Published: 12 July 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
The results show Danby won the seat from the Liberal candidate by 2337 votes after Green preferences Significantly, Danby had his own how-to-vote card directing preferences to the Liberals. This was totally different to the official Labor card, which directed preferences to the Greens.
Danby is away and could not be interviewed for this article.
Questions had been raised about whether Danby, a passionate supporter of Israel and an opponent of the Greens, would be standing at the next election.
Danby told supporters he could have fought off a challenge and won the next federal election, due late this year or early next. But Labor insiders told The Jewish Independent that Danby had been tapped on the shoulder because Melbourne Ports was no longer a safe seat.
Significantly, Danby announced his retirement through journalist Greg Sheridan at The Australian. He is probably the best contact that Sheridan has with the ALP. That’s one less now.
There are several reasons behind Danby’s decision.
First, Labor has held Melbourne Ports for 110 years but the bayside seat is no longer a working-class area of wharfies, tradesmen and labourers. According to the Parliamentary Library ranking, Melbourne Ports is the third richest electorate in Melbourne and Middle Park is one of the most expensive suburbs. And in the 20 years that Danby held the seat, Labor’s vote has dropped significantly, particularly over the past decade, when it crashed from 43.2 per cent in 2007 to 28.7 per cent in 2016. Some of that has gone to the Liberals but most has gone to the Greens.
Certainly, Danby’s critics inside the Labor Party say he has sat on his hands in what was a safe Labor seat to focus on Israel instead of his electorate. Some Labor figures last year said it was time for Danby to retire amid anger over his advertising in the Australian Jewish News and his preparation for a pre-selection challenge in case he decided to recontest the seat.
He was criticised for targeting the ABC and its reporters last October in a taxpayer-funded advertisement in the AJN which specifically attacked ABC Middle East correspondent Sophie McNeill. In red print, the ad said: “Why the double standards?”, claiming that McNeill gave “EXTENSIVE” coverage to Palestinians evicted, but “MINIMAL REPORTAGE” to a Jewish family killed.”
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Senior Labor figures were dismayed by the advertisement and said Opposition Leader Bill Shorten was ropeable. The Age reported at the time that there was “a heated phone conversation”, where “Mr Shorten had instructed Mr Danby – his factional ally – to withdraw the latest ad.” The ad, according to The Age, had already been sent to the printers.
Danby has been a supporter of Shorten’s, going back to the days when he and David Feeney were rising young figures in the Labor Unity faction.
But Labor sources told The Jewish Independent they were no longer close, and that Danby was regarded by many as a single-issue politician, someone who had used the comfort of a safe seat to campaign for his pet issue of Israel.
In fairness to Danby, he has not been a single-issue politician. He served on the joint select committee on the republic referendum in 1999, the year after he was elected as the member for Melbourne Ports. He was briefly the Parliamentary Ssecretary for the Arts in 2013. He has also served on the privileges committee, the selection committee and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander committee. He was also deputy chair of the joint standing committee on electoral matters. He served the ALP as opposition whip from 2001-07. He has also been a member of the ALP’s social policy committee and secretary of the ALP caucus national security committee.
Danby had shrugged off reports that that “senior Labor figures” were expecting him to announce he was leaving federal politics at the next election. He also rejected warnings he might face a preselection challenge if he didn’t step down.
He said there was no internal threat to dump him as no-one had put their name to it. “I’ve won Melbourne Ports seven times,” he told Sky News in 2017. “It’s a very difficult seat and I think that record speaks for itself.
“I’m pretty good at counting, and I’ve got a lot of support amongst the branch membership and a lot of support among that other constituency in the Labor Party, the unions in Victoria, so I’m not concerned about that.”
Danby’s decision coincided with the retirement of another long-standing Labor MP, Jenny Macklin. Like Danby, Macklin had been in Parliament for about 20 years. She served on the government or opposition frontbench throughout that time. Macklin was actively involved in policy development. Among her other achievements, she helped the Gillard government develop the NDIS and shaped Kevin Rudd’s “Sorry” statement to the Stolen Generations.
After Macklin announced her retirement, there were glowing accolades for her achievements on social media and in the newspapers. They called her a “real Labor person totally committed to public policy, helping the disadvantaged and fighting inequality”.
There were no such accolades for Danby. “He won’t be missed if we hold the seat of Macnamara,” a Labor insider said.
All eyes will now be on who gets pre-selected. So far, three ALP candidates, two of them Jewish, have put up their hands.
One is former Danby staffer Josh Burns, a Mount Scopus graduate raised in Caulfield who ran against Liberal David Southwick in the seat of Caulfield in the Victorian state election in 2014. Burns works as a senior advisor to the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.
The other is Nick Dyrenfurth, executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre. Dyrenfurth lives in St Kilda.
The third is former Glen Eira councillor and mayor Mary Delahunty, who lives in Elsternwick.
Photo: Michael Danby at Parliament House (Michael Bowers/Guardian)
