The Greens contested every lower house seat and attracted a total of 8% of the votes there, but it remains an extremely difficult challenge to win a seat in the House of Representatives, and growing their Senate presence is likely to remain the focus of efforts at the next election.
Commentators suggested that Green voters were influential in the Labour Party winning a number of seats. (Under Australia’s preferential voting system, electors can choose to vote “1” Green, but if that candidate isn’t elected their vote is transferred on to the second candidate of their choice.)
A spokesman for the party said that it was now well placed to put pressure on the new Labour government of Kevin Rudd, although the situation was complex in the Senate. Mathematically, the government has to rely for passing legislation through the upper house on the Greens, the highly conservative Family First senator and an independent senator all voting with it.
There is, however, one conservative senator, Barnaby Joyce, who has already moved from the left to the right, and might well move back again. “And given that this is a very conservative Labour government, it is not unlikely that on some issues they will do a deal with the Liberals.”
The first priority was, the spokesman said, to push the new prime minister as far as possible on climate change issues. “He used them very cleverly during the election campaign but his policies are still very weak, and Labour is still trying to use the Howard rhetoric suggesting that there is a competition between climate change policy and economic growth.”
The Greens’ climate change spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, has called on the Rudd government not to wait for an international agreement for post-Kyoto, but to start cutting domestic emissions - worldwide among the highest per capita of any country - drastically now.
The party has developed an energy efficiency policy, EASI, which would retrofit all 7.4 million homes in Australia with efficiency measures and if fully implemented would reduce greenhouse emissions by close to 30 million tonnes each year. (The Greens note that most Australian homes are without basic insulation, shading, or efficient lighting and water heating.)
Rudd’s policies on renewables were “pretty solid”, the Greens’ spokesman said, but the Greens were trying to push that further, while also tackling the fact that Labour was largely ignoring the huge potential of energy efficiency. Other key efforts would be fighting plans to expand uranium exports, and the huge pulp mill planned for Tasmania - which will increase Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2 per cent.
Tackling electoral rules that disenfranchise many Australians living overseas was another issue on the Green agenda. Those voters - and it is estimated 1 million of Australia’s 23 million population live overseas - are concentrated in London, and there was a concerted Greens campaign here for the election, with which Green Party of England and Wales members assisted.
This is a busy time for the antipodean Green parties, with the New Zealanders next up for an election; it must be held by November this year. There are also many New Zealand voters in London, and a campaign has been established to get their Green votes - if you would like to help please contact James Shaw jamespeshaw@gmail.com.
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