Finally, Green-Bashing Goes Viral
On Sunday we had the sight of Michael Kroger (Liberal), Cassandra Wilkinson (sensible Labor) and Andrew Bolt (well, Bolt-ish) all agreeing that the ALP should write off inner-urban seats, stop pandering to the Green mindset, and start thinking about people who can’t afford to summer in Tuscany.
Tony Maher of the CFMEU is having a go. Paul Howes, fresh from attacking NIMBYs in Rozelle on behalf of Benny Elias and Rozelle Village, calls the Greens the Left’s One Nation. John Robertson in NSW and Daniel Andrews in Victoria are piling on.
What does it all mean?
Much as I’d like to believe it’s a Damascean conversion to Wilkinson-like rationality from the ALP’s hard nuts, I fear it is little more than electoral manoeuvring. Will they push out the hard left and accept the loss of Balmain and Marrickville as Wilkinson suggests, all for the sake of re-connecting with middle Australia?
They might try. But in doing so they’d lose a large part of their activists and energy base. The current ALP can’t play the competent, get-things-done card and won’t be able to for a generation. They can’t play the equity card because people are awake to how much damage they have done to lower socio-economic groups over the past decades, primarily through Green and social engineering, but also through lousy economic, public service delivery and development policy.
And they can’t play the character card, because, ahem, laughter isn’t necessarily a vote-catcher.
An ALP without its nutty left would be a collection of whatever-it-takes careerists, union hacks and a couple of gadflies banging their heads against politics-over-policy prejudices.
But as writers on the Centre-Right tend to do, I’m quite happy offering advice to the ALP. Do giveaway Marrickville, Balmain and Melbourne. Write off the green moralising, stop pandering to well-fed senior public servants and Fairfax employees, and the country will thank you for it. Put them last on the how-to-vote and I’ll be fighting for the Liberals to do the same.
It might split your movement in two, you might find yourselves becoming Liberal-lite and being locked out by the Liberal’s equivalent of Hawke-Keating, but you’d be doing the country a favour.
If not for the long-suffering sensibles in the Inner West.
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I seem to recall giving my own gratuitous advice to the Labor Party in Balmain before the 2011 State election. After sensing Verity was “over it” ( I think accurately) I suggested they not stand, and let the Greens and Libs slug it out… Needless to say, no one gave a stuff what I thought, but based on the 2010 Fed numbers, I calculated that Labor preferences would only elect a candidate from a party that despised them.
That’s exactly the way it turned out too. What I didn’t do is speculate on the results of such a contest.
A pity the Bolter on Sunday was so intent on the being Mr Megaphone (he can’t help himself, i guess), cos I would really like to know what Cass reckoned the result would be in Balmain or Marrickville
Any thoughts, JF?
Well, there is the partisan view and the one I take. Gotta be honest about the Balmain electorate. Even though the Libs won the first preference vote quite clearly it was still a 60+% left wing primary vote.
It was close because under the NSW system there was preference leakage. If it were Lib-Greens head-to-head in 2011, it’d still be a Greens win, and easily.
Now, and in 3 years time, it wouldn’t be quite so easy. If Labor walks away from the loony left and leaves a choice between a practical, moderate Centre-Right Liberal and the Greens in 3 years, it’ll be interesting. Worth another run, even, do you think Usual Suspie?
Provided its a 3-way split you do stand a chance Balmain in 2015. Such scenarios are unpredictable though – who could have guessed the late entry of that “independent†last time and her bizarre motives? The ALP fantastically stupid HTV card trickery? It was all brilliantly entertaining, and probably will be again. Although strangely Malcolm MacKerras, speaking on ABC702 radio earlier this week, singled out Balmain as the one seat the Greens could keep – because of Jamie Parker’s “personal following†(his words).
Odd how often I hear that, from analysts who are a long way away and have no direct knowledge of the electorate, or personally meet our odd MP. On the ground – at least amongst the people I mix with (mostly local business and strangely, even some Greens voters) there is a lot of hostility towards him.
Labor will put up a candidate in 2015, they are so distanced from reality they still believe they have a chance. All they have to do is be more green, more Nimby, more “progressive†than the Greens. It’s a fantasy. They will come last, but they will preference Greens, and that could rule you out.
In the coming Council election, they will get two council spots. I’m doubtful about Rozelle, but they may get 3… The most likely scenario after Sept will be similar to the pre-2008 Council (without the indies) Which raises the possibility – if Lib and Lab got together, the Greens could be sidelined.
On the bigger question of the current Labor-Greens spat – a divorce was always inevitable, right from the day the PM signed her own fate away at that weird ceremony with Brown, Bandt and Milne, the very people who despise Labor and all it stands for. People who have vowed to replace Labor. I’m still amazed at how stupid that was, though of course I shouldn’t be by hubris and ambition in politics.
Here MacKerras is right. In the Oz today, “the Greens Are the best gift the Coalition has ever had.â€
Liberal preferences put Bandt into Melbourne, he is there for a reason. It’s the same reason the Libs are not standing in the Melbourne state seat next week – gifting it to the Greens.
So finally James, for what its worth (nothing!) my advice your party in Balmain and Grayndler: Don’t stand a candidate.
“Odd how often I hear that, from analysts who are a long way away and have no direct knowledge of the electorate “. I wrote that above…. This comes from The Australian’s senior political writer Troy Bramston today:
“There is another danger. The Greens have only won seats from Labor when they have secured Liberal Party preferences. This was the case in the NSW seat of Balmain and the federal seat of Melbourne.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/hollow-victory-when-the-count-is-done/story-fnbcok0h-1226432233127
Errr… no. Not exactly.. not in Balmain. But then he arrives at the same conclusion I did:
“But with Labor so catastrophically unpopular, if the Liberals do not field candidates in federal Labor seats such as Grayndler, Sydney, Batman, Melbourne Ports, Brisbane and Fremantle, they are also at risk of being lost to the Greens.”
At last, a plan.