New paradigm really means 'good for Libs'

NEW paradigm, what new paradigm?

The Greens struggle to get their vote higher than 10 per cent and they only win lower house seats if they get preferences from the Liberal Party.

Those are the lessons from the Victorian election on Saturday. Anyone who thinks the two-party system in this country is under threat should think again.

The Victorian result put paid to the idea that the rise of the Greens is anything more than the puffing up of a fraction of the electorate who believe in ideas and issues mainstream Australians are less certain about. It has reached its natural high watermark.

What's most telling about what happened in Victoria is that to the extent the Greens do have political influence, by securing the balance of power in upper houses or winning the odd lower house seat in inner-city areas, it is influence the conservatives can put an end to whenever they like. How ironic.

Added to that is the dilemma for Labor moving forward, as Julia Gillard likes to put it. Labor can't know when, or even if, other Liberal divisions will do what Ted Baillieu did by preferencing the Greens after Labor. That means Labor can't assume it will hold inner-city seats where the Greens vote is strongest and focus on key outer metropolitan marginals in case the Liberals change tactics and preference the Greens.

But pandering to the interests of Labor's inner-city elites hardly endears the party to its blue-collar base. This is a conundrum for Labor, and it isn't going away. In fact, comments at the weekend by Penny Wong to the ALP membership in South Australia that she would urge Labor to support gay marriage are only likely to add to the tense divide opening up between those Labor members who want its progressive reputation maintained and those who believe, as union hard man Joe De Bruyn does, there are no votes in gay marriage.

The Greens continue to pose a threat to Labor's Left flank, but not the overall dominance of the two-party system. All that has changed in the new paradigm is that Liberals now realise they will decide when to unleash the Green threat, and the circumstances in which they will.

And most powerfully of all, they now know they can win elections even when they put the Greens last.