The obvious precedent that comes to mind is 1998, when Liberal and Labor parties in Tasmania combined to reduce the size of the house of assembly, so as to increase the quota for election with the intention of wiping out the Greens. It didn’t work: the Greens still won a seat, their vote dropped only slightly, and twelve years later they’re back to five seats and more than double their pre-1998 vote.
And the Victorian Liberal Party hasn’t even got the benefit of bipartisan agreement. Instead of joining with Labor to shaft the Greens, they’re trying to do it on their own, while the Greens have the benefit of a better than ever preference flow from the ALP. What on earth were they thinking?
Perhaps the Liberals have started to believe what Labor’s spin doctors have been telling them, that the Greens are only a factor in Labor seats. Perhaps they believe the News Ltd line that the Greens are a threat to western civilisation and so preferencing against them will be popular in the suburbs. Or perhaps (as I suggested last time something like this happened) they were just throwing a temper tantrum.
On the first possibility, the Liberals risk scoring an own goal. In reality, Greens strength is spread all around the inner suburbs; of the 24 seats with the strongest Green vote in 2006, a third are already Liberal-held (with a couple more likely to join them this time). Without Liberal preferences, the Greens will have to stop thinking about seats like Footscray, Preston and Williamstown; instead they will probably put more work into Caulfield, Hawthorn and Kew. That could give the Liberals some anxious moments in 2014.
As to the second motive, it may be true that the very mention of the Greens will make outer-suburban and country voters rally to the Liberal flag. This seems to be an article of faith among many on the Liberal right, but it’s at best an unproven thesis — the Tasmanian experience is certainly not encouraging. And many voters who feel that way about the Greens are probably none too keen on the Labor Party either, so they might not appreciate the idea of Labor cabinet ministers being rescued by Liberal preferences.
Which leaves us with the idea that the Liberals are just acting in a fit of pique. If so, this may not be such a bad time to do it. Unlike 2006, when Liberal preferences almost gifted Labor control of the legislative council, there is not much at stake here that the Liberals should really care about, so there’s something to be said for taking the opportunity to show the Greens that they can’t be taken for granted.
It’s not even clear that it’s such a big benefit to the ALP. Although the morning papers are repeating the line that Labor is now safe in the inner-city seats, I think a commenter on Antony Green’s blog last night was probably closer to the truth when they suggested that this makes Melbourne and Richmond more rather than less of a contest — with Liberal preferences against them, Labor could have just written those seats off, whereas now (as my colleague William Bowe explains) they will be line-ball.
It remains to be seen whether the Liberals’ decision will hurt the Green primary vote. It might, by reducing the aura of inevitability about their progress. But it seems more likely that it will work to their benefit, as the Greens portray themselves as the only independent voice standing out against the their colluding opponents in the “old parties”.
If the Liberals really thought they could wipe out the Greens, they’ve left it much too late. At some point the two will have to deal with each other, and having vented a bit of their aggression yesterday the Liberals might just find that easier in the future.
Charles’ tone of “righteous indignation” is palatable! How dare those treacherous Liberals deny the Greens their rightful place in the lower house!
Another question though is why would the Libs want Greens to have the balance of power? Antony Green’s assessment that they have made a “principled” decision is correct, and whether or not it is “tactically” the right one or not is irrelevant.
Or it should be to people like the Greens who say they have “principles” Who never tire of attacking the other parties’ “politics as usual”. Except when unprincipled, cynical and manipulative preference decisions benefit them.
Russell – The Libs would benefit from the Greens having the balance of power (as opposed to gifting Labs an outright return to government) because:
1. The Greens could have formed minority government with the Libs – they never ruled this out.
2. Libs and Greens could have combined to pass legislation against the Labs government (if they formed minority government with them instead).
Fair points Dr Strangelove but I think that, in the end, it was a genuinely difficult decision for the Libs to make. However I also think that the Greens were playing their own little game on this- they would have taken Lib preferences and then sided with a minority ALP government.
I suspect that the Libs have been pretty smart in a way- they voters they lose in the inner city are irrelevant and they were never going to pick up preferences to win any seats from the Greens in eastern suburban seats because Green voters tend not to shift preferences on the basis of a ‘How To Vote’ card. Liberal and Labor voters do.
I agree with Russell though that, in essence, the Greens are righteous hypocrites on the issue. They can take Liberal preferences and win with a lower primary vote than the ALP in Melbourne and they are “making history” (witness Adam Bandt); when the ALP does the same (and possibly with a higher primary vote than the Greens, for what it is worth; we’ll see) then it is somehow ‘convergence’ or ‘ideological sameness’. What rubbish!
@Russell – leaving aside the abuse, you’re right that there’s an implicit assumption in what I wrote, namely that the Liberals didn’t make the decision out of principle. I stand by that; I don’t think any political party makes those sort of decisions out of principle. It’s always either something to do with their internal politics, something they can get from the other party, or some calculation of electoral advantage – including, perhaps, the advantage of appearing principled. And that goes for the Greens just as much as any of the others.
Thanks Charles (and I didn’t mean to be abusive, I enjoy your work here, and always read it). It’s going to be fascinating in March where I live (inner west of Sydney). The parties have the “opt out” of not issuing preferences, but will they? In Balmain in 2007, the Libs did that after failing to reach an agreement with the local Greens candidate. They came third and about 75% of their vote was exhausted. But the allocated prefs went 2:1 to the Libs anyway, perhaps reflecting what the inner city “Green heartland” really is.