Labor won’t be too unhappy that Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger has confirmed the Victorian Liberals are open to a preference deal (in Kroger’s terms, a “loose arrangement”) with the Greens because leader Richard Di Natale isn’t a “nutter”, and Di Natale saying he wouldn’t rule out supporting a minority Coalition government.
Both are, in a way unexceptionable statements — a Liberal-Greens “deal” would involve open preferencing by the Greens — e.g. not formally directing preferences to Labor. Antony Green estimated back in 2011 that this tends to reduce the Greens preference flow to Labor by 3% of preferences (not 3% of the vote). That is, in a very tight contest, it might make a difference, but otherwise it probably wouldn’t. And Di Natale’s comments indicated he’d probably back a Labor government — “it’s much more likely that the opportunity rests with Labor,” the Greens leader said. But under Christine Milne — by implication a “nutter” in Kroger’s estimation — the Tasmanian Greens supported a Liberal government in Tasmania in 1996.
Labor has been working hard to portray the Greens under Di Natale as drifting rightward. The Greens deal with the government on tax secrecy and, particularly, on Senate voting reform, have elicited near-hysterical reactions from Labor, with Sam Dastyari leading the charge. It was Dastyari who accused the Greens of “selling out tax transparency for a cheap, dirty deal with Scott Morrison”, and he wanted to crowdfund a billboard attacking the Greens on the issue. More recently, he used the Senate voting reform bill to theatrically accuse the Greens of selling out the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Dastyari permanently looks on the verge of self-parody, but as Joe Hockey and Mathias Cormann discovered, he can be a dangerous enemy.
That Labor votes with the government against the Greens on a regular basis, rather than once or twice, doesn’t tend to get mentioned by Labor.
Now Anthony Albanese, a target for the Greens in inner-suburban Sydney, is spruiking a “secret deal”. Any preference arrangement, however loose, and even a bland statement that Di Natale wouldn’t completely rule out supporting a Coalition government will be more grist to that particular mill (and, again, it’s not like Labor hasn’t preferenced against the Greens to its own detriment in years gone by — hello, Steve Fielding).
For all that, it’s important to remember that the Greens have done well under Di Natale: there was no dip in the party’s support after he replaced Christine Milne, and the Greens have continued to poll at around 10% in the Essential Report, despite Di Natale having far less experience and profile than Milne. In polling terms, there’s been an almost seamless transition between leaders, which didn’t happen when Milne replaced Bob Brown — the departure of the veteran Tasmanian caused a dip in the Greens’ vote, but it began recovering before the 2013 election (before a stunning performance by Scott Ludlam in the WA Senate byelection).
The problem is, the Greens need every vote — even with an ordinary half-Senate election this year, there are six Greens senators up for re-election, and in Tasmania they no longer have Christine Milne’s name recognition. The 2010 election delivered an exceptional outcome for the Greens in unusual circumstances — extraordinary levels of disillusionment with both an opposition led by Tony Abbott and a Labor Party that had knifed Kevin Rudd. Di Natale is thus leading them into what will be, even under the best circumstances, a tough election where there are likely to be casualties in the Senate, even if they can jag another seat in the Reps.
Expect a lot more talk of “secret deals” from Labor, and more stunts from Dastyari.
Any preference swap is most likely a fantasy, true, but it will be hard for the Libs to ignore the opportunity of knocking off Albo in Grayndler.
The redistribution there adds Balmain (and lots of Lib voting residents) to Grayndler, but still, with the Greens also polling 20 to 30% in the now very wealthy electorate, the Libs can’t quite win it yet. But by running dead and ensuring 3rd place (which they’ve done before in Grayndler) and directly preferencing the Greens (probably with a confusing HTV) they can anoint another Greens to the lower house to keep Adam Bandt company.
That’s how Bandt won Melbourne in 2010. The Libs gave him they seat. It suited them then, and they’ll do it again.
Albo’s right to be scarred, his days are numbered. Tanya Plibersek too… Its win-win, the Libs decimate the Labor front bench, the Greens get rid of Labor’s left and grab yet more disillusioned “progressives”. I’d be incredibly surprised if Di Natale didn’t insist on that in the senate-vote deal. He’s a smart guy, right…
Or not?
As I recall in 1996, the National Party in Queensland said to the Greens: Give us your preferences and we will do lots of good things for the environment.
To my amazement the Greens fell for it, and it was only a week after the election that the Greens realized that had been told lies.
If the Greens have forgotten their own history, they could do worse than examine the promises and performance of Campbell Newman and Tony Abbott.
The Greens would need to drift a lot to the right to be as rightwing as Labor currently is. Labor is quite close to the LNP as far as left/right wing positions.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2013
And they would need to drift *up* a lot to be as Authoritarian as Labor.
The number of times that the Greens vote with Labor or the Libs is a bit irrelevant. It’s what they vote with the Libs on that is important. And there can no more important issue, and a vote with far reaching consequences, that when Bob Brown decided to vote with the Libs (crucially except for two of them) to vote down the ETS in 2009. That decision has left us today without any significant climate change action. It gave us Abbott and every policy decision he was, and still is, responsible for. And yes, split tickets only make a few percentage points difference to Labor’s 2PP vote. But in 2010, it was all the difference in the Victorian State Election. The Greens wanted to teach John Brumby and Labor a lesson. Too bad about the people who were adversely affected by the Baillieu/Napthine government’s four year destruction of state schools, hospitals and other services. Of course, many Greens aren’t ordinary workers. They are likely to actually benefit from Lib policies of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. On ABC radio the other day, Richard Di Natale said the Greens vote was increasing. This was despite the fact that at the last Federal election, their vote dropped by 3% in the House and 4% in the Senate. He sounded like Abbott. Whether Labor is in government or in opposition, the Greens spend most of the time commenting on the policies of Labor. It is why, when Senator Ludlum actually made a speech criticising Abbott that it was so unusual. The reason that the Greens do this is because they know that is where their vote will come from – disillusioned Labor supporters. So they spend most of their time trying to convince Labor voters that they should be disillusioned. No Labor achievement is ever good enough. They didn’t even give credit to Wayne Swan for saving us from the GFC. The party of ideological purity is part of the same package as the party of inertia. The party of compromise is the party of change. The Greens say that Labor should adopt the policies of the Greens. Well, we already have a party that has the policies of the Greens – it’s called the Greens – and they get about 10% of the vote. And that’s what Labor would get if they became the Greens – 10% of the vote. The test of the Senate voting changes will be known soon enough, but you can bet that any adverse effects, like an increase in informal voting, will be called by the Greens as being the fault of Labor (and not the Libs).
@Teddy
I think you give Bandt and the Greens too little credit with that comment. They did have armies of volunteers doorknocking, a surprising amount of ad money and built a record-high primary vote in their own right, Lib preferences were just the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought forward the inevitable.
Albo should have taken Barton and Labor needs to think again about their strategy on this. The point is: if they don’t want to represent the progressive-left values of these electorates then they will have no choice but to make way for someone who does. They should either adapt their policy or cut their losses. The only other option is a protracted and futile death struggle with people on their own side of the chamber.