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High-profile barrister announces MP intention

A high-profile barrister has announced his intention to take on the major parties and deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg by running for election in Kooyong.

user iconGrace Ormsby 05 March 2019 Politics
Julian Burnside AO QC
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In a Greens campaign announced today, Mr Julian Burnside AO QC said he is running for election “because the time has come to take urgent action on climate change, to care for people seeking asylum and to get the influence of big corporates out of politics”.

The Victorian inner metropolitan electoral division of Kooyong encompasses suburbs including Kew, Hawthorn, Canterbury, Camberwell, and Balwyn.

The Honourable Josh Frydenberg MP, who currently holds the seat, was first elected to the House of Representatives for Kooyong in 2010, and was re-elected in 2013 and 2016.

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Mr Burnside, as a self-professed human rights and refugee advocate, most recently made headlines when he headed up the launch of two class actions in the High Court last December for refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.

In a personal profile on the Greens website, Mr Burnside said he had decided to stand for election in Kooyong against “the coal-loving deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg”, and for the Greens because of the situation “our community, our country and our planet are facing”.

“For years the major parties have allowed people to be misled and ignored when it comes to climate change, to refugee policy, to addressing inequality,” he said.

“They’re driven by self-interest and by the demands of their big corporate donors pulling the strings.”

Commenting on his legal career, Mr Burnside said “the cases I am proudest of are those where I have worked to protect people or remedy the injustice they’ve faced by attacks from big corporate interests or from cruel and craven government actions.

“I’ve defended the rights of workers, of refugees, of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, of our environment – against governments, against billionaires, against corporate giants,” he said.

As a Greens candidate and a potential MP, Mr Burnside said he will have honest and frank conversations with people about how we have been let down by the Liberals and Labor, and how the Greens’ plans put the well-being of everyone at its centre.

He said that the challenge we are all facing right now is that “big corporate donors dictate terms to politicians who care more about their own jobs, and about looking after their mates, than they do about the people they’re elected to represent”.

“This is the challenge that I and the Greens are facing up to, a challenge we’re ready for.”

As of 9:39am, Mr Burnside had already raised more than $27,000 for his parliamentary campaign.

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