Barely two months after the Greens’ best-ever federal election result, the party’s moment of truth has arrived. The choices their MPs, and especially their leader Adam Bandt, make about the Albanian government’s climate change legislation will have ramifications that go far beyond this election term.
How this plays out will affect relations between the ALP and the Greens for years to come. It will have a profound influence on whether parties on the political left can work together. What we don’t know yet is if they want to. Or, if they want to, if they would have the ability or the permission of their supporters to achieve it.
The climate negotiations will have a profound impact on whether the Greens and Labor can work together. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
This is a watershed moment in our politics, at least on the left or “progressive.” It is clear that the Labor primary vote is in decline. In 2007 he came to office with 43.4% of the votes. In May, it won only 32.5% of the vote in the primaries, but still won a two-seat majority in the lower house. The Greens’ vote has been on an upward trend for the past four elections. This year they got 12.2% of the votes in the primaries.
The key question Bandt faces is how far it is in his party’s interests for a Labor government to succeed, particularly if that success includes winning on the totemic and central issue of the fight against climate change. Doesn’t it better suit what you might call their business model for Labor to fail in office so they can pick up more disgruntled older Labor voters and dissuade even greater numbers of younger voters from ever voting? Yes, that sounds cynical. Obviously, Bandt and his party do care about action on climate change.
But consider some recent history. In June last year, he invited the ALP to enter into a power-sharing deal with the Greens and independents. Under the proposal, which he said was necessary because Labor had no chance of winning office in its own right, that grouping would have gone into the 2022 election with a range of Greens policies. These included net zero emissions by 2035, taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and a coal ban from 2030.
Unsurprisingly, Anthony Albanese saw this as electoral poison and rejected it. This came from the most important and influential individual in the history of the Greens, former leader Bob Brown, who said that Labor needed to “get over this idea that it will have a solid majority in the future. He will have to share that with the Greens.” He reaffirmed his long-term aim for the Greens to replace Labor as the main party of the left. However, while Labor expected to be overwhelmed by the Greens, he was obliged to work with them, he said.
Former Greens leader Bob Brown wants the Greens to eventually replace Labor as the party of the left. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer.
If you put yourself in Albanese’s shoes, it’s hard to see it as a bargain. Albanese may once have characterized himself as a man dedicated to fighting the Conservatives, but in his seat of Grayndler, his main opponent in every election is not a Liberal but the Green candidate.
When you consider this background, it’s hard to resist wondering how much of what Bandt and Brown have proposed is the usual stock of minor parties who spend most of their time issuing policy wish lists and playing its basis When you find yourself in this situation, you can forever criticize one or both major parties as inadequate or worse. You can remove them ad infinitum.