Tim Murray: Wentworth’s progressive voters need a Labor voice

The local businessman tells Anne Susskind he offers a genuine alternative to his two main rivals who are both conservatives

THERE WERE ABOUT 35 people, a raffle for a surfboard, a rousing speech but “no razzmatazz”, says Wentworth’s Labor candidate Tim Murray, wryly describing his “warm and intimate” campaign launch last week at the Imperial Hotel in Paddington, on the same night independent candidate, Allegra Spender, held her high-profile launch at the Intercontinental Hotel in Double Bay (where the Liberal member, Dave Sharma, also held his in March).

Labor has never won in Wentworth, Murray says, and “to be honest, it would be a big ask for us to win here,” noting that the only time anyone got close was Jessie Street in the 1930s. She was about 30 votes short in the end.

The media mostly comes to him just for comment on the other candidates, and a recent profile in the Wentworth Courier was run online only, whereas that of Spender and Sharma appeared on the cover, smiling from driveways and venues all over the electorate.

So why does Murray, a successful businessman with a day job, stand? As managing partner of short-selling firm J Capital and recently elected onto Waverley Council, full of projects on solar energy, a keen gardener and father of young children, he’s not bored.    

He stands, he says, because there are progressive voters in the electorate, and Labor needs “a voice” as a foil to the two main rivals who are both conservatives, with the same agendas, Spender’s distinguished by a better policy on climate.

“This electorate needs a left-of-centre person, reminding them there is such a thing as a [Labor] agenda.” Labor also needs a presence also because of local council, and the state seat of Coogee, and the Senate.