WHILE most attention of late has been firmly fixed on the tightening contest between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, the rise in support for the Australian Greens (if it holds up until election day) will have a profound effect on politics in this country, not to mention the way the government after the next election goes about its business.
The latest Newspoll allocated the Greens 16 per cent of the vote, a record for the fledgling party. With the demise of the Democrats it is becoming clear the Greens will be the third force in Australian politics for some time.
But there are a number of issues to consider before pencilling in the central role the Greens will play in the years ahead.
What happens when the party’s ageing leader, Bob Brown, retires from politics? Will it be able to survive without his charismatic style? Will the Greens gain control of the Senate in their own right after the next election? And will they choose to play a constructive role by negotiating?
Would any relaxation of ideological dogma by the Greens damage their brand the way the Democrats damaged their brand by negotiating the passage of the GST after the 1998 election? And if the Greens don’t become more pragmatic, what would that do to political decision-making? Can we afford to watch government decision-making grind to a halt because a third force chooses to stand on principle or dogma?
These are all crucial questions that may play a greater role in the direction of political debate than whether Rudd or Abbott is prime minister.
And there is a final issue: do the Greens settle for being a third force taking over the balance of power in the Senate, or do they aim higher and seriously target lower house seats with the aim of rising to become a potential coalition partner in a future (likely Labor) government? This final point of course is unlikely, but the coalition between the Conservatives and the Left-leaning Liberal Democrats in Britain tells us anything is possible.
Brown has been the heart and soul of the Greens since he was elected to the Senate in 1996. Some say he has been the spiritual leader of the green movement in Australia more generally since his involvement in the Franklin River blockade in 1982 and his subsequent entry into Tasmanian state politics a year later.
But at 65, Brown won’t be around forever, and the timing of his exit from public life risks the electoral viability of his party, even if it is on the ascendant.
For my honours dissertation I examined the electoral viability of the Australian Democrats, and one thing I discovered (rather obvious in hindsight) is that Senate-based minor parties cannot survive two consecutive poor electoral performances.
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Of greater immediate significance than the role the Greens may play in an election aftermath is the role they are likely to play in an election campaign. The indications are that the Greens intend to avoid directing preferences: a deliberate play to capture votes from disaffected right and left-wingers. That will be a blow to Labor, accustomed to being rewarded with Greens preferences in the lower house in return for the Greens winning Labor preferences in the Senate.
And of course Labor’s decision to dump its emissions trading scheme is likely to make some of its inner-city seats vulnerable to a Greens campaign for lower house representation. Most such examples will result in no more than scares, but Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner is in real jeopardy in his seat of Melbourne, and were Labor to lose him from its economic team, the effect would be profoundly felt.
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