Greens have sights on Turnbull’s electorate

BY ALEXANDER LEWIS AND WILLIAM HUTCHINSON

For the man who plans to unseat the Prime Minister at the federal election, the fight is personal.

And it’s a fight the Greens candidate for Wentworth, Dejay Toborek, said he can win, even though the seat has been held by conservative candidates since Federation.

“He’s betrayed me and a whole lot of other people,” said the 36-year-old, who has lived in the affluent Eastern Suburbs electorate for 15 years.

“Malcolm Turnbull looked both my partner and I in the eye close to six years ago and said to us both that we could just settle for civil unions, or we’ll have to wait for marriage equality.”

“Well we’ve waited, he’s become prime minister, and we’re still waiting.”

Mr Toborek is sick of waiting and said so too were the people of Wentworth, whom he described as “incredibly diverse, incredibly engaged, and politically very intelligent”.

On the issues of climate change and marriage equality, some would say the Prime Minister and Mr Toborek think alike. But the difference, Mr Toborek said, was that unlike the Prime Minister, he had “the courage of his convictions”.

“Mr Turnbull] is a person who doesn’t have the guts anymore, who doesn’t have the conviction to go through the bold ideas that everyone expected of him, and instead it’s just buzzwords about innovation,” he said.

“I actually believe in what I say, and would be prepared to deliver it and have a party that’s prepared to deliver it.”

“Wentworth cares about climate change,” which is something Mr Toborek said Mr Turnbull had failed to adequately address.

“He’s got an Environment Minister who’s overlooked the Great Barrier Reef as destroyed and has opened some of the world’s biggest coal mines,” he said.

While admitting he saw eye to eye with Mr Turnbull on those issues, Mr Toborek said the two parties were fundamentally different.

“The Liberal Party has an ideology that the Prime Minister still leads with: individualism, a dog eat dog kind of world. Whereas the Greens are keen on fostering communities, and taking the community with them,” he said.

When Perth-born Mr Toborek is not running for the seat of Wentworth, he’s a professional theatre performer.

And that hasn’t just been limited to the stages of Lion King, Les Miserables and Georgy Girl. He’s previously run for the City of Sydney council on the Green’s ticket.

Having been engaged to his male partner for over nine years, Mr Toborek has been a staunch supporter of same sex marriage and accused Mr Turnbull of using the issue as a vote grab from the local LGBTQI community.

The electorate of Wentworth has one of the largest gay demographics, comprising of Darlinghurst, Potts Point, Double Bay, Bondi, Woolloomooloo and Randwick.

“[Malcolm Turnbull is] prepared to put the LGBTQI community under a bus just so that he can get the job he’s now gotten,” Mr Toborek said.

“He’s become a puppet for all those hard right people in the party who have the power at the moment. Malcolm Turnbull was a person in his party who was prepared to challenge the far right and under the guise of a broad church, say what he wanted to say which was popular in his electorate,” he said.

“Now that he’s Prime minister, he’s doing the opposite.”

And that’s been reflected in the polls, with Roy Morgan revealing on May 2 that support for the Australian Labor Party was in front of the coalition 51 to 49 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.

“The electorate [of Wentworth] understands if somebody is giving them the runaround, when someone has flatly lied in order to get into a position of power,” Mr Toborek said, adding he believed the seat will ultimately come down to a contest between the Liberals and the Greens.

“We have a huge voter base in this seat, that’s a natural voter base,” he said.

“This is a seat that wants to vote Green, this is a seat that continually increases its Green vote and we’re committed to making Wentworth a Green seat. “

“Labor’s not really in with a showing for this particular election in the electorate.

But Mr Toborek’s dismissal of Labor could be premature. The Greens were more than 5000 votes behind Labor at the last election, securing only 14.6 per cent of votes, down almost 3 per cent from the 2010 federal election.

Regardless of the outcome of this year’s election, Mr Toborek is confident the Greens will eventually claim the blue-ribbon seat.

“Wentworth wants to vote Greens,” he said.
“However long it takes is however long it takes. We’ve got the prize in sight and hopefully we’ll get there.”