Awkward moment The Liberal MP’s own mother is seen campaigning against him on the opposite side of the pavement
- James Griffin won the Manly seat for the Liberals
- Her mother was campaigning for the Greens across the street.
A Liberal candidate in the NSW election was seen awkwardly campaigning across the road from his own mother, who was urging people to vote Green.
James Griffin is the incumbent MP for the Manly seat and was handing out how-to-vote cards outside a polling booth on Saturday wearing a blue shirt alongside his wife.
But just across the lane, clad in a green shirt, was his mother, who has campaigned for the Greens for 25 years.
“I’ve been working on the mum vote for a couple of years,” Griffin told Sky News Australia.
“She’s quite passionate about the environment and good to it.”
He added that it also resulted in “interesting Sunday dinner conversations.”
James Griffin won the Manly seat for the Liberals (pictured with his wife)

His own mother, Cathy, was campaigning across the street for the Greens.
His mother, Cathy Griffin, said she was proud of her son, but that doesn’t mean she would give up her own political beliefs.
“He has been environment minister for 18 months and from my point of view he did a fantastic job, making more environmentally positive decisions than anyone who has come before him,” he said.
“As far as the family is concerned, we’re all together and we have very happy political discussions, because it really is a lot of fun, but we support James.”
Griffin claimed victory in the seat Saturday night against Teal’s rival candidate, Joeline Hackman.
‘The trulli at the federal level at least came in saying we’ll do it differently. And they did it,” he told supporters of his at the Seaforth Bowling Club.
But what we saw at the state level in all of the northern beaches (and) north shore seats was dirty politics, and I think that has really hurt the teal brand.
They have almost become a parody of themselves.
While the Liberals retained the seat, there was a 10.5 percent party shift, mostly to the Teals.