A soft Green underbelly

LABOR'S decision to preference the Greens has been struck for one reason -- to obstruct an Abbott government.

Adam Bandt and Christine Milne

LABOR could have destroyed the Greens if it had chosen to preference against them.

Instead, it has made a stunning admission of weakness with the weekend announcement that it will put the Greens second in the Senate in every state except Queensland -- an admission of weakness that will only prolong more than two decades of pain for the party, causing division and damaging its electoral appeal.

The announcement was an admission that Labor's strategists believe they will lose the election and that the best thing they can do is try to get Greens elected to the Senate in the hope that between them they will have the numbers to frustrate an Abbott government's agenda in the upper house.

Things could have been very different.

"Balmain boys don't cry," Neville Wran once famously said. Now Labor is the party of wimps.

GRAPHIC: The Greens' team of 10

It has ducked a fight and backed away from a bold one-two blow strategy that could have all but wiped out the Greens at this election and the next.

Instead, by showing it is chicken it has invited the Greens to keep pushing into its old inner-city heartland, despite the problems this creates for Labor in the suburbs and the handful of regional seats it still holds.

Instead of exploiting the Greens' greatest weakness, Labor has said it will help them overcome it. That weakness is reaching a Senate quota, the magic 14.3 per cent of the vote in the states or 33.3 per cent in the territories that sees a senator elected.

Last election saw the Greens score their highest vote ever. Yet preferences were needed to get most over the line.

The Greens achieved a quota in Tasmania and Victoria.

But they fell short in West Australia, where they achieved only 90 per cent. In Queensland it was 83 per cent, in South Australia 80 per cent and in NSW, 70 per cent.

The Greens need preferences -- particularly since Newspoll has consistently shown their vote well down on its 2010 levels for much of the past three years.

Labor has come riding to the party's rescue.

Things could have been very different.

Three Greens are up for re-election at the poll: Peter Whish-Wilson in Tasmania, Sarah Hanson-Young in SA and Scott Ludlam in Western Australia.

Hanson-Young is struggling. She and popular local independent Nick Xenophon will battle it out for the state's sixth senate spot. Even with Labor's preference decision, she faces an uphill fight. But a tougher preference play from Labor could have guaranteed her fate, and perhaps also ended Ludlam's career.

The Greens would have been down to seven senators. Some further hardball at the 2016 election -- when six of those seven would face election -- could see their numbers reduced to two or three.

They would become a fringe grouping. Worse, they would lack official party status and the extra staff and resources that brings. They would be emasculated.

Micro parties of the Left simply poll too poorly to be able to offer any assistance of any value to the Greens.

In Victoria, for example, the ticket of veteran anarchist candidate Joseph Toscano scored just 0.001 per cent of a quota at the last election. The Secular Party in NSW won 0.005 per cent. So did the Socialist Alliance in WA.

Groupings like the Sex Party -- whose Fiona Patten, ironically, was pipped at the post for a senate spot from Victoria by the Democratic Labour Party's John Madigan -- feel they have enough muscle not to need to pander to the Greens and would rather try to strike deals of their own with the majors.

Julian Assange's WikiLeaks Party has infuriated the Greens by preferencing a string of libertarian-inclined parties over them.

And while there are suspicions in some quarters that new micro-parties such as Bullet Train for Australia and the Future Party are "feeder" parties for the Greens -- parties created to push preferences their way -- these are unlikely to make any significant impact.

But instead of being the avenging angel that destroyed the Greens, Labor has suddenly appeared deus ex machina-style as not just a saviour, but as the party that might even increase their representation in the Senate.

Hanson-Young may be doomed, but both Labor and Coalition figures believe the Green-ALP deal has saved Ludlam.

While it is hard to predict the outcome of the Victorian senate race -- it is the state where efforts to game the outcome have been the most pronounced -- the preference agreement could see the election of a Green. It may even shatter the one-all Labor-Liberal grip on the two Senate seats in the ACT and see the Greens' Simon Sheikh elected at the expense of Liberal Zed Seselja.

As a result of the deal, the Greens could increase their representation.

As recently as last week, when a move to preference against the Greens appeared to be gaining momentum, one influential figure from the Labor Right told The Australian, "The hunters have become the hunted."

Yesterday, opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne mocked these sorts of line. "The Labor Party and the Greens would like people, during an election campaign, to believe that they're like the cobra and the mongoose of politics," he told Channel 10's The Bolt Report.

"Actually, they're more like the horse and the cart," he continued. "It's just that no one knows which one is the horse, and which one is the cart. Labor and the Greens are inextricably linked, and their announcement this weekend that they will preference each other just confirms their cosy relationship."

Then came the killer lines. "Labor would rather link up with a party that doesn't support a modern economy, that opposes forestry, opposes sugar, opposes mining, opposes manufacturing. The Greens will do to Australia what they've done to Tasmania, and Labor is prepared to allow that to happen, by preferencing the Greens in exchange for their votes."

The Labor-Greens deal has left senior figures in both parties amazed.

The Coalition cannot believe its luck. After senior figures such as Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's line, "Every time the Greens party has been in a position of running something, of actually being able to exercise political power, they've been found wanting"; and Treasurer Chris Bowen's claim, "I think their public policy approach has been, frankly, naive", the opposition now has yet another claim of Labor inconsistency and decision-making on the run.

Many in the Labor Right are incensed. They believe that rather than stopping more than two decades of bleeding, the party will continue to hemorrhage votes.

One senior figure who wished to remain anonymous went back to the battles over tactics ahead of the 1990 poll. "There was a debate with Richo arguing we should pursue green preferences. Peter Walsh argued against."

Graham Richardson won the day and Bob Hawke won the election, but as the source says, Labor now needs to chase the preferences from protest parties rather than rely on its own strength.

"Richo has been proven wrong and Walsh has been proved correct," the source says.

Labor figures point to the game of footsies between the Liberals and the Greens in state seats in inner Melbourne over the past decade. The Greens made significant inroads into Labor territory in 2002.

"In 2006 they were going to win a swag of seats and did a preference deal with the Libs and we exposed them for that and kicked the shit out of them in The Age," one says. "It wiped 25 per cent off their primary vote."

The unlikely allegiance between the Liberals and the Greens saw Adam Bandt win the federal seat of Melbourne in 2010 with Liberal preferences, but just three months after that Liberal leader Ted Baillieu unexpectedly won a state poll after declaring his party would not preference the Greens.

"The minute you say I'm not preferencing them, there's a percentage of the vote that says 'beauty I'm voting for you'," one Labor figure said.

"Ultimately 89 or 90 per cent of people vote for someone other than the Greens. If you say you're putting them last you're going with the vast majority of the public's view of them. Abbott has clearly learnt that lesson and he is copying Ted's strategy. He has decided there is an electoral advantage in it."

Back in May, then-treasurer Wayne Swan's former chief of staff Jim Chalmers described the severing of the Labor-Greens alliance as "a real blessing".

Chalmers said it would assist Labor candidates "in the city where the Greens threaten to pinch the most votes from us and in the suburbs where the Greens seem most threatening to voters". He warned the Greens "scare the bejesus" out of electors in Labor's heartland.

Labor has attempted to say that the Greens have been inflexible and refused to negotiate. Instead, it has indulged them with projects with massive price tags and equally huge risks, such as the $13 billion for renewable energy projects negotiated as part of the carbon tax.

With the preference deal, Labor has again linked its fate inexorably with the Greens -- despite all their experiences of the past three years.

As long ago as her March 2011 Don Dunstan Foundation speech Julia Gillard declared, "The Greens are not a party of government and have no tradition of striking the balance required to deliver major reform."

Yet this is the bunch Labor has thrown its lot in with.

The preference deal will embolden the Greens in the inner-city seats that were once solid Labor territory.

This will damage the party's Left. It will scare voters in the suburbs and regions, creating more work for the Right. It will draw primary votes away from Labor in the Senate and continue its dependency on preferences in the House of Representatives.

It weakens the party as a force. It further confuses its already muddled identity. The preference deal will push the political agenda leftward, away from the mainstream.

It is catastrophic for Labor, in both the short and long term.

It has been struck for one reason -- to obstruct an Abbott government in the Senate.

"Australia is too open and positive a nation to retreat into a tight little ball of negativity," the Prime Minister said when announcing the election date just 15 days ago.

Not so, it seems, his party.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: JOE KELLY