As Greens candidate for Kooyong, Julian Burnside sets up a four-way contest with Josh Frydenberg, Liberal-turned-independent Oliver Yates and Labor

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The human rights lawyer and refugee advocate Julian Burnside will run as the Greens candidate for Kooyong at the next election.

At a media conference on Tuesday the prominent barrister said he would take on the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, in the blue-ribbon Liberal seat because he believes the “political system is broken”, with major parties listening to their donors not their constituents.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Burnside suggested the Greens would “not treat the perfect as the enemy of the good” by threatening to block Labor’s climate change policies.

The comment suggests the candidate is keen to avoid a repeat of the Greens blocking Kevin Rudd’s emission trading scheme in favour of an interim carbon price that was later repealed by the Abbott government.

Burnside’s announcement sets up a four-way contest between the deputy Liberal leader, Labor’s Jana Stewart and the former head of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Liberal-turned-independent Oliver Yates.

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The usually safe seat, held by the Liberals since federation, has emerged as a political target since Labor’s landslide Victorian state election win and a Construction Forestry Mining Maritime and ­Energy Union-commissioned ReachTel poll suggested it could fall to Labor. Frydenberg holds the seat on a 12.8% margin after the redistribution.

After his work on the 2001 Tampa case Burnside became an outspoken critic of Australia’s treatment of refugees, including the punitive system of offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru.

Before the 2016 election, Burnside advocated that voters give the Greens their first preference and handed out how-to-vote cards for the Greens candidate in Higgins, Jason Ball, but denied being affiliated with the party.

Explaining his change of heart, Burnside told ABC News Breakfast the Greens were now a “mature party” with policies on a range of issues beyond the environment.

Burnside told Guardian Australia the Greens are “the human rights party” and he opted not to run as an independent because they tend to have only “one or two policies” as points of difference.

Asked about the Greens economic plans – such as opposing income tax cuts – Burnside said he had been through all their policies and didn’t see “anything [he] would disagree with”.

“The people in Kooyong are more generous and focused on the future than they are given credit for.”

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Burnside also took aim at Labor which he said “[supports] most aspects of Coalition refugee policy” and accused Bill Shorten of being “too timid to take any clear position in relation to the Adani coalmine”.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale – who declared in September that Shorten will be prime minister – has sent mixed signals on whether the Greens should support Labor’s climate change policies or muscle up to Labor to demand bigger improvements.

Burnside said the Greens would “do everything possible” to improve Labor’s climate change offering but if they “ran out of ways” they would ultimately support it.

“I don’t think they would treat the perfect as the enemy of the good,” he said of his new party. “I keep on saying ‘they’ - I’ve been a member for about a week.”

Burnside said the Greens had “achieved a lot” during the 45th parliament, citing pressure to legislate marriage equality, establish the banking royal commission and create a national integrity commission.

On Tuesday Di Natale said Kooyong would be “fiercely contested”, particularly on the issue of climate change, and Burnside would stand out because he understands it is an “existential threat”.

He said voters in Kooyong were “sick of the climate deniers within Liberal party, sick of seeing Liberal party dominated by the hard right” and “no longer recognise the party they once supported”.

In the wake of the 2016 election, Burnside predicted that the Liberal party would dump Malcolm Turnbull in favour of Scott Morrison, whom he accused of lying about boat people by describing them as “illegal” and demonstrating a “strangely un-Christian attitude” towards them.