons, not only over the Prahran controversy, Tony Lupton’s defence of Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza and his meeting with Advance, but also the views of Lupton’s wife, Julie Szego.
Julie Szego is a prominent writer for The Australian Jewish News who was sacked from The Age for her views on the trans community. She publicly criticised The Age editorial team after it refused to publish a column she wrote reliant on information put forward by anti-trans activist groups and conspiracy theory nuts.
The fallout from this sacking saw an open letter sponsored by the Trans Justice Project and signed by Amnesty International, Victorian Pride Lobby and several other LGBTIQ+ organisations. Szego tried to blame the sacking on her attendance at an anti-trans rally that also attracted neo-Nazis and saw Victorian Liberal Moira Deeming land herself in controversy.
Burns embraced the family, hiring Tony and Julie’s daughter, Sara Lupton, to run his election campaign.
Leaked meeting minutes from branches in Macnamara show that the Lupton and Burns campaigns are closely linked. Brighton Labor branch minutes show that Labor members from Burns’ electorate were recruited to work on the Lupton campaign in Labor Party meetings by Burns’ own campaign manager and during his own electorate’s branch meetings.
The below excerpt from a Brighton branch meeting is indicative that this wasn’t just raised during the meeting, it was an agenda item:
When they say ‘some usual ALP voters’, it may be assumed they mean those who would never dream of supporting the Liberals.
Some will defend Burns as a friend of the LGBTIQ+ community and it’s politically advantageous that he’s seen to be. However, when you are supportive of someone who is critical of Labor’s “identity politics” and whose wife is an outspoken anti-trans activist, it will take a lot of badge-wearing and banner-waving to convince many.
Some local Labor members have questioned if perhaps a deal has been done with the Liberals to hand them a State seat in Prahran in exchange for the Liberals doing whatever they can to see Burns keep Macnamara, given that it’s unwinnable for the Liberals anyway.
Macnamara is an electorate that will be a tight three-way battle and just like the Victorian State Seat of Prahran, it would appear to be a seat without a real Labor candidate.
You can’t wear a rainbow badge while supporting the anti-trans movement, and you can’t wear a Labor badge and openly back Liberal-supporting candidates.
Like Albo, fighting Tories is what I do and that is why if I were voting in Macnamara, there is no way I’d be voting Labor.
After all, a Tory with a Labor badge is just another lying conservative.
Peter Wicks is a former Federal Labor Party staffer. You can follow him on Twitter @MadWixxy.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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