Labor accused of ‘stupid politics’ over climate scorecard in Hawthorn

A Greens member involved in campaigning for the state seat of Hawthorn had authorised a community group scorecard on climate change that ranked his party as having the best environmental credentials among the candidates.

Labor seized on the failure of Benjamin Chesler to declare his role with the Greens, and issued a media release saying the party had been “caught patting their own backs to win votes”.

A climate scorecard for the seat of Hawthorn produced by the Kooyong Climate Change Alliance.Credit: Kooyong Climate Change Alliance

But the group behind the climate scorecard – Kooyong Climate Change Alliance – said it was created by community members genuinely concerned about the environment, and that Labor’s reaction was evidence of why voters were abandoning major parties to vote for independents or minor parties.

Labor MP and campaign spokesman Danny Pearson said the failure to declare Chesler was a Greens member on the scorecard was a “cheap trick”.

Benjamin Chesler behind Greens candidates Nick Savage (Hawthorn) and Jackie Carter (Kew) at a campaign launch last month.Credit: Facebook

“You can’t fake being the leader of a ‘non-partisan community group’ when you are a key campaigner for the Greens political party,” Pearson said. “You can’t hoodwink voters into thinking a policy scorecard is unbiased or independent of the person who authorises it.”

The Kooyong Climate Change Alliance, which created the scorecard, is an umbrella organisation and its member groups have deep roots in the Hawthorn and Camberwell area.

A key member is Lighter Footprints, which has run candidate forums in the area for more than a decade, including one on November 3.

Lighter Footprints co-convenor Lynn Frankes said Chesler had nothing to do with assessing the climate policies for the scorecard.

She said attacking the scorecard was “like trying to shoot the messenger rather than the message. And it’s a petty distraction from a legitimate effort to analyse the climate policies of the candidates.”

Some members of the groups within the Kooyong Climate Change Alliance belong to the Greens, some are Labor and Liberal Party members.

Lighter Footprints organised the public forum this month for the seat of Hawthorn.Credit: Eddie Jim

A key organiser of the scorecard, Leigh Naunton, is a Labor Party member. He said the decision to target Chesler was the sort of toxic politics that turned people off parties.

“This is the sort of smear of a genuine community group that Josh Frydenberg did, and it backfired on him,” Naunton said. “It is really both offensive and stupid politics.

“When you’re a community group, and you need someone to authorise a scorecard like this, nobody puts their hand up. And the reason they don’t put their hand up is that they get targeted like this.”

Naunton added that those who were members of climate groups like those at the public forum at Hawthorn Arts Centre were often likely to be political party members.

“Ben was not on the scoring committee, and it doesn’t involve just our group, it involves multiple climate change groups,” he said.

Naunton said Chesler’s name would be taken off a new copy of the scorecard and be replaced by that of someone else to authorise the information.

Volunteers for the Kooyong Climate Change Alliance are handing out the scorecards at pre-polling stations in Hawthorn and Kew, but the group was on Tuesday told by the Victorian Electoral Commission that its members would not be allowed to hand them out on election day.

The group is considering a legal challenge to the ruling. The Age could not reach Chesler for comment.

Nick Savage, the Greens’ candidate for Hawthorn, said his campaign team did not realise Chesler had authorised the scorecard, and that he only learnt of it when the alliance distributed it.

Both Savage and the Greens’ candidate for Kew, Jackie Carter, posted the scorecards on their social media accounts as independent endorsements of the Greens for the election.

Chesler has also authorised corflutes that can be put up on fences in the Kew and Hawthorn electorates.

This story is part of our in-depth local coverage of the key seats of Melton, Hawthorn and Richmond at the November state election.

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