Dance with the Greens must surely end for Labor

BOB Brown's resignation should prompt Labor to re-evaluate its relationship with the Greens. At stake is not only the future of a minority Labor government, but perhaps the future of Labor itself.

 The agreement Julia Gillard signed with the Greens after the 2010 election betrayed Labor's core values, angered its supporters and cost it the support of the mainstream voters it needs to stay in government.

"They're killing us in the electorate," one Labor MP said last year. "We were mad to get into bed with them." A senior party official describes the agreement as a "death kiss".

There is a growing view inside Labor that the Greens are Labor's enemy and they should never have been made an alliance partner. Brown's retirement could escalate this internal tension.

The Greens have won several state and federal seats from Labor. They continue to fight each other vigorously at the electorate level.

In addition to losing voters to the Greens, Labor has lost a generation of members and supporters who are now campaigning for the Greens.

This will affect Labor's ability to attract campaigners, candidates and staff in the future. The alliance entrenches Labor's identity crisis.

The inner-city progressive vote that Labor relied upon for decades is being lost to the Greens. Mainstream working- and middle-class voters in the outer-suburbs feel alienated by the alliance.

They prize economic advancement, opportunity and aspiration, whereas the Greens are seen as an opponent of economic prosperity, easing the cost of living and socially conservative values.

Brown says his mission is to destroy Labor and replace it as the party of the Left. He has extracted concessions and advanced his far-left agenda courtesy of the alliance while sticking the knife into Labor. So why is Labor in alliance with the Greens?

Where government is formed, in the House of Representatives, the Greens have only one MP: Adam Bandt. He was always going to support Labor.

Labor gained little from the alliance. The Greens are not afraid to savage government policy in a range of areas: asylum-seekers, live exports, forestry, uranium exports and the mining industry.

The biggest concession the Greens won from Labor was the carbon tax; this alone could destroy the Gillard government.

Many cabinet members, backbench MPs and key Labor officials see the alliance with the Greens as a grave error of judgment that will haunt Labor for years.

So, as Senator Brown bids parliament farewell, Gillard should shake his hand, say thanks, and tear up the agreement with the Greens.