Kristina Keneally to contest Bennelong by-election against Liberal MP John Alexander
JAILED Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten have made the same judgment about Kristina Keneally, Malcolm Turnbull said of the former NSW premier’s bid to enter Federal Parliament.
NSW
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JAILED Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten have made the same judgment about Kristina Keneally, Malcolm Turnbull said of the former NSW premier’s bid to enter Federal Parliament.
Ms Keneally announced today she will take on Liberal MP John Alexander in the Bennelong by-election, setting up a high-profile showdown and creating a major headache for the Prime Minister.
She’s been accused of being the puppet premier of NSW with the backing of the now-jailed Obeid and Joe Tripodi, who was found corrupt by ICAC, in a desperate attempt to stop Labor bleeding votes, but lost in a landslide at the 2011 state election.
Speaking from Manila, the Prime Minister said Mr Shorten’s support for Keneally has echoes of a judgment made by the notorious Obeid.
“She’s Bill Shorten’s hand-picked candidate so obviously Eddie Obeid and Bill Shorten have formed the same view about Kristina Keneally,” Mr Turnbull said.
“Don’t let Kristina Keneally do to Bennelong what she did to NSW.”
Mr Alexander was forced to sensationally quit Parliament because he suspects he holds British citizenship.
But Ms Keneally was born in Las Vegas in the United States and, while she may have renounced her foreign citizenship, she hasn’t been able to lose her American accent.
Both Labor and the Coalition maintain their candidate will win Bennelong, a swinging seat considered marginal despite Alexander holding it by 9.7 per cent at the 2016 election.
Mr Turnbull said Mr Alexander had been a “champion” for Bennelong.
“I just say again the voters of Bennelong should back John Alexander, a great local member who has delivered in every respect for his community,” he said.
“He knows them, they know him. He’s an Australian champion and he’s been a champion for Bennelong.”
The next Member for Bennelong, @KKeneally pic.twitter.com/O1kUUrURmV
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) November 13, 2017
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Voters in Bennelong will go to a by-election on December 16 after Mr Alexander resigned following concerns he may have been a British dual citizen.
“I am not running in Bennelong because John Alexander is a dual citizen, I am running because this is an opportunity for the community to stand up and say to Mr Turnbull — your government is awful,” Ms Keneally said today.
“Enough is enough.”
Ms Keneally admitted she did not live in the Bennelong electorate, but 800m away in Boronia Park.
“I come into this community every day,” she said.
“This is where I live, where I work, where my family is and that I have a long connection to and that I love.
“This is a great area of Sydney that quite frankly deserves better than the Liberals are giving it.”
Labor leader Bill Shorten announced Ms Keneally would contest the election this morning.
“I have asked Kristina to once again serve, to serve the cause of the voters of Bennelong by providing a real choice, at the upcoming by-election,” he said.
“This by-election is a chance for the voters of Bennelong to send a wake-up call to Mr Turnbull and his government.
“This is a chance which I think a lot of people in Australia would like to have that has fallen to the people of Bennelong to send a message against the dysfunction and the chaos of the current government, the policy paralysis, the failure of leadership.”
Coalition sources had expected Mr Alexander to hang on to his seat, which he holds on a 9.7 per cent margin.
If Ms Keneally were to win, the Turnbull government would lose its one-seat majority in the House of Representatives and force the Prime Minister to seek confidence and supply from crossbench MPs.
This took me 5 min to pull out of my files. Why do federal MPs need 21 days? #section44 pic.twitter.com/Awqe6fS6uT
— Kristina Keneally 🌈 (@KKeneally) November 8, 2017
It has only ever been held by Labor once, for three years after Maxine McKew deposed former prime minister John Howard in the 2007 election.
Earlier today high-profile Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie became the latest casualty of the citizenship crisis engulfing federal parliament.
Parliamentarians will be forced to declare by the end of the month that they were not a dual citizen when elected, or what steps they took to renounce that citizenship, under a deal between the Coalition and Labor struck yesterday.
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