Byelection forum dominated by Israel, climate change and refugee issues as new poll suggests Kerryn Phelps in a winning position

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The surprise announcement by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, on Tuesday that Australia may relocate its embassy to Jerusalem appears to have divided Wentworth’s Jewish community, a forum on Tuesday night suggested.

The forum featured four candidates running in Saturday’s byelection and was hosted by the Jewish Board of Deputies. There was applause for the Liberal candidate, Dave Sharma, as he explained the government’s new position, though others appeared to back the assessment by the independent Kerryn Phelps that the policy was nothing more than “a politically motivated move”.

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Australia’s policies on Israel and the Middle East, climate change and refugees dominated the forum.

New internal Liberal polling, published in the Australian on Wednesday, suggested Phelps is in a winning position ahead of Saturday’s vote.

Phelps is leading Sharma with 55% to 45% of the two-party preferred vote in the Sydney eastern suburbs electorate, according to the newspaper.

At Tuesday’s forum, Sharma, a former ambassador to Israel, said it was “prudent to assess your foreign policy settings”.

“The context for this is a UN vote in which Australia will be asked to explain its position on voting down a Palestinian chairing a UN body,” he added.

Phelps argued that the prime minister had proceeded without due process. “To announce it without bipartisan discussion, without comprehensive analysis of the defence, security and trade implications, this should not have been raised in the context of the byelection. There’s no question that this was a politically motivated decision,” she said to applause.

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Labor’s Tim Murray, an economist and entrepreneur, faced questions over whether his party supported unilateral recognition of Palestine – a hot issue in the community.

Murray said it was not the policy of the federal Labor party and he did not personally support it. He said resolutions passed at the New South Wales, South Australian and Queensland state Labor conferences supporting recognition of Palestine did not mean that unilateral recognition was policy and that he would personally be advocating within the party against it.

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Also high on the Jewish community’s list of concerns was climate change – as it is with most Wentworth voters.

A ReachTel poll of 661 voters in Wentworth, conducted between last Thursday and Sunday for Greenpeace using automated telephone surveys, found 40.6% nominated climate change as their top issue in the byelection.

This was ahead of schools and education (7.4%), health and hospitals (8.4%), immigration (15.3%) and the economy (19%).

Sharma faced the most sustained questioning as a result of the Coalition dumping its own national energy guarantee last month, which has left it struggling to explain how it will tackle emissions and meet Australia’s Paris commitments.

The Neg, which attempted to address both emissions and energy prices, was jettisoned after a backbench rebellion among conservatives that cost the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull his job.

“I accept the science of climate change. I will be a voice in the party to continue to address climate change,” Sharma said.

Phelps reminded voters that Sharma was “the candidate for a party which doesn’t believe in climate change and that climate change sceptics have blocked any policy”.

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Greenpeace said its polling showed the voters of Wentworth were planning on sending the “climate wreckers in Canberra” a message. “There is huge electoral penalty to pay for abandoning action on climate change,” said the Greenpeace campaigner Neneh Darwin.



Sharma also received a frosty reception from the audience when he suggested that the Liberals had inherited offshore detention from Labor – which is true, but the Liberals have been in power for five years and continued offshore detention as a central plank of its deterrence of illegal boat arrivals.

“What we are trying to do is address that problem. I want Australia to be generous. When we have control of our borders we can afford to be generous,” he said, citing increased humanitarian intake of those applying through official channels.

Sharma said he favoured agreements such as that with the US to resettle refugees from Nauru in third countries. But he did not budge on bringing the 95 children remaining on Nauru to Australia.

Murray said that as Labor was in opposition, he could not, if elected, effect an immediate change in policy. But he said the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, had announced on Tuesday that any child on Nauru deemed by medical staff to have a medical problem would be brought to Australia under Labor. He also said Labor would accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees.

About 12.5% of the electorate of Wentworth are Jewish, according to the 2016 Census, making it among the largest Jewish communities in Australia.