Albo's recruits
Party turncoats rarely land on their feet, but that hasn’t stopped Anthony Albanese from collecting them.
Australian political history isn’t exactly littered with successful defections.
From former Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot’s dramatic leap to Labor to Peter Slipper’s pivot to the Speaker’s chair, Craig Kelly’s journey to Cliveworld and Cory Bernardi’s ill-fated conservative crusade, examples of party switching that end well are surprisingly rare.
You probably have to go back to 1931, when Joseph Lyons left the Labor Party to join the conservative opposition, and then became prime minister, to find a clear-cut success story.
Which brings us to West Australian Senator Dorinda Cox’s announcement on Monday afternoon that she is ditching the Greens for Labor.
Standing beside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Perth, Cox declared her values now align more with Labor’s and that she could achieve more in a party of government than as a member of the crossbench. Sources close to Cox, a former Labor Party member, insist the move was triggered by what she perceived as an increasingly radical posture from the Greens, particularly its deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi.
