A question more frequently asked after an election but one everpresent in voters minds is if the Greens and the Australian Labor Party could ever form a coalition, like the Liberals and Nationals have. And while the two parties do certainly align in various aspects of their policies and seemingly have an informal preference alliance when it comes to voting, have members of the two parties already made this an achievable option?
The most basic aspect of a coalition is that the two parties politics match up for the most part. With Labor and the Greens being left-leaning parties, this is the easiest part for a coalition to form on. The two parties have similar policies on Climate Change, Energy, Agriculture, Taxation reform and Social security. However, while Labor currently has a large focus on the last two, especially in their last election platform, the Greens are far more radical with their approach to Climate Change and Renewable Energy, and have called Labor out for not being as environmentalist as they are. So while the two parties do share similar policies, there is a fundamental difference in what they see as the most important policies.
The other aspect of bringing together a coalition is a common opposition which the two or more parties involved need to defeat. In this case, the opposition is the pretty clear cut Liberal/National coalition, and while a Labor/Green Coalition would not have enough seats to stop them in the house of representatives, it would provide a significant force in the Senate. At the same time, a coalition would provide assurance that each party would definitely preference the other, as well as helping to keep the two parties from squabbling over seats secured by the one or the other and allowing the coalition to focus on more substantial seats.
However, while the two parties may have similar policies and a common foe, there is one reason why there is little chance for a coalition and why a coalition hasn’t yet formed. And that’s the hostilities between the two parties members. Potential Labor leader Anthony Albanese has already stated his distaste for the Greens and has even gone as far to call them ‘extremely dangerous … to Australian politics.’ Greens leader has not been quiet on his side either, stating vowing to clean up Labor and Liberal politics, attacking Labor over the Adani coal mine and even going so far as to call the Labor party out on twitter for working with the Liberals. Other members of the parties have also lashed out, with the Labor party focusing attack ads on the Greens, the greens attacking Labor over royal commissions and the Greens voting against Labor with the Liberals on various occasions.
As such, while the two parties have a very well defined base for a possible alliance, in terms of both their policies and their opposition, petty attacks by members of each party onto the other as well as the potential leader of Labor and the current leader of the Greens inability to respect the other party means that any coalition is currently a pipedream. However, once government is sworn in with a majority, it could force these two parties too finally set aside their differences and work together.
PoliticsBuff 