And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone’s hearts must be torn to shreds.
That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself—
Surely you see that. – Brecht
Adam Bandt attributed his loss to an electorate redistribution, which pulled in more Labor voters. He said many constituents had “shifted their votes to Labor to keep Dutton out.”
In 2002, my sister Pamela Curr ran for the Greens in the seat of Brunswick and polled strongly coming second to Labor. Pam campaigned on social justice issues like support for refugees and getting rid of exploitation of sweatshop workers (Fairware campaign). Pam achieved a swing of 18% in what was the heartland of Melbourne’s progressive community. Brunswick is diverse and was once an industrial centre of Victoria.
In the 2022 election, Bandt won 66.5% of the two party preferred vote in Brunswick East. In 2025, those voters have gone to Will’s under the redistribution. As have Princes Hill (64% for Bandt) and in Fitzroy North, where Adam won 67.9% of the two-party preferred vote.
So, taking Brunswick out of the electorate of Melbourne certainly hurt Adam Bandt but has helped the Greens against Peter Khalil in Wills because Labor has been so weak on the genocide in Palestine. Note the swing to the Greens and the very good showing by the Socialist Alliance candidate, Sue Bolton, who cut her political teeth during the 1985 SEQEB dispute in Queensland.
Sue Bolton has built up a base of support in the city of Moreland, where she was a councillor. Note that this local government ward in Melbourne includes the suburb of Brunswick.
It looks as though the Greens may have peaked at the last election against the LNP and now have waned with some exceptions. There is no doubt that taking runs week out of the electorate of Melbourne hurt Bandt.
The results in Brunswick East (now part of Wills) is particularly interesting. Even though there was a 7.6% swing against the Greens, that vote went to Sue Bolton of the Socialist Alliance who picked up votes from both Greens and Labor. What I am saying is that if Brunswick had remained in Melbourne Bandt would have picked up those votes that leaked to the socialist alliance in Wills where a candidate with a lower profile was always vulnerable to Labor’s sitting member, Peter Khalil. The sizeable pro-Palestinian vote in Brunswick went to Sue Bolton. Khalil is a well-known supporter of the US, an apologist for the genocide and was a close ally of Zionist Michael Danby and David Sharma.
Bandt broadened the political base of the Greens, including more progressive policies on housing, Medicare, unions, and Palestine than previous leaders Bob Brown and Richard Di Natale. The environmental party had become a party of social justice. This was aided by strong political representatives like Max Chandler-Mather and David Shoebridge.
Unfortunately, the strong support that Max Chandler-Mather gave the CFMEU could not be returned. The Labor government appointed an administrator, thus stopping any political support for Max from the union. This hurt Max in Griffith and Remah in Moreton.
The truth is left-wing candidates like Adam Bandt, Max Chandler-Mather and Remah Naji would be better served by being in a social democratic party, not an environmentalist party. Both Max and Remah are candidates who came from Labor but when it shifted to the right under Albanese and began attacking the CFMEU and supporting Israel they were forced to/chose to go to the Greens. This move has clearly been supported by progressives but, without any real institutional backing from unions, can’t go anywhere electorally.
Remah Naji was not really a Greens candidate even though that party endorsed her from a list of 10 strong possibles. Remah’s energy and the power of her campaign came from outside the electoral system, namely from the Justice for Palestine Magan-djin movement that has mobilized thousands of people for the last 18 months.
Adam Bandt had union connections that helped his campaign, so he was not your run-of-the-mill Green candidate. The biggest problem for the Greens is that they do not have a class base because they are an environmental party.
The ALP now has the same problem – 2/3 of all workers have never been members of a union. The ALP has suffered as a result because the unions were their link to ordinary workers. Labor’s attacking the CFMEU, strong unions like the ETU now question that special relationship.
The 1972 Whitlam experiment showed that the parliamentary road is a thorny path whether it be to introduce the modest reforms demanded by Whitlam or a larger scale revolutionary change to socialism. Both are impossible without real engagement with working class people and their organisations, the unions.
Ian Curr, 8 May 2025
Perhaps inadvertently, it was you who warned of the link when you claimed that Remah would be ‘attacked’ at Sunnybank. You are aware that there are two sets of Greens that we are talking about here. The ones who are strongly pro-Palestine and others who avoid the discussion. In public at least. Drew Hutton is in the latter category.
I told you about the collaboration between the Australian Jewish Association and Advance Australia to attack the Greens, and you said it was a conspiracy theory, but anyway. It was the Australian Jewish Association that attacked Remah for speaking in a school early in her campaign. I don’t know why they did not attack her further, she was their ideal target. My guess is they aborted their anti-semitism campaign after the fake caravan bomb got exposed. The AJA’s anti-semitism campaign was not designed to mobilise Jews, from what I have gleaned they pissed a lot of Jews off. The AJA’s campaign was designed to portray Greens and JFP as terrorists.
John, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
An analysis of data from the 2021 General Census, which compared the number of Australian Arabs, Muslims, and Jews in each federal electoral district, as well as the votes received by government and opposition candidates in the 2022 federal election, revealed that the Arab and Muslim communities can significantly influence the outcome in at least 21 federal seats. Of these, 15 were held by Labor (11 were marginal seats), the Liberals held five, and an independent held one. In contrast, the Jewish vote has the potential to influence four seats (three marginal and one fairly safe), with two of these were held by independents and two by Labor. – Ali Kazak
The data relied upon in the above quote is out of date.
After a redistribution in 2024 the seat (Melbourne) was influenced by the Jewish vote. Labor won the seat in the recent 2025 election. The Jewish population in the Kooyong area is a growing presence and the seat was won by Dr Monique Ryan financed by billionaire Simon Holmes à Court. Dr Ryan said that: “I have real concern about rising antisemitism since October 7, it has been “awful” and “distressing” to witness.”
References
https://www.australianjewishnews.com/relationships-take-time/
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/05/there-is-no-jewish-vote-in-australia-nor-is-supporting-israel-a-vote-winner/
Why don’t you get together with SEP the Socialist Equality Party they have similar ethics to you. They care about worker’s rights and call out injustices.
Hmmm … The Socialist Equality Party was deregistered by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) due to a lack of members. The SEP obtained 0.03% of the senate vote in the 2022 federal election in Victoria.
Socialist Labour League in SEQEB dispute
The SEP’s predecessor, the Socialist Labour League, played a minor role in industrial disputes like the 1985 SEQEB dispute. In that dispute that involved most of the Queensland working class the SLL could spare a couple of comrades sent up from Sydney from time to time. Hardly the number of cadre or organisation needed to swing that dispute in favour of 1001 sacked workers. They sold their newspaper at the gates of Perry Park where the sacked workers met every Thursday, no doubt claiming the paucity of their numbers was outweighed by the ‘correct line’ of their newspaper. The harsh truth is nobody took them seriously.
The Beast of British Trotskyism
Gerry Healy – “To his dwindling band of diehard admirers, Healy was the leading revolutionary in the British working-class movement of his time, with a career at the head of the class struggle stretching over more than half a century. To his detractors — far greater in number, among those who remember him at all — he was a petty tyrant with extreme delusions of grandeur, subjecting those who were supposed to be his comrades to a regime of psychological, verbal, physical and sexual abuse.” – Tom Blackburn in the Tribune
Bandt would have got a lower vote if the redistribution did not happen. Three booths that moved from Melbourne to Wills – Princes Hill swung 12.6% against the Greens, Fitzroy North 18.6% against and Brunswick East 7.6% against. However in Melbourne’s new southern booth of Prahran the swing was 3.5% towards the Greens. The redistribution disguised the scale of the collapse in Green heartland.
You are missing the point … the vote that the Greens lost in Brunswick went to the Socialist Alliance, not to the Labor-Right candidate, Peter Khalil.
Remember, my sister won her swing of 11.7% to the Greens in 2002 because Labor, under pro-US Beazeley, supported the culture warriors slogan ‘Stop the Boats’.
There were many former Melbourne Green voters that voted for Sue Bolton in Wills when they had that option (I think that is very significant). This happened the most in Brunswick East – Bolton got 9.81% and there was a 7.61% swing against the Greens. However in Princes Hill Bolton got 6.73% and there was a 12.61% swing against the Greens – 5.8% went somewhere else. In Fitzroy North Bolton got 7.43% and the swing against the Greens was 18.58% – 11.1% went somewhere else.
The Greens were a very different party when your sister ran in 2002.
One factor people have forgotten is the high “Jewish vote” in the electoral division of Melbourne. That vote went against Adam Bandt because of his strong support for Palestine.
I wish to make it clear what I mean here. The “Jewish vote” does not mean Jews who vote for Israel. As you know, a lot of Jewish people do not vote for Israel. Some of the leading opponents of Israel are Jews.
The “Jewish vote” comprises Liberals and Social Democrats. Some Liberals voters support Israel because of the Holocaust. Some Social Democrats support Israel because they saw it as a national liberation movement.
There are Greens who are going to blame Adam Bandt for the loss of lower house seats including his own seat of Melbourne. This is not a serious argument. The Greens obtained 1.7 million votes. That is a huge number! One Nation got only 800,000 votes.They have the balance of power in the Senate!
I don’t know enough about Melbourne Judaism to speculate but I suspect the “Jewish vote” is an illusion created by Zionists to scare Albo with. https://solidarity.net.au/palestine/anti-zionist-jews-stand-in-defence-of-palestine-solidarity/
Blinky needs to pay more attention to what Jewish people in Israel have signed up to, genocide.
It was Norman Finkelstein who said that Israeli Jews had signed up to genocide.
I suspect Jewish people in Israel and Jewish people in Melbourne have different perspectives on the war. Should we judge the attitudes of Australian Muslims by the Taliban?
It is very dangerous to use Australia’s leading Zionist newspaper, the Australian Jewish News, as your source because it is full of lies.
Such lies as the ‘Not in our Name’ group is comprised of ‘self-hating jews.’
Many Australian Muslims have fled the Taliban. 500, 000 Jewish people have fled Israel since the genocide began.
Zionist settlers have destroyed Israel from the river to the sea.
The Melbourne “Jewish vote” –
(Talking about Macnamara) “These neighbourhoods, long considered bastions of conservative-leaning Jewish voters, have progressively transformed into reliable Labor territories, with the Greens also making significant inroads.”
https://www.australianjewishnews.com/the-jewish-vote-counted/
From 1998 until 2019 Australia’s leading parliamentary Zionist was Michael Danby, Labor Party member for Melbourne Ports.
Why would the Australian Jewish news lie about some Jews voting Green? Do you think “Solidarity” was lying too in the above link about the Melbourne Jewish protest against the Gaza war? The most militant and sustained protests in the US against the Gaza war have been by Jewish groups. Why don’t you think Melbourne Jews wouldn’t be just as horrified as everybody else about what is in the media every day? The various Australian Zionist fronts are not trying to mobilise Jews any more than Jacinta Price is trying to mobilise Aboriginal people, the Zionists (and Price) are just puppets of the political right to titillate their conservative base. The conflation of “Israeli” and “Jew” is a Zionist lie that you have believed.
You need to read the whole article. The AJN is saying the conservative vote for Israel went to the Liberal party in suburbs where there was a high number of Jewish people. A high percentage of the Jewish vote always went to the Labor Party because the champion of Zionism in Australia was Michael Danby who came from the Labor Party. Danby held the seat of Melbourne Ports for 22 years on the back of the Jewish Zionist vote. Danby’s seat of inner and south Melbourne always had the highest Zionist vote in the country.
As for your ridiculous statements “Australian Zionist fronts are not trying to mobilise Jews” and “the Zionists are just puppets of the political right to titillate their conservative base. Now who is being naive? Zionist organisations have mobilised people in Australia (Jewish and Christian) to go and fight in every Israeli war from the 1967 six-day-war to the current genocide. Perhaps you do not understand the difference between Jewish and Christian Zionism? The pre-dominantly atheist Zionist worked in many different religions to gain support for Israel.
As for your vicious accusations, show me where I have ever conflated “Israeli” with “Jew”. That is the province of racist anti-semitism which comes from the Nazi’s who bombed the Synagogue in Melbourne.
The project for Greater Israel is not a religious project, it encompasses all religions and no religion. To resort to lies that come out of the AJN is a low and vicious attack on the Palestinian community and their supporters who comprise a significant minority of Jewish people who may or may not vote the Greens, so much the enmity of your comments.
You claim – “One factor that you’ve forgotten is the high Jewish vote in the electoral division of Melbourne. That vote went against Adam Bandt because of his strong support of Palestine.”
Conservative and Zionist Jews did not previously vote for Bandt, they did not swing against him this election. Only previous Green voters can swing against the Greens.
Regarding your conflation of Israeli and Jew, you said – “Blinky needs to pay more attention to what Jewish people in Israel have signed up to, genocide.”
How is that relevant to how Melbourne Jews vote? The swing against Bandt came from his traditional base, no matter how much you want to blame the Jews.
(The AJN article is only about previous elections, there is no data yet on the recent one)
It was you who said – “Blinky needs to pay more attention to what Jewish people in Israel have signed up to, genocide.” What has that, or Finklestein, got to do with the collapse in Bandt’s vote?