Vote with your head, not with your heart
The Liberals cannot win Macnamara in 2025 unless there is an unprecedented political earthquake.
I write this not just as a member of the Jewish community, but as a mathematician with a PhD in pure mathematics, a former vice-chairman of Young Labor Victoria, and a former Caulfield councillor with over 53 years of experience analysing Australian elections.
I have closely followed Australian politics for decades, and I have been deeply critical of Labor’s foreign policy regarding Israel under its current leadership.
One has to admire the performance of Julian Leeser, the only Jewish Coalition member of the House of Representatives, since Josh Frydenberg lost the seat of Kooyong at the 2022 election. It is vital that we have pro-Israel members of Parliament from both major political parties.
Currently, the ALP has three Jewish federal parliamentarians; two of them being Mike Freelander (Macarthur) and Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs). The third Jewish Labor MP is Josh Burns, whose seat is on a knife edge with the Greens.
Despite my strong concerns about Labor’s direction, the reality in Macnamara is that voting Liberal will not elect a Liberal MP – it will hand the seat to the Greens, who are far worse for Israel and the Jewish community.
According to ABC election analyst Antony Green, Macnamara is a safe Labor seat against the Liberal Party with a margin of 12.25 per cent. Even in historic landslide elections, such massive swings are rare.
The largest national two-party swing in federal history was 7.4 per cent to the Liberals in 1975 and 7.1 per cent to Labor in 1969. In 2022, the swing against Labor in Macnamara was just 1.5 per cent – far below what would be needed for the Liberals to win. Even in the biggest Liberal victories, seats with margins over 10 per cent rarely fall.
To put it bluntly: the Liberals cannot win Macnamara in 2025 unless there is an unprecedented political earthquake. It is mathematically unrealistic.
So who are the real threat? The Greens.
In May 2022, Josh Burns (ALP) almost lost the seat to the Greens. The seat had eight candidates. After five distributions of preferences, the final three candidates were Colleen Harkin (Liberal) on 31,327 votes, Burns on 31,149 votes and Steph Hodgins-May (Greens) on 30,555 votes. As the Liberal party will never get more votes than Labor and Greens combined, and Labor voters tend to preference the Greens and the Greens preference Labor, one of the two are bound to win.
While the Liberal Party is not competitive in Macnamara, the Greens came within just 594 votes of overtaking Josh Burns in 2022. Had 298 people voted Greens instead of Labor, the Greens would have won.
Had 595 more people voted Liberal instead of Labor, the Greens would have overtaken Labor, received Labor’s preferences, and won the seat. This is the real danger in Macnamara.
If you are frustrated with the ALP’s policies on Israel, I completely understand. But here’s the reality: voting 1 Liberal in Macnamara increases the likelihood of a Greens MP, who will be even worse.
What happens if the Greens win? A Greens victory increases the likelihood of a minority Labor government reliant on the Greens for support. This would give the Greens leverage over the government, including foreign policy decisions affecting Israel.
Worst of all it would also meaning losing another Zionist Jewish person in Parliament and replacing him with a Greens MP. No matter what your thoughts are on Josh Burns, electing a Greens MP will lead to your federal representative supporting an anti-Israel agenda and policies.
If you care about the Jewish community’s interests, the numbers make it crystal clear: Vote 1 Josh Burns, and put the Greens last. If you want to send a message to Labor, vote for the Liberal Party in the Senate, but do not risk helping the Greens win Macnamara.
Voting Liberal in Macnamara will not elect a Liberal MP – it will elect a Green. Make no mistake: this is a battle we cannot afford to lose.
Professor John Zeleznikow is an academic, a former Caulfield councillor and a member of the Melbourne Jewish community.
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