A week after abandoning its opposition to much of the Albanese government’s agenda, the Adam Bandt-led Greens are now seeking to dictate terms to the government on a formal alliance ahead of the next election. Given the polls keep pointing to a hung parliament as the best possible result for a truly ordinary government, that makes perfect sense.
Equally sensible, from the Labor point of view, is to explicitly reject any agreement with the Greens, and commit to refusing to govern in alliance with them in the event Labor finds itself in a minority.
There are two good reasons, from the government’s perspective. The first is that Bandt has ruled out supporting the Coalition at all after the next election (a position that of course could change should Bandt be replaced by a less divisive leader after the election). If Labor’s position is that Bandt can support Labor or Dutton and it won’t be discussing the matter, it doesn’t leave the Greens with much room for negotiation.
The second reason is that Labor — and Anthony Albanese, who was then leader of the House — has been there, done that with the Greens under Julia Gillard. Bandt says that’s a model of power-sharing. Sure as hell is, just not entirely in the way he thinks.
Sharing power with the Greens led the Gillard-Swan government to deliver a high-quality emissions abatement scheme as a condition of Greens support. It was a good policy outcome for which the Greens under Bob Brown and Christine Milne deserve credit. Except it was also a crown of thorns for Gillard and an important reason — though by no means the only reason, thank you Kevin Rudd — why Labor lost by a landslide to Tony Abbott, who promptly killed the scheme and ushered in what is now 11 years of delay and denial on climate. Swings, as they say, and roundabouts.
What Albanese demonstrated in the Gillard years, however, was an ability to get a big agenda through a hung parliament. You could see him out in Manuka on parliamentary sitting nights, dining with Rob Oakeshott, or in the chamber, pulling aside Tony Windsor, always working to get the numbers. There is literally no-one in Parliament with as much skill and experience at working in minority government than Anthony Albanese.
All the more reason why Labor should be looking to the teals, not the Greens, as its natural partners if it slumps into minority. Teal MPs can deliver sensible, centrist government, more rational policy, greater transparency and real climate action, without the identity politics obsessions or tax-everything-that-moves focus of the Greens. Albanese knows how to get results from working with multiple partners in the House of Representatives.
Committing to work with the teals would also be a signal to the electorate of Albanese’s willingness to work “across the aisle”, while Peter Dutton demonises teal MPs. Out of the past five elections, there’s only been one where a party won more than 77 seats — Tony Abbott in 2013. Clearly the electorate now prefers governments in or hovering near minority. Who would you rather leading the country, Labor could ask — someone who has a track record of achievement in such circumstances, or someone whose default position is vilifying anyone not like him?
There were some interesting reactions online to a recent piece about the Greens, with progressives wondering why Labor just couldn’t get along with the Greens because they’re all really after the same thing. This reminded me of Brian yelling at the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front fighting in the sewers of Pilate’s palace. Politics is a blood sport; the Greens want to destroy and replace Labor; Labor wants to crush the Greens. The stakes are, from the point of view of both, enormous, regardless of whatever intersection of policy goals might exist between the two.
Lamenting that they can’t get along is thus an absurd exercise in singing kumbaya in the middle of a knife fight. Think they should be struggling together? “We are struggling together.”
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