By Dave Riley
BRISBANE — When the ALP lost office in Queensland in the aftermath of the Mundingburra by-election, many local activists were stunned.
The Queensland Greens copped the blame. An early accuser was the West End Neighbourhood News, which targeted Greens' spokesperson and local resident Drew Hutton. Always keen to print Green Party scuttlebutt, the News didn't mince words: "The tragic consequence of the Green Party strategy to 'teach Labor a lesson' is that it has brought about the election of a National Party-led government".
In the inner-urban left ghetto of West End, there is perhaps no greater crime. "We must always remember the treachery of the Greens", stated the paper's February edition, and five months later the furore has still not died down.
In the July 1995 state election, the Greens chose to direct preferences in several seats to the Coalition. How influential this strategy was on the final result is debatable, but Labor probably lost three seats as a consequence of it.
What drew the most interest, however, was Hutton's sudden keenness for the Coalition. In a July 13 article, Courier-Mail journalist Tony Koch resurrected many of Hutton's statements printed by the Courier-Mail before that election, pronouncements that now make embarrassing reading. For instance: "The Coalition is no longer an extreme right-wing party. Have a look at their policies ... you'll find a middle-of-the-road Coalition."
A few days later, also in the Mail's pages, Hutton was justifying the Greens' actions: "The strategic problem faced by the Greens is that Labor governments in recent years have performed poorly on the environment and social justice. People like Koch might believe that, even so, we should give our preferences to Labor because the Coalition would be even worse.
"If that approach is taken", he went on, "Labor does not have to try for Green preferences; they merely have to frighten Green voters with the prospect of a Coalition government. We tried to change that by 'greening up' the Coalition."
What Hutton says is true, but it doesn't solve the strategic problem he describes, especially when "greening up" failed so abysmally to impact on the victors. When, later on, the Mundingburra by-election became decisive as to who would govern Queensland, the leadership of the Greens intervened to ensure that no endorsed Green Party candidate stood.
At issue here are many of the pitfalls of electoral politics. While Hutton now accuses the Coalition of betrayal, the Greens' gullibility was remarkable. Perhaps the Greens were suckered, and maybe they are deserving of our sympathy for being so naive. But what Hutton's anarchist critics in Neighbourhood News didn't emphasise is that the ALP itself delivered Queensland back into the hands of the Nationals. The Greens' attempt to outsmart themselves was merely an agent of this core political reality.
The 1989 state election could have been won "by a drover's dog" given the crisis the National Party suffered in the wake of the Fitzgerald inquiry. All Labor had to do in office was govern better for the people of Queensland than the Nationals. It simply did not. The Goss Labor government's main impact on the state was to begin the process of restructuring Queensland along economic "rationalist" lines, thereby making the Coalition's tasks today that much easier.
However, the Greens have offered no tactical alternative. The party's reliance on electoral politics — who wins or loses on polling day — has proven no solution. Trapped between the major parties in a game variously of brinkmanship and lobbying, the party has fallen on its own sword.
Koch compared the Greens' electoral approach with that of the Queensland Police Union, now the subject of a special inquiry after the union signed a pre-poll agreement with the Coalition. "Perhaps the Greens now consider it would have been more prudent", writes Koch, "had Hutton set out his organisation's wish-list in a signed memorandum of understanding with the Coalition. Hutton ensured the Coalition got the gold mine. His followers just got the shaft." Unkind words indeed, and employed to teach the Greens a lesson.
Despite the bold attempt to assert their independence from the ALP, and regardless of their rhetoric and their occasional half-hearted foray onto the street, the Queensland Greens have sunk into the quagmire that awaits any organisation which chooses to rely on an electoralist rather than a campaigning strategy for its political impact. Given the fallout from their most recent undoing at the hands of the Coalition, the credibility of the Greens as a viable alternative to what's currently on offer in Australian politics is dubious.