Canberra: Labor says it is “strongly represented” in Bennelong and can win back the safe Liberal seat, despite needing a significant swing away from John Alexander.
Alexander became the latest to fall to the growing citizenship scandal on Saturday when he stood down from parliament after days of speculation about his citizenship, triggering a byelection.
The timing of the poll is still uncertain, but it could be held before Christmas.
Labor has wasted no time in starting its campaign, and appeared in the suburb of Eastwood on Sunday.
It would require a dramatic loss of support for Alexander and the reversal of a largely uninterrupted history of Liberal victories.
The former tennis champion achieved 50.4 per cent of first preference votes in Bennelong last year, far outperforming the 28.5 per cent achieved by Labor’s candidate, Lyndal Howison.
The Liberal party has won Bennelong in every federal election since 1949, barring the 2007 election, when Labor’s Maxine McKew sensationally unseated then prime minister, John Howard.
Tony Burke, appearing alongside Labor senators Sam Dastyari and Jenny McAllister, said the opposition was confident it was strongly represented in Bennelong where it holds power in
Ryde council through its mayor, Jerome Laxale.
“In this local area, Labor is strongly represented, particularly in local government where Labor is very strongly represented here,” he said.
The opposition had previously signalled its campaign would hope for a backlash from ethnic communities about the Turnbull government’s controversial citizenship requirements, which stalled in the Senate.
Burke said on Sunday that Bennelong was now a “strong example” of multicultural society, and that it was “no longer the Bennelong that John Howard first ran for”.
Many of the suburbs in the seat, including Eastwood, are ethnically diverse. About 38 per cent of Eastwood residents were born in Australia, and the suburb has large Chinese and South Korean populations.
Burke, the shadow citizenship minister, warned of a Liberal-One Nation preference deal, citing the Queensland election as an example.
He also criticised the government’s citizenship proposal for imposing onerous standards on Chinese and Korean migrants.
“There is a university-level English test that would apply to people who come from Asian nations, that would not apply to you if you come from England, Scotland or Ireland,” Burke said.
“That’s the sort of policy that only One Nation used to stand for.”
Burke said the selection process for Labor’s candidate in the seat was under way.
“The process won’t take an incredibly long amount of time, we don’t have a long amount of time,” he said.
Alexander was forced to resign after almost a week of uncertainty about his citizenship, which began when Fairfax Media reported on his father’s British citizenship.
Alexander initially delayed announcing his intentions, saying he was waiting on advice from the British Home Office. He continued to say such advice had not been received as recently as Friday. But on Saturday he said he could no longer have sufficient certainty that he was a sole Australian citizen, so he had no choice but to resign.
His resignation follows that of Barnaby Joyce, who is facing a byelection in New England on December 2 after discovering he was a New Zealand citizen because of his father’s birth.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd, 2017
