Bolt: Prahran by-election result should scare and shame Albanese
The Greens’ reckless pandering to Muslim and hard-Left extremists who hate Israel has just cost them the Prahran by-election – and Anthony Albanese should be very afraid.
Andrew Bolt
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Tony Lupton has just shown Anthony Albanese the danger of going soft on Jew-haters – and the Greens.
Lupton is the man the Greens publicly blamed for their stunning loss on Saturday of the Victorian seat of Prahran, which they’d held for 11 years.
That isn’t just a huge win for new Liberal leader Brad Battin. It should also scare and shame the Prime Minister, which is what Lupton wanted.
Lupton once held Prahran as Labor politician, but has quit Labor in disgust for responding so weakly to the explosion of Jew-hatred.
He also despises the Greens for whipping up anti-Semitism by demonising Israel, and decided to make both parties pay by running in the Prahran by-election as an independent.
He didn’t care if he lost, as long as he helped defeat the Greens – by steering his preferences to the Liberals’ candidate, Rachel Westaway. Labor didn’t run a candidate.
It worked brilliantly. Lupton came third with a healthy 13 per cent, behind Westaway and the Greens’ Angelica Di Camillo, who were virtually tied.
One statistic alone should tell Albanese something: 70 per cent of people who voted for Lupton, the former Labor man, then preferenced the Liberals, not the Greens. That’s huge, and enough to give Westaway a narrow win in a largely Left-leaning field.
This suggests two things.
One, many Labor voters are appalled by the Greens’ reckless pandering to Muslim and hard-Left extremists who hate Israel.
Two, Labor’s habit of helping the Greens win seats by swapping preferences with them instead of Liberal candidates now looks immoral.
Lupton says many Labor voters want Albanese to make a stand: no preference deals with the Greens.
As he told me on Sunday: “Ahead of the federal election, I hope I’ve given both major parties an example of what principled politics looks like.
“The epidemic of Jew-hatred is getting worse by the day. What will it take for both parties to join in putting the Greens last, as they did with One Nation in the 1990s?”
Lupton says current and former Labor MPs back him. Put the Greens last, for the sake of our liberal democracy.
Yes, that could mean Labor helps the Liberals win seats that would otherwise have been won by the Greens, who’d back Labor to stay in government.
But Labor’s deals with the Greens also come at a cost – in reputation and sense of purpose. Lupton has proved that, too.
Originally published as Bolt: Prahran by-election result should scare and shame Albanese
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