Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Schools) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Politics makes strange bedfellows, it's said, and the Batman by-election is making this very clear. We have the Liberals, our party of government, who can't get enough of talking about the Batman by-election in here but when it comes to the election itself, of course, have failed the most basic threshold test: they're not even running. They decided not to run. They are all talk and no action when it comes to the Greens political party. It's like an homage to the member for Dawson but in reverse: they are lions in Canberra and lambs in Northcote.

And it gets worse than this, with the unconvincing play-acting between Michael Kroger and Alex Bhathal over her policy positions. No-one was surprised to see him satisfied with her answers and her party's flexibility, with the Liberals then agreeing not to run a candidate.

But that's not all. What about the member for Melbourne talking up Labor's preferences just as Senator Bernardi confirmed he had been approached by the Greens? What appalling hypocrisy. But Batman voters will see through this Greens-Liberals unity ticket and the wider unity ticket of a lack of purpose, which binds the party of the three-word slogan and the party of the two-word slogan together.

Only Ged Kearney and Labor are listening to voters in Melbourne's north, while the other parties talk obsessively of preferences on the one hand and about the Labor Party on the other. Only Ged Kearney and Labor have a plan for voters in Batman and Melbourne's north.