Federal election 2016: Greens squeeze giving Bill the pips

Bill Shorten is being squeezed and the pressure is showing.

So early in this long campaign, the Opposition Leader is starting to sound shrill and frustrated as the Greens attack Labor from the left on social issues and workers’ rights while simultaneously joining the Coalition in a pincer movement on illegal boat arrivals.

What is of real concern for Labor is that its back-room deals on asylum-seekers, party reform and same-sex marriage have been exposed for what they are: no real examination of where Labor stands, no true conviction and an abrogation of the duty of a party losing government to truly examine itself.

There were too many union deals to prop up Shorten’s leadership that now come back to haunt the Labor leader.

It is to Labor’s credit that economic policy development has given it political momentum, but its failure to reassess itself is now giving the Greens and the Liberals headway.

What is remarkable, and no doubt adding to Labor’s frustration, is that the Greens are primarily attacking the ALP, contesting Labor seats and vying for Labor voters.

For the Greens, Labor is the party it sees both as a host and a victim from which it can drain political force like a parasitic fig and strangle into subservience, ultimately to death.

Greens Leader Richard Di Natale treats Liberals as mere background fears as he fights in Labor’s foreground of inner-city Sydney and Melbourne, targeting Labor’s leading old-school Leftie, Anthony Albanese, in Grayndler with policies on “progressive” issues such as same-sex marriage and the safe schools ideology.

At the same time, Greens have wedged Shorten on the workers’ concerns of penalty rates in an appeal to the factory floor, the office and the coffee shop that reaches out to the industrial Right.

From the Right and Left, the value of the Opposition Leader’s deal on offshore processing and “turning back the boats” is being undermined as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull exploit Labor’s failures in government and the Greens foment civil war within the ALP.

So far Dutton is proving the most effective and politically damaging cabinet minister against Labor in the campaign, as he tallies growing ALP dissent, reminds voters about Labor’s failures and gives the Prime Minister a walk-up start.

Turnbull’s own public conviction has increased as the Labor-Greens divisions grow, and he can exploit doubts about offshore processing under a Labor government or a Labor-Greens minority government, and Shorten’s contradictions on penalty rates.