Greens fight for their place in the Sunshine State

The Greens hope, finally, to win a Senate seat in Queensland, but it may prove surprisingly hard

NORTH of the Tweed is promised land for the Greens. Election after election it was supposed to happen. They would win over Queensland, get a senator up and entrench their position in national politics. Talk about performance anxiety.

So here we go again with Larissa Waters, a 33-year-old environmental lawyer thought the Greens' best chance to break their Queensland hoodoo.

The party arguably arrived in 2007, when Bob Brown's team in Canberra increased to five, delivering official party status to the Greens federally and the staff and resources that come with it.

Tasmania can boast two high-profile Greens senators in Brown and Christine Milne, and Western Australia has two as well. The fifth position is held by South Australia's Sarah Hanson-Young.

NSW has elected a Greens senator in the past and, like Victoria, has Greens in state parliament and local councils. Queensland, though, has none. If Waters makes it to Canberra, she will be the first Greens candidate from that state to hold elected office.

With the Greens surging in the latest Newspoll -- to 12 per cent nationally and 9 per cent in Queensland, against their 2007 election result of 5.6 per cent in that state -- expectations are high that the Greens' Senate roster will lift to seven or more in the next parliament, securing them the balance of power independent of crossbenchers Nick Xenophon and Family First's Steve Fielding, the latter of whom will struggle to be re-elected. A breakthrough win for Waters in Queensland is factored into those calculations.

It's still a big ask, given the Greens' history of disappointment in Queensland and the conservative nature of the local electorate; despite Labor's dominance at state level, the ALP has won a majority of federal seats in the state at only five of the 14 elections since 1972.

"We don't have an upper house, of course, with proportional representation in the state, which most other states do, and that hurts us," Waters says. "So the Senate is the only real opportunity that we have to give those nine, 10 or 12 per cent of Queenslanders who vote Greens to have their voice heard. And, hopefully, this time that's what will happen."

The last two Senate outcomes in Queensland reflected heavy swings to the main parties. In 2004, when John Howard hammered Labor's Mark Latham, four of the six upper house places in play at that half-Senate poll went to the conservatives as the Nationals' Barnaby Joyce scraped home at the expense of Greens candidate Drew Hutton. In 2007, when Waters had her first tilt at the Senate, Labor's Kevin07 campaign swept just about all before it in Rudd's home state, and the Senate result split three-three between Labor and the conservatives.

If Waters's time arrives on August 21, the quotas in Queensland will revert to a more traditional three-two configuration between the conservatives and Labor, favouring the former, and the Greens will take the sixth spot at the expense of the fourth-placed candidate on the combined Liberal-Nationals ticket, sitting Liberal senator Russell Trood.

But if any electorate has been resistant to the middle class radicalism -- as commentator Gerard Henderson dubbed it -- espoused by Greens candidates such as Waters, it is Queensland.

Unlike Brown, for example, who earned his stripes in the Franklin Dam confrontation in Tasmania in the early 1980s, this inner-city hue of green doesn't come with mud on the boots.

Waters, who has taken leave from her job at the Queensland Environmental Defender's office and is juggling campaigning with caring for the 15-month-old daughter she has with partner Brendan O'Malley, a Brisbane journalist, is very much of that ilk. She has never stood in front of a bulldozer and makes no apology for it. "As a lawyer, if I'm arrested that affects my ability to practise," she says. "So I made a decision that my skills are best served helping others and to make sure that they're complying with the the law . . . but I have been on many peaceful public protest rallies."

In any event, the Greens' agenda has moved beyond the environment. One of the economic policies the party is taking to the election in a fortnight is a proposal to cap executive pay.

Waters confirms the figure is $5 million for the chief executives of public companies. If they earn more than that, counting stock options and bonuses, shareholders will be required to assent under the Greens proposal.

Not so populist, at least in Queensland, is their plan for fishing. The professional and recreational sides of the sector for once are united against the Greens' idea to increase sixfold the no-take zones for fish around Australia.

Tony Abbott has seized on the issue -- saying the Coalition would freeze extension of protected marine areas by Labor, including a big new ocean park in the Coral Sea -- and there are signs it is biting in regional marginal seats such as Gladstone-based Flynn, Dawson between Mackay and Townsville, and Townsville-centred Herbert, as well as Brisbane bayside electorates Longman, Petrie and Bowman.

Hundreds attended a rally on the Redcliffe peninsula, in the city's north, last weekend to attack the Greens' plan. Their message was clear: mess with our fishing at your electoral peril.

Waters points out the closure of fisheries in Queensland under the Greens' model would be less than elsewhere because much of the Great Barrier Reef is already covered by no-take zones.

Her spin could come straight out of the Hawker Britton campaign manual. The fishing lobby and the Greens are actually on the same side, she insists. "We both want a long-term sustainable industry with fishing and we think the way that should be done is by looking at the science, which tells us fish need somewhere safe to breed or their stocks run out. They don't just fall out of the air."

Which brings us to the coal industry, Queensland's biggest export earner , which is hoped will lift the state out of unaccustomed economic doldrums. The Greens want a moratorium on new coalmines and also oppose the extraction of coal seam methane gas and underground coal gasification on farmland in the Surat Basin fields, northwest of Brisbane.

This, coupled with the Greens' push to bring forward the end of sand mining on North Stradbroke Island, means Waters risks sounding high-handed when it comes to jobs.

She denies this, of course. On sand mining, she agrees the Greens want Consolidated Rutile's Enterprise mine, employing about 125 people, wound down in five years when, theoretically, it could operate until a 2027 deadline set by Anna Bligh's state government. A second CRL sand mine on Stradbroke, Yarraman, is due to close by 2015; Waters says the Greens are happy with that.

The Enterprise workers may not be so pleased with her plans for them. Waters says there is no reason why they can't be redirected into site rehabilitation or eco-tourism. But what if they like what they are doing now?

"People are happy when they can put food on the table for their families, and I think they're happy living on Stradbroke and we want to make sure that they can still do that, and in a way that's not sabotaging the values of the island long term," she says.

There is ammunition there for the forces mobilising against the Greens. The next two weeks will test them, and Waters.