William Hill and Sportsbet both have similar markets - the Greens at $1.72 and Labor $2.10. William Hill offers the Liberals at $17 to Sportsbet's $15.Batman's two-decade drift away from Labor #auspol pic.twitter.com/IRuZ2S1lQs— Antony Green (@AntonyGreenABC) February 1, 2018
Clearly the market makers expect the Liberals to end up not having a runner in the race. From the comments below that decision will depend a lot on the attitude of the Green and Labor candidates towards Israel and the United States:
Speaking on Sky News on January 22, Kroger said: “We didn’t run in a state seat in Batman recently; we decided not to run and the Greens defeated Labor. We haven’t decided yet but we’re considering whether we would run in a [federal] by-election [for Batman]. If we didn’t, it would be likely that the Greens would win that seat from Labor.
“We would do everything we can to check on the credentials of these Greens candidates. You’ve seen a number of anti-Semitic comments by Greens members and senators, you’ve seen Greens participate in the discriminatory BDS campaign against Israel.
“So we would go through every Greens candidate’s credentials, their speeches, their participation in BDS rallies, to see if there were any elements of anti-Semitism, and if there were, we would probably run and would certainly preference against the Greens candidate, particularly in the case of someone like Feeney, who has been very pro-Israel and pro-American,” said Kroger.
