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| Governing with the Greens, The State of the Left, 5 July 2012 |
| By David Hetherington, Per Capita Executive Director | |
The positioning of the Greens is making a divisive mark on Australian politics as the Gillard government’s new carbon tax takes effect
In midwinter, Australian politics often becomes a phoney war. The cudgels of political battle are set aside as Parliament rises for its long winter break and politicians depart for study tours in sunnier climes.
Not this year, though. In winter 2012, the political contest is as heated as ever. When Parliament rose in the last week of June, politicians fanned around the country to engage in the defining battle of the current electoral cycle. Labor's carbon tax took effect on July 1, and political strategists on both sides believe it will be the issue that settles the fate of Julia Gillard's Government.
The tax is set at A$23 per ton and is levied on the 500 largest emitters of carbon dioxide. After three years, it will transition to a cap-and-trade scheme with a floating price. The policy is politically charged because, while Ms Gillard committed to a carbon price before the last election, she specifically ruled out a carbon tax.
The semantics matter. The conservative opposition claims the prime minister has broken a clear election promise and cannot be trusted. Ms Gillard points out that her hand was forced by the minority Greens party in the hung Parliament; their demands meant the tax was the only way of delivering on a carbon price.
To date, the opposition's tactics have worked. The carbon tax is a major factor in the Labor government's poor polling. The opposition believes the formal introduction of the tax will cement the government's fate, and has based its electoral strategy on this.
Yet thanks to a generous compensation package, the impact on most households is expected to be minimal. The government hopes that once households discover the tax is hardly punitive, the opposition's scare campaign will fade.
Other issues have contributed to the fraught atmosphere this winter. Two more boats carrying asylum seekers have sunk tragically, again highlighting a problem that bedevils Australian politics, and for which a solution seems as remote as ever.
The fragile carapace of a hung Parliament endures, but the Parliament has proven incapable of dealing with issues of this complexity. After the sinkings, the House of Representatives passed an emergency bill allowing boat arrivals to be processed in Malaysia and Nauru, but the conservatives and Greens combined to overturn this in the Senate.
An even bigger challenge may soon emerge for the Gillard Government. Australia's economy has so far withstood the Great Recession and the eurozone crisis, but commodity prices have fallen, China's growth is slowing and consumer confidence is weak. It may not come to pass, but even a mild slowdown in Australia would do enormous damage to Labor's prospects, since so much of its policy credentials rest on its impressive economic record.
One final thought occurs as we survey the state of the Left in Australia this winter. The second party of the Left, the Greens, has proven hugely influential in this Parliament as its role in the debates on asylum seekers and the carbon tax shows. Yet it is not clear the Greens' influence has delivered better progressive outcomes. By joining with the conservatives to strike down the asylum seeker bill (albeit for different reasons), they've prevented any progress on the issue.
What's more, their charismatic, long-term leader Bob Brown recently announced his retirement, leaving enormous shoes to fill. All this leaves open the question of whether the Greens can continue to build support at the next election. The conventional wisdom has been that they will grow at the expense of Labor. But if voters are not convinced by their recent impact and new leader, they may regress, shifting the landscape in favour of Labor. This will be the critical question on the state of the Australian Left for years to come.
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