Never won an election, but won every battle he fought
A little-remarked upon aspect of this most recent Australian federal election has been the performance of the Greens. It’s not surprising that the media don’t report on the Greens’ results, since they hate the Greens and they can’t take them seriously as a party, but it is a little disappointing that they haven’t commented on the Greens’ performance in this particular election, since in many ways the last three years have seen their coming of age as a party, and this election presents strong evidence that they are a mature and robust member of the electoral mainstream.
By way of comparison, let’s consider the Australian Democrats, who in 1999 passed the legislation for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) through the Senate, in support of the Liberal government of the time. This decision was made under the leadership of Meg Lees, who had taken the position in 1997 just before the 1998 election, and was determined to stamp out the Democrats as a responsible party of the mainstream. The GST was extremely unpopular, and in the 2001 election the party lost 12% of its vote and one senator. At the following election the Australian electorate took them out the back and quietly shot them, as the saying goes, and now they no longer exist as a party. Basically, the party had shackled itself to an unpopular government and specifically an unpopular piece of legislation, it was struggling to define itself after the loss of a charismatic leader (Kernot, 1997) and in its flounderings it slowly destroyed itself.
The Greens took found themselves in a similar position in 2010, but in spades: having won a seat in the lower house they explicitly joined a minority government with Labor and passed a very unpopular piece of legislation, the carbon price, and they also experienced the loss of an inspirational and visionary leader – their founder, Bob Brown – just after forming government. So they went to the 2013 electorate shackled to an extremely unpopular government, identified directly with an extremely unpopular policy, and with a leader the electorate didn’t recognize. They suffered a swing against them of about 3.2% (about 25% of their total vote) but they retained their lower house seat with a swing against them of only 0.7%, and gained a Senate seat (they had 9 in 2010 and now have 10). Furthermore, the swing to them in 2010 was 4.0%, so despite their position in the minority government and the unpopular carbon price, they haven’t lost all the gains of the 2010 election. So although the swing against them is not pretty, they are still in a better position than when they went into the previous election (unlike the Democrats in 2001), they have shown themselves able to hold a lower house seat, and they have improved their representation in the Senate. This result arose despite them having been continuously painted as reckless by the major parties and the media, a very strong campaign against them in their lower house seat, the arrival of a new and seriously cashed-up independent party campaigning strongly federally (the PUP), and the Liberals preferencing them last in every state. The Democrats have never faced an electoral landscape as hostile as the Greens, and yet the Greens have survived and gained relative to 2010.
One interpretation of the swing against the Greens is that a proportion of their vote is simply anti-mainstream-parties protest voting, and that once PUP arrived on the scene some of those protesters switched. I think this is only partially true – a large portion of that vote loss is protest against the carbon price and the Greens’ role in minority government. But in this lies the key difference between the Greens and the Democrats. The Democrat rank-and-file largely opposed the GST, and Lees voted for it against the interests of her base. The Greens performed largely in the interests of their base during their period of minority government, and somehow where they voted pragmatically or compromised they have been able to communicate effectively with their voters about this. And most specifically, in exchange for all the compromises of government they won the thing they and most of their supporters most wanted, an effective carbon price. There were other policies they failed to deliver – they wanted the resources tax to be stronger – but by securing a few key gains they managed to convince their voters that they were working for their vision.
In a very well written and thoughtful essay in the Guardian recently Julia Gillard, ex-PM, stated that the most important thing for a political party is to show purpose and to stick with its purpose. For all her and her government’s faults this was a strong and clear principle of her time in office – on the whole she sailed a steady course and didn’t allow policy to be dictated to by polls or fancies. In comparison her predecessor and successor Rudd made policy like a weather vane, pointing whichever way the wind blows. I think the Greens have confirmed the truth of Gillard’s simple principle, and it can be seen in comparison with the Democrats: by sticking with their principles in minority government, explaining clearly to their voters why they do what they do, and not allowing themselves to be governed by flights of fancy or concerns of popularity or media trifles, they have retained their core vote and advanced their agenda. I am confident that the Greens would have been willing to accept electoral destruction in exchange for a sustainable and effective carbon reduction scheme, but they have shown that by sticking to what you believe and acting responsibly and rationally you can make progress in politics. I think this has marked them out as a mature and responsible party in a way that Labor under Rudd definitely was not.
A corollary of this is the possibility that Labor could have done better at the election under Gillard. I still think this could have happened – she might not have won, but I think she would have done no worse. Then at least the ALP could sit in opposition with their heads held high. Sadly, that wasn’t to be. Perhaps it’s time they took some lessons on responsible government from the Greens.
Compromise and Conceit 
September 21, 2013 at 1:08 pm
The Greens have done amazingly well considering the concerted efforts of the two major parties and mainstream media to paint them as the ultra-radical extremist left in order to poison the minds of mainstream voters against them. This election revealed the falsehood of the much used lie that 80% of the Greens’ vote is made up of protest vote.
I have to confess that I find it bizarre that seemingly intelligent people can turn rabid, frothing at the mouth when the subject of the Greens is raised. I live in a rural part of Tasmania where the terms “Greens” and “radical environmentalists” are interchangeable. I vote Greens but I would never admit that publicly here. The true extremism is the intensity of hatred held by “normal people” here towards the Greens. Violence both verbal and physical is a real threat here, such is the level of hatred. Yet what comes out of their mouths is the mindless parroting of the anti-Greens propaganda of the two major parties and the media, rather than anything based on considered thought or personal experience. Sad stuff.
I have to agree with your recent comments about Gillard. I believe history will see her term as PM in a much kinder light than it is seen currently.
September 23, 2013 at 2:33 pm
I’m glad you agree with me David! Overland has an article claiming that the Greens suffered from being shackled to labor but I think it misses a lot of points. It also reports senate votes (which I couldn’t find!), suggesting that the Greens’ vote dropped in the Senate by 30% (4.4 percentage points), but I think this is not the best way to look at Greens votes because they are more volatile than the majors and their changes are driven by changes in attitude towards the major parties: in 2010 their vote in the House increased by 50% (4 percentage points) but I don’t think it would be wise to say that they saw a sudden landslide in approval – it just represents some mixture of protest voting and a desire to see a carbon price implemented. That Overland article also wants to pretend that the 4-5% swing to LDP – driven entirely by Liberal voters getting the wrong box – isn’t important in considering how the electorate voted. There was a 1.9% swing to Liberal in the lower house, but whatever swing we see to them in the Senate needs to be increased the 4-5% who would have voted Liberal but ticked the wrong box. That article also credits the PUP with 2 seats in Queensland and only notes in passing that those seats must have some debt to the party being preferenced by the Greens.
Also, the Greens’ vote can be very volatile in and of itself, changing by 10 – 25% from one election to another. It’s true that this election they saw a huge swing against them but they also saw a historic swing to them in the previous election, in a generally anti-left party environment. If you look at the trend in their vote, their final vote in the 2013 election is consistent with their long-term upward linear trend.
I guess the question is what would have happened to the Greens if they had not been in minority government. Do commentators saying they did badly because of their minority govt membership think that against the backdrop of a big swing away from the left, they would not have seen a swing against them had they not been in the minority govt? That counter-factual needs to be considered, along with the reasons for the huge increase in their vote in 2010. It could be for example that a large proportion of that upswing in 2010 was people voting Green to try and ensure a carbon price; people who otherwise don’t like (or even hate) much of the Greens’ other policies (e.g. same sex marriage and welfare positions). Having got their carbon price, those people would then return to their standard parties, which may have been Liberal.
If the mainstream media and Abbott are to be believed, Gillard never once mentioned that she was going to introduce a carbon price in 2010. Of course this isn’t true – she stated it explicitly in the election campaign – but if as they claim this was not known to anyone, we should expect that those people who thought this was “the great moral challenge of our time” might vote first for a party that was promising such a goal. And, having got what they wanted, they returned to the mainstream parties whose denialism had driven them away in that crucial point in our history. If this is the case, then it can be said that despite being shackled to the ALP, the Greens have held their core voting base intact. That’s a huge achievement. In Germany today we learn that junior parties in Merkel’s coalition have been blown away, not even making the threshold to get into parliament. The next junior partner heading for the chopping block is the UK’s Liberal Democrats, widely tipped to be decimated at the 2015 general election.
I think the Greens have come out of what appears to be a very challenging situation for a minor party having a) achieved their core goals and b) retained their core vote. That’s a huge win.