Now that the state election is over, I feel able to make some observations.
My first observation is that the Greens primary vote only marginally increased to 10.9 per cent, up from 10.7 in 2018. The Greens vote in 2014 was 11.5 per cent. The result was initially described as a “Greenslide by Greens leader, Samantha Ratnam: “Tonight, my friends, I’m so proud to be up here to tell you all that the Greenslide continues”.
As is often the case in politics even a modest increase in the primary vote, if coupled with more advantageous preference flows, can yield significantly more seats in parliament. And so it was with the Greens who ultimately finished with four upper house seats, up from just one.
This will change the nature of negotiations in the Upper House as in most cases the Labor Party will need these four votes of the Greens, perhaps added to the two votes of the new Legalise Cannabis Party to obtain the six votes it needs to pass legislation.
Despite the significant increase in Upper House seats by the Greens, Ms Ratnam’s comments are hard to justify: “Just to be clear, we’ve seen massive swings to the Greens on primary votes” and “the Liberal preference hasn’t made a difference to the outcome”.
Liberal preferences not only assisted the Greens in the Upper House, but also in the one extra seat they achieved, Richmond, in the Lower House. In Richmond the Greens and Labor primary votes were close at 34.66 per cent and 32.81 per cent respectively. These numbers are close to those of 2014, which was the last time the Liberals ran in Richmond. In this year’s election the two-party-preferred vote was 57.2 per cent to 42.8, which looks like an extraordinary swing to the Greens.
But 14 per cent of this 57 per cent came in preferences from the Liberal Party that put Labor last on its how-to-vote cards statewide. Only about 4 per cent went to Labor. If the Liberals had preferenced Labor and these figures were reversed, Labor would have won on a 2PP of Labor 53 per cent and Greens 47 per cent.
Indulge me a little now that the election is over to talk about Northcote, where my daughter, Kat Theophanous was Labor’s candidate. In Northcote the Greens received a thrashing on their primary vote, which dropped almost 10 per cent on their 2018 vote to 30 per cent. Labor’s primary vote held at over 40 per cent.
Yet the Northcote result was nail-bitingly close, with Labor prevailing 50.2 per cent to the Greens’ 49.8. This is because the Greens 30 per cent was bolstered by 8 per cent from the Liberal Party, whereas Labor only received 4 per cent. If this were reversed the 2PP would have been Labor 55 per cent to Greens 45.
One of the first decisions the new Liberal Leader, John Pesutto, must make is whether he wishes to keep electing Greens members to the parliament over Labor members. Such a position runs counter to the very ideology on which the Liberal Party is based.
Ted Baillieu understood this and won an election in part by standing firm against unprincipled schemers in his party and putting the Greens behind Labor in all electorates. Matthew Guy made a huge strategic error in his policy of putting Labor last. It meant Greens were put ahead of Labor but extremists on the Right also were.
I speak to Mr Guy from time to time. On more than one occasion I advised him to take the Baillieu route. But the hard heads within the Liberals who cynically think their party benefits (even if the state does not) from an unstable minority Labor government won the day. The Greens were also propped up by the Victorian Socialists, who passed on about 6 per cent in Northcote and 4 per cent in Richmond to them. The Socialists are well organised in pushing their agenda. But as I said to one Socialist organiser, they should reconsider preferencing the Greens as they have much more in common with Labor, which stands with workers and unions. If the Socialists changed, they could seriously change the electoral map.
But back to the Liberals. If the major objective of the Liberal Party in the election was to prop up the Greens, then they did well. The Liberal tactic was driven by a mistaken view that there was so much anti-Dan feeling that “Put Labor Last” would be the cut-through message. The Labor vote statewide did go down by 5.8 per cent, but not in the seats the Liberals had to win, and Labor increased its majority to 56 seats. The tactic failed for three reasons. First, the anti-Dan feeling was barely a factor in the swing seats, with many voters allowing for the difficult Covid management circumstances Labor faced.
Second, the “Labor last” directive by the Liberal Party put the Greens, but also other extremists on the Left and Right, ahead of Labor. It put ahead the United Australia Party, the Angry Victorians Party, and extreme
Right wingers like Catherine Cumming who suggested the Premier should be turned into “Red Mist”. A slogan I saw defacing many corflutes of Labor members.
Third, the attempt to go “Labor light” in policy terms with no regard to traditional concerns of Liberals around fiscal responsibility or reducing debt meant swinging voters could find no good Liberal defining reasons for voting for the Coalition.
New leader Mr Pesutto needs to take a stand by making it clear the Liberals are not in the business of electing Greens through preferences and will instead develop policies in line with Liberal values to become a viable opposition.
*Theo Theophanous is a commentator and Victorian Labor Minister