Liberal candidate for Macnamara Benson Saulo defends loyalty amid ‘party-hopping’ ways

Liberal candidate for Macnamara Benson Saulo has defended his loyalty to the party, saying it better “aligns” with his values despite previously working with two fringe parties and the Greens.

Liberal hopeful Benson Saulo has been accused of party-hopping. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

Liberal candidate for Macnamara Benson Saulo has been accused of “party-hopping” following revelations he was a former Greens member.

But Mr Saulo has defended his loyalty to the Liberals despite also being involved in two other fringe parties, before becoming a staffer for then-Greens leader Richard Di Natale and running for Greens prelection.

The spotlight has been on the electorate after Labor MP Josh Burns announced he would not preference the Greens and instead have an open ticket.

Mr Saulo confirmed his Greens membership was approved in late June 2015, adding that for three weeks in July he was employed by Mr Di Natale to support his national tour as the new Greens leader.

He claims he “naively nominated” for Greens preselection for the federal seat of Batman – now the electorate of Cooper – which he lost.

Candidate for Macnamara Benson Saulo says he “naively nominated” for Greens preselection. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

In his pitch for the candidacy, he raised concerns that young people’s voice were not being heard on issues such as climate change, and their contributions were being “disregarded by the Labor and Liberal parties”.

“I believe that the Australian Greens can cut through this haze of bitter politics to provide a strong vision for a more equal, just and democratic Australian society,” he wrote online in 2015.

In one tweet, he wrote: “90 per cent renewable energy by 2030. Now that’s the kind of future I want for my children”.

But Mr Saulo says “unknown to me, I was being pushed by a Greens faction seeking to use my identity as an Indigenous man to unseat the incumbent candidate”.

“After this experience, I did not renew my membership or continue an ongoing association with the Greens,” he said.

A year earlier, he co-founded a “youth-focused” political party called Emerge, which he says “never got off the ground”.

The group was later absorbed by the Australian Progressives, which he left in 2014 before it was registered as a political party.

Liberal hopeful Benson Saulo has defended his loyalty to the party. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

“I joined the Liberal Party in October 2018 as it better aligned with my values,” he said.

A Liberal Party spokesman said: “We’re proud of Benson’s story about why he walked away from the political left – it’s why we endorsed him”.

But a Labor campaign spokesperson said this was “another case” of Peter Dutton and the Liberal Party “not doing the homework on their own candidates”.

“When at first Mr Saulo did not succeed, he tried, tried again – and then tried again, all with different parties,” the spokesperson said.

“It’s a matter for the Liberal Party to explain why one of its star candidates, who has been campaigning alongside senior shadow Ministers, appears to have been party-hopping for the last decade.”

Opposition leader Peter Dutton has spent a lot of his campaign attacking the Greens and calling on Anthony Albanese to rule out a Labor-Greens government saying it was a risk to Australia.

“We’ve now got Josh Burns, who has taken a principled stance in relation to the Greens because he can see them as anti-Semitic,” he said on Saturday.

“He can see them as reckless when it comes to the economy.”

Originally published as Liberal candidate for Macnamara Benson Saulo defends loyalty amid ‘party-hopping’ ways