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November 3, 2010
The state election in Victoria is underway, with Victorians voting on November 27. It looks as if the Brumby Government will be returned with a reduced majority. The Brumby government has a thumping majority - 55 of the lower house's 88 seats, compared to the Coalition's 32 - and the opposition would need to attract a landslide swing of about 6.5 per cent to snatch victory in its own right.
The real interest is how many inner city seats in Melbourne will the ALP lose to the Greens? Some say up to 4 (Melbourne, Richmond, Brunswick and Northcote). The Greens are the new third force and public transport is a hot issue in Melbourne's inner city seats. Labor now fights permanently on two fronts, the Greens on the Left and the Coalition on the Right.
It does look as if the ALP is increasingly being pushed to the centre as the progressive vote with its concern for equity, social justice and compassion)shifts to the Greens, and right wing Labor is increasingly willing to bash the Greens (the “attack the Greens at all costs” approach) and run smear campaigns --as they did in Tasmania.
Labor is not prepared to rule out preferencing the Greens. Nor will Brumby rule out striking a Gillard-style alliance with the Greens after the election in the event of a hung state parliament.
Brumby's spin is to use Victoria as "the engine room of the nation" to stamp himself as the face of the future. The ALP is the party of innovation whilst the Liberals are the party of conservatism. The spin is undercut by WA being the engine room of the nation and the Greens being the progressive party.
Climate change is going to hurt Brumby Labor given Victoria's historic dependence on brown coal and the symbolic significance of Hazelwood. Failure to act on climate change sunk federal Labor as a progressive party and its going to hurt Brumby Labor in Victoria.
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Paul Kelly in The Australian says that:
From the perspective of the Liberals the more Labor is pulled to the Left to save its inner-city base, thereby gifting the Coalition a popular majority in the nation at large. Kelly says:
Kelly assumes mainstream Australians are centre right. Are they?