A concerned Liberal writes...please don't do it Ted!

Sebastian Tombs explains the dangers of a Liberal-Green preference deal.

Preferences are the bane of Australian election campaigns.  They’re great for democracy in giving voters the fullest possible voice.  But parties and candidates want other parties and candidates to give them their preferences, and parties and candidates need to decide who to give them to.  That leads to all sorts of interesting combinations, permutations and unholy alliances.

The federal election showed the huge power of preferences in our voting system.  There was a Green, Adam Bandt (who looks uncannily like 60s cartoon character Atom Ant), elected in Melbourne with Liberal preferences. Andrew Willkie, that left-leaning ex-Liberal ex-Green, was elected in Denison with Liberal preferences.  National Party preferences overwhelmingly favoured kingmaking rural independents Tony Windsor and Rob “I’ll never be a Trappist monk” Oakeshott.  What was the result of these guided preference flows?  Julia Gillard is prime minister and Tony Abbott isn’t.

The preference game hit hardest in Victoria.  Thanks to the Liberal decision to preference Bandt, Labor lost Melbourne.  But there was no quid pro quo in terms of Green preferences helping embattled Liberals, particular in Corangamite (narrowly failed to regain) and La Trobe (narrowly lost despite having a relatively Green-friendly local member in Jason Wood).  We gave all and got nothing in return.  If we had just held La Trobe with a Greens open preference how-to-vote card, that might have been enough to get us over the line in negotiating the final election result.

Now it’s the turn of the Victorian state election and we’re at the preference game again.  Polling shows that the Greens are doing well enough to seriously threaten Labor in four inner-Melbourne seats, and that Liberal preferences will surely get them over the line and into the Legislative Assembly for the first time.  The Victorian Liberals are more than playing footsie with preference allocation, it seems to be on the verge of inviting the Greens into a one-night stand in the hope that the Greens will favour a Ted Baillieu minority or small-majority government.

It may seem smart tactically to try and seduce the Greens, but strategically it certainly isn’t.  For most grass-root Liberals members, and certainly our National coalition partners, partnering up to these hairy-legged and cloven-hoofed spawn of Beelzebub goes against  everything we say that we stand for: smaller government, lower taxes, free enterprise, individuals know best, and choice.  What’s more, aspiring governments (and especially State governments) focus on practical ways of solving practical problems and running effective services, especially health, education, public safety and transport.  Practical solutions, not ideological fairyland.

Just look by comparison at the Greens’ way out front priorities since grabbing Gillard by the short and curlies – gay marriage and voluntary euthanasia. Personally, I’m not against gay marriage or civil unions, and I think it’s worth having another national ethical conversation about euthanasia, but using the balance of power to push these as pressing issues above all else?  I don’t think so, and I think that Liberals across the philosophical spectrum don’t think so either.  But as Helen Kroger bluntly pointed out in the Melbourne Herald-Sun, this is the sort of agenda we would be signing up to in letting the Greens through the preferential door in Victoria.

As John Howard has said, my enemy’s enemy is not necessarily my friend.  We may have to swallow hard, and risk falling short of winning government to take a stand on principle, but we must fight the siren call of the Greens.  We can remind ourselves that they stand for far more than protecting mighty trees and cute furry critters – the Greens stand for authoritarian, anti-free enterprise, high-taxing socialism.  I would rather have another term of a weakened Brumby Labor government than to have to deal with the Watermelons – green on the outside and deep red on the inside.  If this means that we can’t govern in a hung parliament, so be it.

The Labor marginal seat blitz strategy leaked in today’s Age shows that they’re worried over and above those four latte-belt seats.  Beneath the calm media-managing exterior they are running s***-scared, so much so that they are strategically leaking in week 1 of the campaign to scare their supporters back to the Labor fold.  The Liberals should be emboldened by this – it says that we would better be employed on concentrating our efforts on winning seats of our own than let the parasite Greens ride into real power on the back of Liberal preferences.  And if we do preference the Greens, Labor could get away with arguing to swinging voters that they’re the only sane alternative.

A lesson from British history should also be a warning to us.  In 1906 the UK Liberals ran dead in many Tory seats to give the then-fledgling Labour party a leg-up on the basis that my enemy’s enemy is my friend.  As a result Labour went from a handful of House of Commons seats to over 50, and its future as a party was assured.   So much so that less than 20 years later it formed its first government, and Keir Hardie’s Labour values and Labour’s nationalisation and welfare state agenda dominated the agenda of British politics until Margaret Thatcher came along in the 1980s: and the UK Liberals were all but wiped out.  Sorry to lay it on Ted, but it’s worth a read of that classic book The Strange Death of Liberal England – and I’m happy to lend you mine, but I’m sure David Kemp has one.

If Australian Liberals follow the same path, there is a real chance that we will entrench in power (if not necessarily government) a cadre of activists who will take the agenda of federal and state politics further and further to the Left in formal or de facto Coalition with Labor, so much so that the Liberal party could be marginalised for generations.  What that would do for the party of Menzies and Howard is to ensure that it withers and dies. Maybe not now, nor in the next few years, but die it will slowly and surely.

Sebastian Tombs is a long-term member of the Liberal Party.

[As always, the views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of MH]

Comments

[David]

1.

The Coalition should always preference Labor last. They are the enemy (that is, the rival which has the opportunity and ability to form government).

The Liberals didn't force any concessions out of Labor when they (voluntarily!) agreed with Labor (!) to preference Labor ahead of such parties as Australia First (small bickies).

I don't think the Party administration is too smart about these matters. The Greens are a bigger threat to Labor, it is in Labor's interest to get rid of them, they are dividing and destroying Labor's vote and seat take.

The preferences should be used dispassionately in order to maximise the Coalition's and mininise Labor's seat take - that is all it should be. It should not be a public ribbon of some politically correct value system which rates the parties on an objective scale of merit.

[Clinton Mead]

2.

If Liberal and Labor work together as a coalition in Labor/Green contests, then in the eyes of the public the Greens are the opposition.

This is a great way to move even more voters to the Greens.

[Terry Barnes]

3.

To me John Howard is a wise man. I hope though that Sebastian's right in saying that the leaked Labor planning says they're running scared of majority Coalition government. Party organisation leaks always happen for a purpose in election campaigns...

[Dallasbeaufort]

4.

On the knocker Sebastian, if the liberals sell out private enterprise and the nationals, and that's what is at stake here cuddling up to the greens, which labor is promoting, where will they drown their sorrows? Maybe they will do charity work, to remove that useless guilty stain, in a nothingness retirement or just do the hippy thing and run to the hills for a generation. Or just runaway overseas, which is reminiscent of a previous fall. Just what labor and their greens really want.

[Mark Sharma]

5.

There is only one solution to all this. A new party in direct competition with Greens. May be we can call it "The Blues"!

Coalition politics is now the norm and no 1 party will ever rule Australia again. Labor has an advantage on this as they always benefit from Greens preferences and even if Greens win ahead of Labor they will still side with Labor.

The conservative side has no such "ally". Unless a new 2nd Conservative party is formed this problem will never be solved!

P.S Before anyone say it let me clarify. Nationals only exist in Country areas and CDP & FF are just waste of time! Only a new conservative movement can fix Australia's political problems.

[Martin Snigg]

6.

I'm with the author in believing it to be short sighted and strategically foolish.

The way I see it there are historically significant opportunities for conservatives to permanently distinguish themselves from Greenism - as the federal Coalition did so successfully.

I note Anthony Watts, who runs the most popular science blog in the world, reported yesterday how climate change reporting is becoming journalistic poison http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/04/australias-abc-has-introspection-on-climate-reporting/

Andrew Bolt's documenting of the enormous waste of taxpayer money in Victoria following climate change mania is regular and damning.

The Green's brutal and divisive social policies are those of a demographically dying segment of the population and have placed Victorians under the Western World's worst abortion laws.

The monumental defeat of leftists in the US yesterday was a resounding rejection of climate change ideology and the thinking that gives rise to it.

With leftists so blinded by ideology conservatives simply have to avoid becoming mirror images of blind political expediency to establish themselves as the party of reason, principle and the 21st century.

Surely conservatives can take their lead from events in the US and make us of historically propitious circumstances.

[David]

7.

Whether the Coalition preferences Labor ahead of Greens is irrelevant in establishing its policy credentials on Green issues: BOTH Labor and the Greens believe in the Global Warming swindle, and want to establish political control mechanism to transfer wealth in accordance with their corrupt vision of distributive justice.

The issue of preference distribution should be different from policy formation and credibility.

One could argue that since we don't have a free press we leave ourselves open to opportunistic attacks such as occurred with preferencing or not preferencing One Nation. However, the Greens are Labor's "One Nation" so it doesn't work or apply in this case.

[Aggrieved Liberal]

8.

Dear Ted,

You preference the Greens and the only reason you'll still have my party membership is that I know you'll be gone after the election.

I hope a purge of all Reds in the party finally rids us of "LaborLookalike". We have room for most conservative/libertarians in the party but those whose philosophy shadows the ALP's should swap over.

You underestimate the anger out in Liberal grass roots land my friend. We are not the plaything of the wealthy and connected. We are a team and (unlike ALP) are not beholden to factions. We want to make a difference and run this nation responsibly and fairly. Greens are neither responsible nor fair and the ALP is not far behind.

[Nona Florat]

9.

The right to assign preferences belongs to the individual voter. It is undemocratic for parties to assume that role, and use it as a mechanism for devious strategies. I am a Liberal voter, but placed the Greens last, and am proud to say that I always vote below the line for the Senate.

Isn’t the welfare of our country worth a little extra time and trouble of looking into the voting records of individual candidates? An uninformed democracy is doomed to destruction, giving way to Fabian socialism, as has happened in the EU.

The only sane approach is order of merit. Our Liberal representatives should not allow backroom bureaucrats to decide preferences. That is to commit political suicide.

I strongly disagree with Sebastian’s expressed support for same-sex “marriage” and euthanasia, but he articulates common sense. Our “enemies’ enemies” are NOT our friends.

[Selim]

10.

The Liberals need to come clean on why they would not preference to a party such as the Liberal Democratic Party in this state election. It's really pathetic of a Conservative Party to give the Anti-Free Enterprise activisits (the Green) a hand into Federal and State Parliament.

[Sebastian Tombs]

11.

Nona, you speak great sense yourself about individuals making their own preference decisions without interference. For the record, though, while I don't oppose recognising gay relationships appropriately (nor does Tony Abbott from what he says in Battlelines) but I am strongly opposed to voluntary euthanasia. It's very important though that the community has moral debates about both of them as issues, however, as they in their different ways relate to defining the sort of society we want to be.

But by batting for them as first-order legislative issues above international security, the economy and simply ensuring that our basic social services work - and even over their beloved environmental causes including their evil carbon tax - the Greens show that they are the mouthpiece of inner-city "land rights for gay whales" latte sippers, not of responsible and competent government.

Above all, I do wish that I didn't have to assume a pseudonym to make sensible comments about the risk of preferencing the Greens for the future of the Liberal Party I love.

[Ben]

12.

Excellent points Nona.

[Andy]

13.

The Greens are the “Arch Enemy” of Liberty. The Australian Editorial was correct to say they needed to be crushed at the ballot box.
We should have optional preferential voting like in QLD (Which I’m now lead to believe Bligh wants to change back to compulsory preferential voting – I wonder why??).

Like the Senate, I should be allowed to place 1 against the politician (party) I want and if I choose to preference anyone else, then that’s my right – not some party machine. If a politician gets 35%+ of the primary vote then that’s good enough (sure some people will say 2/3 didn’t vote for that person and that would be correct, but it would also be correct to say the other candidates failed individually)

RE the Greens:
The watermelons of the green movement true end game: to extend the powers of government; to raise taxes; to weaken the capitalist system; to curtail personal freedom; to redistribute income; to bring ever-closer the advent of an eco-fascist New World Order.

[pk]

14.

woah.

You can really smell the green fear on here.

Maybe time for the libs to construct some real policy and win votes on their own merit instead of whining on and on about preference deals.
I'll be voting green this election because remember as an inner-city latte sipping greenie I am also highly educated and professional - as such I can see through the media bullshit, know what I want and how to get it. The choice between the libs and labor is about as different between that of coke and pepsi and dammit, I really want a beer.

[Paul]

15.

The Greens have an agenda that is far more evil than that of Labor. If there were only two political candidates on the ballot paper, one being Greens and the other Labor, I would vote Labor.
The Victorian Liberals - and their NSW colleagues who have also countenanced the option of directing preferences to The Greens in March 2011 - should hang their heads in shame if they follow this path.

Always choose the lesser of two evils!