Julian Burnside eyes Kooyong, targets wealthy with death taxes

Greens convert and barrister Julian Burnside wants the return of death duties as he aims to unseat Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Human rights and refugee lawyer and advocate Julian Burnside. Picture: Supplied

Prominent barrister Julian Burnside says he has been a member of the Greens for only two weeks as he seeks to unseat Josh Frydenberg, but he is comfortable with hitting the wealthy voters of Kooyong with death duties.

Mr Burnside will launch his campaign for the blue-ribbon Victorian seat of Kooyong today and says he is running against the Treasurer in order to end offshore detention and enact more action on climate change.

But the barrister — who has represented the likes of Rose Porteous and Alan Bond in his career — said could not confirm where his preferences would go and that he would struggle helping Bill Shorten’s Labor Party in any way at the next election.

“That makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it. We used to have death duties and then Joh Bjelke-Petersen got rid of them and then all the other states fell into line,” he told ABC Melbourne radio this morning.

“We’ve got a spectacular budget deficit and I really think we need to take the world a bit more seriously.”

The support for death duties could hurt Mr Burnside’s push in the leafy suburbs of Camberwell and Hawthorn, but these were also places that swung to the left in the last Victorian election.

Labor ended up winning the state seat of Hawthorn, but Mr Burnside today said he could not “easily” help the ALP gain the federal seat by sending them preferences.

“I think the Liberals are hopeless and you can’t believe anything they say, but you know, Bill Shorten, nice guy, but I’m not sure that he’s, I don’t think the Labor Party is all that good,” he told ABC News.

“I’m not sure that preferencing the Labor Party would be something that I would do easily.”

Mr Burnside has reinvented himself as a refugee rights advocate in recent years and said he has only joined the Greens at the last minute because they are now a “mature party.”

“The Greens are now a mature party. Our policies on any number of things are policies that most people would agree with,” he told ABC News.

“It’s come of age. It’s not the bunch of environmentalists it was thought to be when it was established in the early 90s.

“(I joined) only in the past week or two weeks because I spent my entire life not being a member of any political party. But I’m persuaded this election that it’s really important to give the Greens a proper voice.”

Kooyong MP Josh Frydenberg. Picture: Gary Ramage

Burnside takes on Frydenberg

Mr Burnside, in confirming his candidacy last night with The Australian, said he was targeting the Treasurer’s Melbourne seat of Kooyong.

But he declined to comment on what his priorities would be for constituents in the electorate once held by Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies.

Just days ago, Mr Burnside likened the government’s border protection policies implemented by Scott Morrison to the tactics employed by Nazi Germany in a controversial tweet quoting Hermann Goering at Nuremberg in 1946.

“Prediction: #Scomo will send a whisper to the Navy to let a couple of asylum seeker boats through before the election. Then he will try to terrify the nation that we are under attack.

Could he be that dishonest? Don’t fall for it: read the attached comment,” he tweeted.

Mr Burnside then posted a quote from Goering, stating: “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country”.

Mr Frydenberg is also facing another challenge from former Liberal Party member and renewable energy champion, Oliver Yates, who headed up the Clean Energy Finance Corporation under the former Labor government.

Mr Burnside’s candidacy is likely to drain votes away from Mr Yates, who is running as an independent.

It is understood Mr Burnside decided to enter the race as Mr Yates was struggling to gain traction within the electorate.

Mr Frydenberg, who was elected the Liberals deputy leader last year, holds Kooyong on a margin of 12.8 per cent after a redistribution. He first won the seat in 2010 and has increased his vote in subsequent elections.

Mr Yates, who clashed with Mr Frydenberg over the Coalition’s national energy guarantee, was ejected from a $10,000-a-table Victorian Liberal fundraiser in late 2017 after objecting when senator Jane Hume presented Scott Morrison with a fake lump of coal — a reference to the then treasurer’s move to bring a sample of the fossil fuel into the House of Representatives. Mr Yates, son of former Liberal MP William Yates, said it was “not a laughing matter”. He later described the government’s energy policies as immoral and warned the Liberals had been hijacked by the far-right and had drifted from their core values.

Scott Morrison in Canberra today. Picture: AAP

‘He makes a lot of noise’

Scott Morrison said Mr Burnside, a thorn in his side during his time as Immigration Minister, “makes a lot of noise” and attacked his inability to protect Kooyong voters from Labor tax policies.

“He makes a lot of noise. Julian Burnside won’t be able to prevent retirees getting taxed $5 billion a year,” he said in Canberra today.

“A vote for Julian Burnside won’t be able to do that. He won’t be able to stop Labor’s tax attack on the electors of Kooyong.

“There is only one person who can stop that and that is the Treasurer. He is not only going to stop it for the Kooyong electors, he will stop it for the entire country.”

There has been some analysis that a split in the anti-Liberal vote between Mr Burnside and independent candidate Oliver Yates would ultimately help Mr Frydenberg.

Mr Yates, a former head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, said he welcomed Mr Burnside’s decision to run.

“I have long shared Mr Burnside’s concerns for the treatment of refugees in Australia’s inhumane and expensive offshore detention camps. I also share Mr Burnside’s desire for a more just society,” he said.

“I welcome Mr Burnside to the campaign and look forward to seeing him campaigning and meeting the voters of Kooyong, as I have been doing over the past several weeks.

“We will work together across the campaign to ensure representation of Kooyong is better aligned with the concerns of our electorate.”