Victorious Bandt takes the stage to a “making history” mantra
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If the weight of the nation’s political future — and a kingmaker role negotiating with three northern independents on banana imports — was weighing on the freshly-elected Member for Melbourne Adam Bandt, he certainly wasn’t showing it last night. The situation that the union-backed Labor nemesis now finds himself in might be a comedown from the lofty proclamations of environmental salvation, but at the Victoria Hotel, before a nest of screaming acolytes, there was little sign of the burden weighing on his shoulders. Bandt, who stole a massive 11% swing from Labor candidate Cath Bowtell, declared victory well before the ABC had confirmed the fall of this 106-year-old ALP fiefdom, a wholly appropriate move given the sense of inevitability had been hovering over the city’s inner north for weeks. The mood for change across booths yesterday was palpable. In 2007, volunteers were relying on a substantial dose of luck to push them across the line, but by 3pm harried conversations made it clear voters were in the mood for change, smashing Labor’s primary vote over the ALP’s cynicism, whose strategists had left locals in limbo in the service of Western Sydney. For Bandt the tipping point had clearly been reached well before he ascended to hotel podium to repeat the party’s “making history” mantra. While Bandt railed about not taking inner-city “values” for granted, comedian and local councillor Trent McCarthy listed the concrete triumphs. The party had doubled their vote in Corio, Holt, Mallee, Murray and Lalor. And they had emerged with the balance of power in the Senate, with Otway farmer Richard Di Natale finally gifted a taxpayer-funded triumph on his eighth tilt for public office. “This is one for the ages, tonight we can say good night to Senator Steve Fielding”, said Di Natale, to rapturous squawking. (“F-ck you Family First…you killed Steve Fielding!” came the approving reply from the gallery.) But the beautiful truth of sticking it up Labor brought the house down: “There is a new light on the hill and it’s powered by renewable energy!” And this, aimed at John Howard: “We don’t want a nation that’s relaxed and comfortable. We want a nation that is bold and courageous!” How had all this happened? Media strategist Damien Lawson wasn’t giving much away, telling Crikey “…the people made this happen and they wanted someone that would represent their values. The success of the campaign is underpinned by the hard work of many many volunteers over many years.” Across town at the Maritime Union of Australia’s salubrious West Melbourne headquarters, the ALP’s Socialist Left faithful watched the carnage with only a hint of surprise. The stench of death was palpable as loyalists clung on to something to give meaning to the last month’s slog. A maudlin Sharan Burrow and a good-natured Bowtell watched on as the gravity of the situation, and the payback owed to the NSW Right, dawned. But if last night’s rout means the assassins of the Right are now finished as a serious persuasive political force, then the triumphant Greens might do well to graft some lessons in compromise as their fallen rivals stagger to the exit. Crikey’s former politics lecturer Robyn Eckersley, a paid-up Greens member and realist par excellence, while jubilant, sounded a note of caution. “The Greens need to think very seriously about what it is that’s fundamental that they really have to stand firm on…politics necessarily involves comprise but it can’t involve comprising the really important things, and we’ve seen that Labor’s done that and they’ve been punished severely.” The most likely person to take on that strategic message doesn’t even sit in the Federal Parliament. Impressive Victorian upper house MP Greg Barber was in the process of running his own booth analysis on what the result might mean for the state election, especially in Melbourne and Richmond where the party must now be rated a massive chance. Electrical Trades Union chief Dean Mighell, who had stumped up $325,000 for the Greens campaign, celebrated with Barber his “good day at the office”, and told Crikey he was “pretty excited”. “What we expect is Adam to take up workers’ rights in the lower house…which neither of the major parties had the will or the tenacity to address.” Mighell was confident of Labor bending the ear of Rob Oakeshott, saying that he had been in favour of a number of progressive policies, including the gross feed-in tariff on solar panels. The chuffed unionist then strode out into the night, no doubt pondering a new future in which his army of cashed-up electricians called the shots. And the Greens’ volunteers, not quite sure how to handle the breakthrough they’d been battling for for years, turned their minds to celebration. |
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15 Comments
Perhaps, the Greens should agree to support the first major party which agrees to allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.
Julia Gillard said she wouldn’t compromise her values and previously promised a Gillard Government would not allow same-sex marriage.
Tony Abbott has not locked himself into opposing a conscience vote on the issue.
If Tony Abbott agrees to a conscience vote, the Labor Party in Opposition would not be led by Julia Gillard (and Wayne Swan of the mining tax would NOT be a safe pair of hands!).
If Gillard retains government by allowing a conscience vote, she will have compromised her stated values and her pre-election vow to the religious right.
Game, set and match for the Greens and for same-sex marriage.
Then, let the horse trading begin on climate change and all of the other hard and expensive issues.
OMG, the Greens won a seat! The one with the GPO in it. The GPO to which urban Greens are tethered to by 3km cords.
One labour lawyer beat another labour lawyer. OMG! The Battle of the Identical CVs!
Who did the Greens beat? -A suicidal ALP run by incestuous cliques and the same CV.
-A Prime Minister, with the same CV. The excruciatingly banal Julia.
A PM, labelled a Leftist, who is a shallow opportunist. “Values”: “hard work” and “ejukation”.
Ask her about Gaza. And Tim’s job.
There’s no Greenslide, just a shift in the Left from the rotten to the religious. the Greens claim this election reflects climate rage- but that only applies to the 3% who shifted from ALP to Greens. Australia-wide, putative Left and Right are now split 50-50. Green climate change policy is fundamentally anti-working class. Huge increases in power and therefore all costs. “There is a new light on the hill and it’s powered by renewable energy!”: moronic. There’s only only one extant “renewable” and that’s useless wind power. The brunt of this huge waste is born first by the inland rural poor and secondly by all consumers. The scale of this fraud will soon dwarf the school building rorts and associated fiascos. By 2020, it will exceed the entire stimulus package.
The Greens in their present form are going nowhere.
Surely ther solar panels on roofs with grid inverters are another extant form of renewable energy, Frank Campbell.
Regardless, you’re forgetting the Greens are watermelons — a lot of disaffected lefties in the Greens as a faction would moderate any supposedly working class punishing policy ideas raised in the Greens.
With 9 seats and the balance of power in the Senate, I beg to differ.
The bitter remarks about labour lawyers don’t really go anywhere. The more the Greens achieve in government with a mix of lower house and upper house representation the more people will be drawn to vote for them as time progresses.
Sean: Solar is a real possibility, but is not yet baseload. Gillard stripped solar to the bone in the campaign. Wind is all they’ve got. Domestic solar is still just that, domestic. Expensive, marginal.
There’s nothing much for renewables R and D. Gillard promised $1 billion (!) to connect dispersed wind turbines to the grid. Their very dispersal causes wind to be even more inefficient through transmission losses.
It’s not just “labour lawyers”, it’s the detachment of the entire political class from empirical reality. They don’t know how anything works, therefore they are easy meat for rorters/Ponzi merchants etc. The “Managed Investment Schemes” saw billions wasted on tax-dodge plantations, for instance. Thousands of mum n’ dad investors ripped off. Real farms and real plantations were subverted by the inevitable gluts in woodchips, grapes etc. Building industry rorters wrecked the well-intentioned stimulus plans re insulation, school buildings, etc. The political class also has not the faintest idea how the electricity grid operates, so they are ready victims for European wind spivs desperate for new suckers after the failure of wind in Europe- now compounded by the removal of subsidies in Europe (without which wind turbines would not exist).
The bureaucracy “advises” the govt., but the bureaucracy is also detached from the real world and is increasingly politicised. What warnings they did issue on the building rorts were late, inadequate and ignored. Seen Garrett lately?
The global warming cult- both sides of it- has (i) empowered the hard Right (ii) caused the neglect of the real environment. The political Greens know little of the real environment: their agenda has degenerated into a narrow religious cult. Real greens still fight for forests etc but are politically marginalised. Look at the Crikey environment blog- in the past year I think there’s only been one piece NOT on AGW (the marine parks item last week).
The cult which swayed Rudd and Turnbull (and cost both their jobs) has ensured that rational action against AGW is decades away.
“don’t wish to hard for what you want cause you might get it…”
So how long before the lower house member Bandt tells the upper house members Browne and Milne that he is the party leader?
@SBH: When the winner of the lower-house stoush make him Minister for the Environment. Don’t laugh.
John said:
I don’t think you can horsetrade in that way. I do think that the starting point for discussion — call it a good faith gesture — should be conscience votes allowed on all matters that do not go to the integrity of macro- or micro-economic policy. It is one thing to say that rights attaching to infrastructure investment or taxation ought not be changed on a whim. That has nothing to do with gay marriage or whether one funds school chaplains, or laws about marijuana or the occupation of Afghanistan or the treatment of irregular arrivals.
I am going to write to Windsor, Oakeshott (and Wilkie if he wins) and suggest that they take this view into negotiations. I encourage others to do likewise.
SBH asked:
Well it is said that Bob Brown has another three years in him. That might be a good time, if so. As great an advocate as Bob has been — and I bear him the greatest respect as he more than any other figure is responsible for the good standing the Greens now have — at some point, he was going to have to step back and have emeritus status. It is good that we have a new and articulate advocate on the radar. Along with Milne in the Senate, I can easily see him doing us proud over the coming years.
Not laughing Meski, a tempting proposition all round.
Fran B, don’t be a Pollyana. As for “on all matters that do not go to the integrity of macro- or micro-economic policy” what on earth does that mean?
Frank Campbell ?? Thermal Solar is base load and can store heat (power) in water (steam ) and what about Tidal Power and Wave Power . Just sell your dirty coal shares, Frank . QLD has now a Green’s Senator in Larissa Waters and 9 senators all up and 1.2 + MILLION voters . Not bad considering a small budget and the Pell telling his dumb flock not to vote for the SWEET POISON ?? and Ltd News life time hate of the Greens.
Franky , how many lawyers in the Fiberal team ???? Open both eyes.
SBH asked:
Law not touching taxes and major spending, IR, the RBA …
Everything else is in …
HarryBel…: Yeah Gee Harry, I’m so fucking thick… they must have just slipped my mind…tidal, wave, then there’s hot rocks and…well, a list as long as Shorten’s sustainable swinging member…
Not one of these technologies is anywhere near ready to go. Solar is nearest- and what did Gillard do? Wreck it.
No coal shares Harry. No shares at all. But both sides of gummint celebrate coal expansion- locked in for the next several decades.
Read my comments on Tehan and Henderson, Harry: Lib candidates in the adjacent seats of Wannon and Corangamite: both children of Kennett ministers. One a staffer from Hawthorn (!) now masquerading ludicrously in his ads as a farmer, the other a lawyer.
The political class is a sociological cul-de-sac.
“Well it is said that Bob Brown has another three years in him. That might be a good time, if so. As great an advocate as Bob has been — and I bear him the greatest respect as he more than any other figure is responsible for the good standing the Greens now have — at some point, he was going to have to step back and have emeritus status. It is good that we have a new and articulate advocate on the radar.”
Verily it is said that tossers abound this season, milord…
SBH: “So how long before the lower house member Bandt tells the upper house members Browne and Milne that he is the party leader?”
MESKI: “When the winner of the lower-house stoush make him Minister for the Environment. Don’t laugh.”
ANDREW CROOK: “If the weight of the nation’s political future — and a kingmaker role negotiating with three northern independents on banana imports — was weighing on the freshly-elected Member for Melbourne Adam Bandt, he certainly wasn’t showing it last night.”
Meski, I’m laughing. SBH, never.
Andrew Crook, the reason Bandt didn’t show it is because he doesn’t understand it. He declared for Labor so fast, they know they have him where they want him and they don’t have to concede a thing. Not even a timetable for carbon policy, let alone a portfolio. All that balance power, and he’s blown it before the full results are even counted.
It’s now left to the independents including Tony Crook — all from the right — to make the major parties understand that their best so far has not been good enough.
Frank Campbell doesn’t understand the nature of the Greens vote. Australia-wide two million people voted Greens, many perhaps most of them in the inner suburbs of capital cities but many also in the regions. Every political grouping has geographic and demographic concentrations of support. No surprise and absolutely no interest in the fact that this also applies to The Greens. Poor Frank also needs to update his knowledge of renewable energy technologies and their capacity to contribute to base load energy requirements. Solar and wind already sucessfully integrated into baseload energy provision widely around the world. Geothermal is a mature technology which has been successfully utilized in many parts of the world. Australia has particular problems the solutions of which are not yet demonstrated by virtue of the depth of the energy deposits but this is likely to be completed within the short term. For a credible if ambitious plan to transition to completely renewable power generation by 2020 I recommend the first part of the Zero Carbon Australia energy plan which you can download from the net. Completely agree that both major parties have tried to ignore climate change and are wedded to a fossil fuel future but the shock-waves of this Federal election and (hopefully) those from the imminent State elections have the potential to create rapid change in this situation. Take heart Frank, bring yourself up to date but above all get active. We’ll only get the change we need when the perceived threat from the electorate outweighs that from the industry lobbies.
As a Green voter (up to now) I do understand the nature of both the Greens as a party and their vote. Note Douglas that it’s us in the ‘regions” who are getting very pissed off by the direction the party is taking.
As for “Solar and wind already sucessfully integrated into baseload energy provision widely around the world”, see Don Watson if your weasel words persist: solar is in trivial quantities anywhere and wind is now recognised as a colossal waste of capital in Europe. that’s why the spivs are here in provincial Australia. Turbine-saturated Denmark (wind was “a terribly expensive mistake” according to the chair of the energy committee of the Danish parlt.) dumps most of its useless wind at peppercorn rates into the eurogrid, while GG emissions have increased, thanks to coal-fired additions. Idiocy.
“successfully integrated”? Pure weasel.
Your reading of the election is wishful thinking: Abbot’s almost there, as I predicted on Crikey last December. Disgusted ALP voters have (3%) voted Green, but overall the election is bad news both for the AGW cult, rational AGW action and above all for the real environment. There are now 4 ex-National independents (inc Cook, WA) raving about killing marine parks, expanding logging etc etc. One Melb GPO Green vs 4 feral Nats.