[Warning: Australian politics] Last weekend there was a State election in Australia, with popular Liberal (for overseas readers: “conservative”) premier Mike Baird up against apparently well-liked Labour (for overseas readers: “liberal”) opposition leader Luke Foley. In the context of a deeply detested federal Liberal government, and a recent crushing defeat for the Liberals in Queensland, this election was being carefully watched for warning signs of the imminent demise of the federal Liberal leader, Tony Abbott. Unfortunately for people who like to draw simple conclusions, and by extension the federal labour party, the swing against the federal Liberal party was small (about 2%) but the swing to the Labour party huge (about 9%). It wasn’t enough for Labour to win government but enough to restore them as a political force (they had previously been wiped out in the state due to rampant corruption and general nastiness[1]).

But for those of us who care about the environment and the future of modern, peaceful, developed human society there was an interesting side story, initially ignored by the media. The Greens, Australia’s environmental party, increased their seats in the lower house by 3-4, depending on the result of late counting, and also their vote share. They increased their vote share in the seat they previously held and stole at least two new seats – at least one from the Nationals, a slowly dying party of rural socialism. But in addition to this, they became the second biggest vote winner in a range of seats – most of which are staunchly conservative voters.

What’s going on here?

There is a lot of debate about this coming out in the national media, and most of it is evidence of high panic. The Telegraph (not to be confused with the British high tory newspaper of the same name – the Aussie New South Wales version is toilet paper) has two articles complaining that inner city Greens voters are too rich to care about environmental issues, and rural Greens voters are a bunch of lazy drug users. The latter story gives a detailed run-down of the economics of the electorate that has voted for a Green candidate, suggesting that the Green has been voted in because the electorate is full of unemployed drug users, but doesn’t really pay any attention to the fact that the electorate has been under the control of the Nationals since 1988. Surely if an electorate has been under the control of one party for nearly 30 years, the unemployment and drug use problems of that electorate are the fault of the 30 year party, not the newly-elected one? Perhaps the election of a new candidate is a sign that the locals don’t want this to continue? Perhaps they want change?

Meanwhile there is new evidence that the Greens have replaced Labour as the party of protest in a range of wealthy suburban seats in the north of Sydney. So now we have a situation where National Party seats are being stolen by Greens in rural Australia, and wealthy Liberal voters are switching to the Greens in preference to Labour. This has led the Australian newspaper (owned by American espionage expert Rupert Murdoch) to refer to the Greens as a “cancer on democracy” (as, obviously, any party that wins at the ballot box must be) and is surely leading to a new round of panic in the offices of Labour and the Liberal party.

What’s going on here?

On the surface it looks like Australians are starting to wake up to the environmental problems Australia faces. The new seats appear to have been won on the back of protests against coal seam gas, which is a sign of classic anti-AGW activism with the power to change seats. However, the increase in votes in wealthy areas might possibly be attributable to NIMBYism (“not in my backyard” politics), and this is certainly the line defenders of wealthy privilege are taking – but it could also be because people in those seats are starting to realize that the Liberals as they are currently composed are a threat to humanity.

Traditionally Australian media outlets have avoided talking about Green successes and trumped apparent Green set-backs, and argued that Greens in power would fail. But the federal Green politician is going well electorally, and now the Greens have significantly increased their state representation. This is a sign that people in Australia are starting to realize that the environment is their key concern, and also that the existing “mainstream” political parties do not serve to improve the wealth of the regions. Of course the Liberals could easily combat this by fielding a candidate for prime minister who recognizes the pre-eminence of global warming and understands the genuinely liberal value of local areas controlling local environmental decisions. I don’t necessarily agree with this idea, but it is naturally liberal and it is not happening because the current Liberal party at both federal and state level is essentially a legislative vehicle for developers. If the Liberals want to fix their electoral challenges and become a genuinely liberal party they need to do two simple things: ditch Tony Abbott, and find a way to destroy the influence of developers on state political parties.

Do that, and the Liberals will hold power for a generation.

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fn1: And would have been wiped out much sooner, except that the religious right wing of the federal party carefully organized a hit job on the moderately liberal state leader and replaced him with a far right christian; during this vicious hit job the party leader attempted to commit suicide, and the current federal Liberal leader joked about his suicide attempt the same day.