In an era of declining support for the major parties, Labor must reconcile with the Greens
The Albanese Labor government has hit the ground running this week, holding crisis energy talks with state and territory ministers and bringing the Murugappan family home to Biloela. Perhaps the more apt metaphor is that it’s picking off some of the low-hanging fruit left by a Coalition administration that was committed, in the end, to nothing except nastiness.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has claimed a mandate for Labor’s policies. Mandates make sense in two-party systems, but Labor no longer attracts half the nation’s vote. Its primary vote has now dropped below a third, and the proportion of us voting for someone other than the two major parties is now more than 31 per cent.
Albanese’s stirring speech on election night perhaps distracted from the fact that his wounded Labor Party was still limping its way into government. And as the count dragged on, we could almost see the true believers frantically hauling up the drawbridge behind them to prevent hordes of Greens and “teal” independents surging in. Labor managed it, in the end. But only just.
The low-hanging fruit will soon make way for some thorny branches. Labor can’t rely on Peter Dutton’s Trumpesque Coalition to pass its bills in the Senate, so it will need the support of the Greens, who have 12 seats – the most the party has ever had – and effective control of the crossbench. Labor would then need just one additional vote, and independent candidate David Pocock – former openside flanker for the Wallabies – is likely to provide it.
The Greens aren’t inside the citadel of government, but they’re in a position to hold siege. Even the early, relatively easy pickings contain kernels of discord: Labor and the Greens have very different policies on energy and refugees. Today, Albanese is already batting away calls to provide support to low-income earners, citing the $1 trillion national debt.
The Greens will say there’s a way through. A week before the election, when they were hopeful of being in the balance of power in a minority Labor government, Adam Bandt issued seven policy demands. It’s instructive to assess Labor’s position on them. No new fossil fuels? Not quite. Expanding Medicare to include dental and mental health? No. Building one million affordable homes, and improved renters’ rights? No. Free childcare? No. Cancelling student debt? No. Lifting income support? No. The only demand that Albanese signed up to, in the end, was committing to the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The Greens costed these policies at $173 billion over four years, and would have paid for them by way of increased taxes on super profits and billionaires, and by ending the gigantic subsidies for fossil-fuel companies. Labor, meanwhile, campaigned on the need to reduce taxes, implicitly accepting the Coalition’s outdated formula: taxes bad, spending bad.
Social democratic parties, with their roots in the labour movement, have made way nearly everywhere for parties of the environmental movement. The inevitable disputes centred on resource industries – especially mining and forestry – have exposed the divisions. The challenge now is to reconcile those movements and their parliamentary expressions. Elsewhere, there are signs that this is happening. In New Zealand, Labour (then in Opposition) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Greens before the 2017 election – and it delivered Jacinda Ardern a minority government. And in the ACT, the Greens have consistently supported minority Labor governments since 2008. That’s pushed Labor into more progressive territory. For instance, in August 2020, the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to commit to raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, which is (so far) a policy to which, at a federal level, only the Greens have committed. (Capital territorians are still waiting for this legislation. Meanwhile, Tasmania’s Liberal government this week announced that it will raise the minimum age at which children can be detained to 14.)
Following the election, Albanese deployed all the traditional anti-Greens bluster. Labor hates the Greens, but the fact is that it needs them in this era of declining support for the major parties. If Labor isn’t careful, it risks a kind of impotence in a political culture that demands solutions.
Listen to The Politics Podcast, with Rachel Withers
GOOD OPINION
Independence day
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“It’s not there to accept instructions from the government of the day, it’s there to be independent.”
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, who says the government aims to deliver a national anti-corruption watchdog by the middle of next year, points out what independent means.
|
|
| |
|
BAD OPINION
Share the blame
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
“Politics has ruined national interest energy policy in Australia over the past 15 years. This applies at all levels – federal and state, Labor, Coalition and Greens – without exemption.”
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Editor-at-large Paul Kelly believes the blame for the parlous state of Australian energy and climate policies, which have been mismanaged and obstructed by the Coalition since at least the Abbott era, should be shared equally.
|
|
| |
|
7am Podcast
Students are paying for Uni. Teachers are marking for free.
|
|
|
|
| |
|
University students don’t read detailed feedback, so what’s the point in paying academics to give it? That’s the position of one of Australia’s most prestigious universities. Now, staff are striking and battlelines are being drawn in one of the biggest industrial disputes in the history of the university sector. So is there an end in sight to the crisis in universities? Today, Rick Morton on the battle for the soul of a university.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
The approximate cost of a single lettuce, after the price of some fresh produce more than doubled in recent weeks. Wholesalers say that the price hike is set to continue for months.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
THE policy
NDIA chief departs
|
|
|
|
| |
|
National Disability Insurance Agency chief executive Martin Hoffman will step down on July 2, as the Albanese government prepares to overhaul the NDIS.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
Russell Marks
Russell Marks is a lawyer and an adjunct research fellow at La Trobe University. He is the author of Crime and Punishment: Offenders and Victims in a Broken Justice System (Black Inc., 2015).
