By Ben Schneiders
THE Greens have received their largest-ever political donation with a disaffected Victorian blue-collar union giving $325,000 to help the party win the seat of Melbourne and its first Victorian Senate spot.
The Electrical Trades Union's Victorian branch - which until last month was affiliated with Labor - recently gave $125,000 to the campaign to elect Greens candidate Adam Bandt in the marginal seat of Melbourne.
A further $200,000 has been donated to help Richard Di Natale become the first Greens senator for Victoria.
The donation dwarfs previous amounts given to the Greens - in 2007-08 its national office declared total donations of just $170,000 - and comes as the party has won support from other blue-collar unions. It is believed the Victorian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has donated about $50,000 to the Greens' Senate campaign.
ETU state secretary Dean Mighell said the support was due to the Greens' better industrial relations policies and their strong support for abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission.
''The only party that is on the side of our members is the Greens. They have an absolute commitment to abolish the ABCC and restore workers' rights,'' he said.
Mr Mighell said his union would make small donations to the marginal-seat campaigns of Labor's Mike Symon in Deakin and Darren Cheeseman in Corangamite. In the 2007 election campaign, the ETU spent hundreds of thousands to get those two candidates elected.
The donation to Mr Bandt, who has done work for the ETU as a lawyer, sees the union oppose former ACTU senior industrial officer Cath Bowtell, who is the Labor candidate for Melbourne.
Mr Mighell said he ''liked and respected'' Ms Bowtell but ''at the end of the day she will have to toe the Labor line''.
But Australian Services Union assistant national secretary Linda White said Ms Bowtell had broad support from left and right unions. She said Ms Bowtell was a better candidate who understood issues such as social inclusion and ''embodies great Labor progressive values''.
Ms Bowtell said she was grateful for the support she had received from the Melbourne community, Labor Party members, unions and a range of groups including Labor law firms.
Mr Di Natale said the donation to the Greens was ''a sign that there are unions that understand our policy on industrial relations, in particular the abolition of the ABCC, along with our strong support for the renewable energy sector, is in the interests of unions like the ETU''.
With the Greens likely to hold the balance of power in the Senate, the Master Builders Association of Victoria is spending about $100,000 on advertisements in Victorian marginal seats warning about the Greens' economic policies and their promise to abolish the ABCC.
Master Builders spokesman Asher Judah said they were running a ''Greens policy awareness'' campaign as builders were concerned about the long-term viability of their industry.
Mr Judah said the CFMEU's support for the Greens was bizarre as their policies would put its members in the dole queue.
''The Greens want to ban logging, end coal mining and shut down all of Australia's coal-fire power stations,'' he said.
The Greens' opposition to the ABCC has appealed to some unions, which are angry about Labor's failure to abolish the watchdog and its controversial interrogation powers.
Instead, Labor has tried to replace it with a new industry regulator with watered-down fines and other powers while keeping a version of the interrogation powers.