In the immediate aftermath of the last Federal Election, I wrote an article saying Labor needed to temper its hard-left predilections and that, for at least the next two election cycles, the ALP needed to preference the Greens last to ensure its own political survival. That was June 2022. Fast forward two years and not only has Labor fed the crocodile to appease it, but it appears to have started a breeding program within its own ranks.
During this term, the Greens have consistently shown us their true colours - the tree-loving hippies of the Bob Brown era, chaining themselves to bulldozers, are long gone. They have since been replaced by a mish-mash of fringe misfits, who are bound together only by a mutual hatred for Australia’s past and a laser-focused intent on tearing down the social and economic norms that underpin our civilised and functional society. They use words like inclusion, reconciliation and equality as the cute sparkly billboard for division, retribution and “let’s eat the rich”.
Labor have had their political beer goggles on for some time, but the political party they woke up next to the morning after is not the political party they went to bed with the night before. Save for the Gillard era of Labor government, the Greens have been tolerated as a party of protest because they have been largely politically impotent. However, with Labor’s primary vote being squeezed from both sides by the Liberal Party and the Greens respectively, what was once a friends-with-benefits type relationship is now an unhappy marriage where Labor can’t afford the divorce.
We have continued to see the Greens’ entitled absolutism and lack of political pragmatism: it takes place in a fairyland where they have the luxury of promising the world, without ever having to consider the real-world consequences of their impetuous demands. It’s easy to holler about policy change, without so much as brushing past a calculator, when you never have to be accountable to the electorate. There is limitless freedom to engage in the populist art of throwing deep-fried tempeh to your base.
As traditionally Labor inner-city areas are encroached upon by the Greens, Labor is confronted by a crisis of identity and of electoral relevance. While everyday families are concerned with cost-of-living, the Greens and their collaborators are enamoured by irrelevant post-material fluff which the progressive elites can indulge because they don’t have to fret about paying the bills. Equally, as Labor continues to out-left the Greens, its traditionally working-class voters feel abandoned and have increasingly looked to the Liberal Party or other right-wing minor parties to be heard.
It's all come to a head in the last couple of weeks with Labor and the Greens butting heads over housing policy and the inclusion of a climate trigger in Labor’s proposed Nature Positive legislation. And you know the government is getting frustrated when the words “double dissolution trigger” start hitting the press. This is also an internal issue for Labor in the context of a government that is increasingly hostage to its belligerent socialist left faction which the Labor right faction has struggled to curtail.
Not only because of the left’s numbers but also an apparent weakening in the right over the Israel/Gaza issue. The Victorian right has remained committed to supporting Australia’s historically bipartisan position regarding Israel and Palestine. The NSW right however has capitulated to the short-sighted pro-Palestine view of the world in the name of political self-preservation, given the material number of Muslim voters in their Western Sydney seats.
Similarly, Labor’s pursuit of the Voice during 2023, to the exclusion of issues facing everyday Australians, highlights the disconnect between the needs of the electorate and the pet-project of Labor’s ideological left. The lack of policy discipline within Labor will materially impact its ability to produce a relevant and practical legislative platform leading into the next election. Voters burdened by cost-of-living pressures are wondering whether Labor is holding the reins of this economy or whether they’re going to try, yet again, to punt the blame elsewhere.
Few of them are feeling better off than they did two and a half years ago. Regardless, Labor must continue the balancing act between being electable and indulging the whims of the Greens who are desperately dressing up nice-to-haves as need-to-haves. But given Labor’s heavy reliance of Greens preferences, it becomes almost impossible for them to walk their hardline talk insofar as the Greens are concerned.
If Labor was focused on its long-term survival, it would preference the Greens last, giving them a one-way ticket back to political obscurity. However, short-term imperatives, and Albanese’s ingrained “fight the Tories” mentality means that any unshackling from the Greens is unlikely. And while you can ask the crocodile to eat you last, dessert is often the course most savoured.
Caroline Di Russo is a lawyer with 15 years of experience specialising in commercial litigation and corporate insolvency and since February 2023 has been the Liberal Party President in Western Australia.
