 Political Corrections
with Margo Kingston
Hanson Green Power Demolishes Labor
My only wealthy friend was a rusted-on Labor voter before November 10, when she voted Green – after a double take at an extraordinary new alliance in the making when she took a how to vote card from a feral.
Lynton Crosby picked it when he said this election was for conviction politicians and that meant John Howard and Bob Brown. Howard's third term win transformed him into the comfortable and relaxed Prime Minister only victory in the culture wars can bring. The equally elated Greens face a huge cultural aftershock.
Pauline Hanson electrified the disaffected right – Labor and Coalition – and became the biggest obstacle to John Howard keeping power, despite the irony that his and her cultural outlooks were so similar. The debate sparked by Hanson moved both major parties to the right on social/identity issues, climaxing with bipartisan support for the demonisation of boat people and the Pacific solution.
This seismic shift in the norms of mainstream political discourse saw a disenfranchised progressive vote – a mixture of well-off Keatingites and lower-paid humanitarians – hive off to the Greens. The Greens doubled their lower house vote to 5 percent, over the threshold required to score $1.79 a vote in public funding. And it keeps going up – last weekend's Newspoll has them at 7 percent, its highest support level ever, easily outgunning the Democrats, whose vote is down to 5 percent. One Nation is in freefall, down from 4.4 percent on polling day to 3 percent.
Howard has ended One Nation's fragmentation of the Coalition vote (provided he keeps delivering on the fear and loathing). It took a huge policy and principle shift to do that, and on the evidence to date, Labor has no intention of doing the same thing to win back progressives.
This puts Howard in the fantastic political position of being able to keep moving right, throwing new wedges into Labor's voting base as it goes with him.
Unlike One Nation, The Greens have been around for a long time and are related to a European movement, which sees Greens in several European coalition governments. Like One Nation, The Greens lack a professional national infrastructure and is completely volunteer-dependent due to lack of funds. This has also meant the party is seen as concentrating on just a few issues – the environment and increasingly, with an influx of education and health professionals, the protection of public services assets.
So, a grassroots party of young lefty activists, teachers and nurses with a global focus on the environment and human rights and an essentially anti-globalisation, socialist economic agenda, is suddenly supported by many people who support the GST and are true believers in global capitalism.
The Greens have experienced two big spikes in membership – the first after Labor capitulated on boat people, and the second after the election result. What next?
Like One Nation in its prime, The Greens now have lots of active, committed, grass roots members – an asset the majors continue to lose. Unlike One Nation, they have the potential to secure a support group of voters with invaluable specialist expertise in many policy areas.
And unlike One Nation, the culture clash between an incredibly disparate support base could make or break the party. My wealthy friend believes the post-Tampa behaviour of the majors will trigger a rebirth of activism among middle-aged, middle-class progressives. The results of the 1970s and 1980s activists and the current crop looking each other in the eye will decide whether The Greens have benefited from a one-off protest vote or are at last in the main game.
We have entered an era unsuited to the Democrats. Mediating deals with the majors presupposes a significant gap in outlook between the two and a sensible middle ground. In a political climate where the things which divide Australians are more important than those which unite us, they could be squeezed out of play.
The Greens will score about $1.4 million in public funding from the election and have almost certainly won their first Senate spot in the eastern States – NSW. Their first task is to put the cash into creating a professional national party and a Green think tank to fashion a coherent, viable Green economic vision.
All of a sudden, Labor has replaced the Coalition as the Party facing a debilitating fragmentation of its vote.
Such was, and is, the explosive, unpredictable power of the Pauline Hanson phenomenon.
Email: mkingston@mail.fairfax.com.au
Margo's web diary - www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/webdiary/
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