Back into the two-party cage?

If the last federal election promised the beginnings of a break from the two-parties-for-capitalism electoral system that has plagued Australian politics for the last century, the March 26 NSW election seems to be a lurch in the other direction.

The Liberal-National Coalition won dominance of the Legislative Assembly and (with small right-wing parties) control of the Legislative Council because a large number of working-class voters punished the Labor party with a 13.5% swing in primary votes.

The Sydney Morning Herald estimated that 623,500 voters deserted the ALP. Most of these voted for the Coalition.

While the Greens vote increased by about 2% in the Legislative Council, they are hoping to gain one extra seat there.

The last spot in the upper house will go to the Greens, ALP candidate and former Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union NSW secretary Andrew Ferguson or Pauline Hanson, the former leader of the racist One Nation Party.

It will come down to preferences. The right-wing parties preferenced each other but while the ALP gave the Greens its second preference in the upper house, the Greens did not reciprocate.

It’s welcome news that the Greens’ Jamie Parker won a tight race in the inner-Sydney electorate of Balmain, defeating Labor’s Verity Firth.

The Greens failed to win Marrickville, which they were tipped by pollsters and the Sportingbet bookmaker to win.

The left-wing independent Gordon Bradbery, a popular Wesley Uniting Church minister who was sacked for his progressive views, came very close to winning the seat of Wollongong. The Socialist Alliance and other left groups in Wollongong supported his campaign.

The Socialist Alliance increased slightly or held its vote. Pip Hinman, its well-recognised candidate in Marrickville, got 1.9% of the vote (compared with 1.6% in the 2007 election).

The Socialist Equality Party also stood James Cogan as an independent in this seat and took 1.3% with the top spot on the ballot paper.



Zane Alcorn, another well-known Socialist Alliance candidate, won 1.7% in Newcastle while Rod Noble, a leader of the Progressive Labour Party, won 3% standing as an independent in the same seat.

Duncan Roden, who ran in the federal election in the same area, won 1.6% in Parramatta. Paola Harvey won 1.4% in Keira (a seat in the Illawarra area). Daicy Olya, Socialist Alliance candidate in Fairfield won 0.7% of the vote.

In the Legislative Council, where the Socialist Alliance won 15,142 votes in 2007, it appearred to be down by 0.15%. Counting won't be complete for a couple of weeks.

The Socialist Alliance used its election campaign to further unify the left. Its Legislative Council ticket included several left independents and several leftists who had just broken from the Labor party.

The Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia also initiated a joint left statement on the elections and CPA members helped out with the Socialist Alliance campaign in western Sydney on polling day.

The critical dynamic of this election was the large number of traditional Labor voters in the working-class deserting straight to the Liberal-National Coalition rather than to the Greens or to left-wing parties.

Many progressive booth workers reported the heart-sinking sight of many working-class voters grabbing just the Liberal how-to-votes and rushing into the polling booth.

Some in the Greens may be thinking that their party needs to abandon some of its more progressive policies to win more votes. In reality, the Greens should be more conscious of working class interests.

The party alienated many working-class people with its embrace of the federal Labor party's regressive carbon pricing scheme (which is to morph into a pollution rights trading scheme). This gave the climate change deniers a free kick.

If the Greens want to win the mass of working people to the fight for serious action on the climate change crisis, they need to champion public investment in renewable energy and public transport, funded by taxes of the big corporations which are ripping out record super profits and which are also the biggest polluters.

Regressive carbon taxes (which operate like the GST to shift the tax burden from the rich to the poor) will not produce the scale and urgency of investment needed. But they will destroy the chance of mobilising the majority against the powerful vested interests that are blocking real action on climate change.

If we want to reverse this lurch back to the two-party system (where the working class alternately punishes and rewards Labor or the Coalition and gets nowhere) the Greens and the left need to reach out more effectively into working-class heartlands.