Minority Labor government with the Greens is a diabolical prospect

The splintering of voter options potentially to include more faith-based and high-profile independents is bad news for Labor and increases the chances of minority government whenever the federal election is held. The big winner is likely to be the Australian Greens, who have been able to peel off former Western Australian Labor senator Fatima Payman and whose political strategy has been to divide the electorate at every opportunity. Anthony Albanese has characterised the resignation of Senator Payman, after she crossed the floor to vote with the Greens on recognising Palestine, as the culmination of a months-long strategy by his political foes. Whether this is true is not the point. It demonstrates the tight situation Labor finds itself in months from an election, with the economic outlook uncertain and the party losing votes across a suite of left-wing causes.

The results of the British election are instructive in terms of what damage a properly organised Muslim party political campaign is able to do. In Britain, The Muslim Vote candidates were successful in taking primary votes from Conservatives, costing the Tories a large number of seats without winning many for themselves. The first-past-the-post voting system in Britain is different to what we have in Australia but the example is clear. As political editor Simon Benson explained on Monday, Labor’s reliance on left-wing preferences to form future governments is becoming ever more profound. Labor’s highest level of primary support among any age group is 35 per cent, with young voters the smallest demographic for the party. Newspoll results show the ALP is losing votes to the Greens, who are campaigning hard on hot-button issues including housing affordability, increasing rental costs, climate change and Gaza. This is leading to calls for Labor to change its rules on crossing the floor and the adoption of an “ethnic lens” for some issues. As a protest party, the Greens are not constrained by having to consider the bigger national interest and issues of economic management, defence and international relations. In government, Labor is finding it much more difficult to deal with the issues it campaigned hardest on from opposition.

Labor’s climate change response is off target and over budget, the housing crisis is getting worse, there are no easy options to rising rents and the Prime Minister missed the opportunity to stamp down hard on rising anti-Semitic tensions immediately following the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 last year. None of these issues would be better addressed by increasing the influence of the Greens. The drift of primary votes away from Labor, particularly in western Sydney, is perhaps one of the reasons, but no justification, for Mr Albanese’s caution on the issue of Palestine. Labor enjoys a big margin and high primary vote in western Sydney seats that could be vulnerable to a Muslim party onslaught. A shift in primary votes would open the way for co-ordinated preference arrangements between the Greens, right-wing parties and religious-based candidates to achieve an oversized impact, certainly in the Senate and possibly in the lower house.

The Muslim Vote website openly declares that a million Muslim votes are capable of forcing the current government into a minority government. The Muslim Vote and Senator Payman have both confirmed they have had talks with political consultant and “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery. The potential for a minority Labor government that relied on the Greens is a diabolical prospect. The Greens were the kiss of death for the Gillard government and they have become only more extreme, with no capacity to deal sensibly with the biggest issues facing the nation. The prospect of a faith-based political movement rooted in the intractable politics of the Middle East adds immeasurably to our current political uncertainty.