Greener political landscape may be slippery

WHILE most attention of late has been firmly fixed on the tightening contest between Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, the rise in support for the Australian Greens (if it holds up until election day) will have a profound effect on politics in this country, not to mention the way the government after the next election goes about its business.

The latest Newspoll allocated the Greens 16 per cent of the vote, a record for the fledgling party. With the demise of the Democrats it is becoming clear the Greens will be the third force in Australian politics for some time.

But there are a number of issues to consider before pencilling in the central role the Greens will play in the years ahead.

What happens when the party's ageing leader, Bob Brown, retires from politics? Will it be able to survive without his charismatic style? Will the Greens gain control of the Senate in their own right after the next election? And will they choose to play a constructive role by negotiating?

Would any relaxation of ideological dogma by the Greens damage their brand the way the Democrats damaged their brand by negotiating the passage of the GST after the 1998 election? And if the Greens don't become more pragmatic, what would that do to political decision-making? Can we afford to watch government decision-making grind to a halt because a third force chooses to stand on principle or dogma?

These are all crucial questions that may play a greater role in the direction of political debate than whether Rudd or Abbott is prime minister.

And there is a final issue: do the Greens settle for being a third force taking over the balance of power in the Senate, or do they aim higher and seriously target lower house seats with the aim of rising to become a potential coalition partner in a future (likely Labor) government? This final point of course is unlikely, but the coalition between the Conservatives and the Left-leaning Liberal Democrats in Britain tells us anything is possible.

Brown has been the heart and soul of the Greens since he was elected to the Senate in 1996. Some say he has been the spiritual leader of the green movement in Australia more generally since his involvement in the Franklin River blockade in 1982 and his subsequent entry into Tasmanian state politics a year later.

But at 65, Brown won't be around forever, and the timing of his exit from public life risks the electoral viability of his party, even if it is on the ascendant.

For my honours dissertation I examined the electoral viability of the Australian Democrats, and one thing I discovered (rather obvious in hindsight) is that Senate-based minor parties cannot survive two consecutive poor electoral performances.

The nature of half-Senate elections is that a Senate party can recover from one poor result to rebuild and come back stronger. But not two, which usually wipes them out altogether and certainly threatens their official party status (if a party holds five or more seats, it gets a huge funding injection by the state).

The key to good electoral performances is quality leadership. It is no coincidence that each time the Democrats went to an election with a low-profile leader (1993 with John Coulter, 2004 with Andrew Bartlett and 2007 with Lyn Allison), they didn't do well.

Looking at the parliamentary team around Brown, while they are all passionate about green issues, none of them is anywhere near capable of filling his shoes.

The Greens have five senators in parliament, but only two of them are up for re-election. Christine Milne in Tasmania should be comfortably returned, while Rachel Siewert will find the going a little harder in Western Australia. Across the rest of the country, opportunities exist to add new senators to the ranks in Victoria, Queensland, NSW and perhaps South Australia as well.

If the Greens win spots in five out of the six states, adding those places to the three senators not up for re-election would surely give them outright control of the balance of power, which would suddenly thrust their policies and approach to government into the headlines in a way that hasn't happened since two WA Greens held the balance of power when Paul Keating was prime minister in the early 1990s. Dee Margetts and Christabel Chamarette's stymieing of Keating's agenda caused him to describe the Senate as "unrepresentative swill".

In Tasmania the Greens entered into an accord with Labor to share power in government, but it soon collapsed because the Greens were unhappy with parts of Labor's forestry policy. We now have a new coalition in Tasmania between the two left-of-centre parties, this time with a promise that they will work more co-operatively. Time will tell.

Of greater immediate significance than the role the Greens may play in an election aftermath is the role they are likely to play in an election campaign. The indications are that the Greens intend to avoid directing preferences: a deliberate play to capture votes from disaffected right and left-wingers. That will be a blow to Labor, accustomed to being rewarded with Greens preferences in the lower house in return for the Greens winning Labor preferences in the Senate.

And of course Labor's decision to dump its emissions trading scheme is likely to make some of its inner-city seats vulnerable to a Greens campaign for lower house representation. Most such examples will result in no more than scares, but Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner is in real jeopardy in his seat of Melbourne, and were Labor to lose him from its economic team, the effect would be profoundly felt.

If the federal Greens win the balance of power in the Senate, they will be called on to reduce their ideological dogma and make deals. That approach by the Democrats caused a split between the will of its parliamentary team, which wished to remain relevant, and its organisational members, who wanted the party to take a principled stand even when doing so stifled government.

The Greens are less likely to deal than Democrats were. But that would mean that the next term of government, whether led by Rudd or Abbott, is going to find governing difficult. We may see a prime ministerial repeat of Keating's attacks on the Senate.

At a time when governments need to react quickly to a volatile international economic environment, a slow-moving Senate could reduce Australia's economic competitiveness.

The political landscape after the next election will look different. How the Greens choose to deal with issues ranging from an emissions trading scheme to the resource super-profits tax will all make for interesting viewing.

The euphoria of winning the next election could quickly make way for difficulties in negotiating with a party not yet ready to be as practical as its bigger counterparts. Victory at the next election could easily turn into a poisoned chalice if Brown decides not to become just another politician.

See Peter van Onselen interview opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb on Sky News's Saturday Agenda at 8.15am today, repeated at 8.30pm. Or view on theaustralian.com.au after the morning broadcast.