If you don’t want the Greens to block Labor bills, how is positive change supposed to happen?

Public opinion about the Australian Greens has perhaps never been so detached from the reality of their actions in parliament.

Over the past term of federal parliament, the Greens have repeatedly voted in favour of every major government bill for which Labor needed Greens’ support to pass legislation through the Senate (the one notable exception was the Greens' opposition to Labor's Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation bill).

And yet, quite a few voters – particularly upper-middle-class voters in electorates that have been digitally carpet-bombed with anti-Greens propaganda – seem annoyed that the Greens are “always blocking Labor’s bills.” Apparently they feel the Greens are ‘obstructive,’ even though the party didn’t obstruct anything that was going to meaningfully address the capitalist polycrisis.

The kicker is that a significant proportion of Australia’s voting population strongly support Greens policy proposals to ban new fossil fuel projects, end property speculator tax handouts that drive up housing costs, and tax big corporations to fund free dental care and education. But while they like those policies, they’re in denial about the assertive parliamentary strategy which is necessary to actually enact them.

It’s a case study in the power of propaganda, and a reminder that even ‘well-educated’ people who consider themselves fairly politically engaged are still easily swayed by whatever narrative the major parties and mainstream media are pumping out.

The housing bills

When it comes to housing policy, maybe some of these voters with a “Greens are too obstructive!” mindset understand that actually the Greens did vote through Labor’s legislation eventually, and are simply annoyed that the bills were delayed by a few months. But this naive criticism ignores how parliamentary processes and political decision-making actually work in practice.

Labor's federal housing minister has said very clearly that she doesn’t want house prices to fall, and that Labor’s goal is for property prices to keep rising.

When Labor’s stated intention is for homes to get more expensive, why would any sensible progressive voter want or expect the Greens to support such an agenda?

Of course, the Greens did end up voting through both bills, securing a modest $3 billion in extra funding for affordable housing in exchange for supporting the Housing Australia Future Fund bill in 2023, but securing no additional concessions in exchange for supporting Labor’s ‘Help to Buy’ and ‘Build to Rent’ bills late last year.

Housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather had rightly highlighted that Labor's approach would contribute to housing becoming even more expensive. So why did the Greens party room eventually decide to support the government’s wet lettuce proposals?

The Greens MPs and their staffers had concluded that a growing proportion of their own support base wanted them to stop blocking. So they voted in favour of proposals which they knew would be ineffective at reducing the rate of evictions (I should note though that having doorknocked a lot lately, I've also found plenty of people – mostly renters – who do support the Greens blocking and maintaining pressure for deeper housing policy changes).

If the Greens don’t block Labor, nothing will change

I’ve argued previously that a better approach for the federal Greens party room would be to hold broader public plebiscites to decide whether to support or oppose controversial government bills. I still think that’s strategically the best option for a progressive minor party in the current political landscape.

But what should Greens supporters be calling for if the politicians do ask our opinion?

Those progressive voters who say “The Greens should negotiate with Labor but not block bills altogether” are overlooking two crucial factors:

1. Labor governments are heavily influenced by big business interests who persistently argue against the kinds of changes we urgently need (e.g. ending fossil fuel exports, lowering real estate values).
2. If you’re negotiating with an entity that’s under considerable pressure not to meet your demands, and you want positive outcomes, you need leverage.

No leverage = no outcomes.

If Greens negotiators go to the Labor party and say “the scientists are clearly telling us Australia must immediately stop approving coal mine expansions,” but the government is also feeling direct corporate sector pressure to keep supporting fossil fuels, what do you think happens?

Well we already know the answer, because in recent years the Labor government has overseen and supported an increase in fossil fuel extraction at a time when we really ought to be cancelling fossil fuel exports altogether.

The big swing to the Greens and pro-climate action independents at the 2022 federal election didn’t have any significant, practical impact on Labor’s continuing support for fossil fuels, because ultimately, the Greens weren’t willing to use their numbers in the Senate to block Labor’s agenda.

The blunt reality: If Labor leaders know the Greens will never block their tokenistic reforms for fear of being called ‘obstructive,’ the Greens have no leverage to push the government to do better.

Even if the Greens do win more seats, that won’t significantly increase the party’s negotiating power unless they're willing to use their numbers in parliament to block Labor bills and budgets.

We’re not talking about friends negotiating which restaurant to eat at

I expect some readers will still have the old “but we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!” lullaby looping endlessly in the same part of your brain that also memorises advertising jingles. But trite turns of phrase are not a pragmatic political strategy.

Major party politicians who support publicly subsidising new gas pipelines aren't going to change their mind because a couple of Greens and independent politicians sat down with them and respectfully explained the science behind global warming.

For any policy or taxation change that’s likely to impact the profit margins of big business, whatever pressure crossbench politicians might theoretically apply by asking politely, ‘negotiating in good faith’ and developing ‘collaborative relationships’ with Labor ministers is going to be outweighed by the corporate sector’s significant influence.

Major industries have numerous tools to manipulate politicians – from direct bribery via political campaign donations, to funding their own PR campaigns that publicly attack a party’s policy agenda, to the threat of abruptly closing down operations in a jurisdiction where a bunch of sudden lay-offs will hurt the government electorally.

Donating a hundred thousand dollars before an election can certainly buy significant access and influence, but so can privately whispering the magic words “if you tighten those environmental regulations, we’ll shut down our factory in that marginal electorate, leaving a lot of people unemployed and angry at you.”

On top of all that, the Labor party has a strong political incentive to make the Greens seem powerless. The only argument Labor politicians can still offer to voters who are considering switching to the Greens is “Labor has power and the Greens don’t.” If it becomes obvious that Labor is routinely agreeing to Greens demands, and that the minor party actually does have significant power to deliver progressive policy outcomes, there’s no reason for anyone to keep voting Labor.

So both because of external pressure from the corporate sector, and because of the party’s own existential insecurity, there are very few issues and portfolio areas where Labor is motivated to negotiate in good faith.

Maximising leverage?

What all this boils down to is that if Labor knows the Greens will never block anything, Adam Bandt will have very little influence at the negotiating table. If the Greens don't want to reduce themselves to subservient appendages of Labor who serve no useful purpose beyond greenwashing ecocide and genocide, they have to block at least some of the time.

The trickier question for the Greens is whether to block bills that have nothing to do with the specific changes the movement is seeking.

For example, banning new fossil fuel projects is a core policy goal for the Greens. But Labor isn’t going to bring a bill to parliament specifically about that issue. So if the Greens want to phase out fossil fuel exports (which the science tells us is essential to maintain a climate that can support human flourishing), they have to be willing to block various other bills and say “we won’t pass these unless you agree to stop approving coal and gas projects.”

That’s realistically the only way major change is likely to happen in a parliamentary system where the two major parties are more-or-less puppets of big business.

Rather than messy horse-trading on a month-by-month basis, I think the cleanest approach for the Greens is to state clearly from the outset “these are the must-have changes we insist need to happen, otherwise we won’t pass Labor’s annual budget, and we will vote against every bill that doesn’t closely align with Greens policy.”

And as I’ve suggested previously, the decision about what the ‘must-haves’ are shouldn’t be made by Greens politicians alone – it should be decided by participatory democracy processes that are open to the wider Greens support base.

Some might call this a ‘hard line’ position, but alternative strategies have failed, and we no longer have time to muck around. Global warming is accelerating, and if we don’t make some significant changes to reverse rising homelessness rates soon, a lot of angry people are going to be seduced by far-right fascists.

The last few times the Greens have held balance of power, the party has mostly taken a softer approach, compromising significantly to pass incremental reforms that are marginally beneficial at best. This is always done with the assurance that the Greens will keep pushing for bigger changes. But passing minor reforms often neutralises the political pressure for deeper change.

Measured against the party’s policy goals and electoral ambitions, that incrementalist strategy hasn’t worked, but the Greens are still being accused of obstructionism.

In fact, across the globe, you’ll find numerous examples of Greens parties that consistently made big compromises with larger centre-right parties because they didn’t want to “let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” They have subsequently either stagnated (e.g. ACT Greens) or lost ground (e.g. Irish Greens) in electoral terms.

In some cases, such as Germany, Greens parties have compromised on core values or formed coalitions with right-wing governments so often that Die Grünen is now (accurately) seen as a capitalist, establishmentarian force. Consequently, at the local level, more radical environmental parties have recently emerged to the left of Die Grünen under the ‘Klimaliste Deutschland’ banner, while in Germany's recent federal election, Die Grünen lost significant vote share to Die Linke – an actual left-wing party that also has reasonably strong climate action policies.

The repeated lesson is clear: compromising too readily neither benefits the Greens electorally nor gets us any closer to the deeper social and economic changes we urgently need.

Time to wake up

Whenever Greens politicians hold balance of power in either the Senate or the House of Representatives, Greens supporters must insist loudly that they take a stand.

If the MPs aren't willing to do this, and the best we can get from a three-year parliamentary term with Greens in balance of power is a couple hundred extra 'affordable' housing dwellings, a partial restoration of Medicare funding and some minor workers' rights reforms, then the party isn't serving the role we desperately need it to.

Australia’s fossil fuel emissions and exports are still rising. More and more people are being priced out of stable housing. Our government is directly subsidising private companies to manufacture military weapons for profit. And across the world, billions are being uprooted and displaced by famine, war, unnatural climate disasters, political persecution and the multiplying iniquities of a capitalist system that sucks wealth from the Global South at the barrel of a gun.

In this context, saying “well you should still just support Labor’s minor reforms and keep pushing for bigger changes down the track” isn’t a strategy at all – it’s a capitulation to apocalypse.

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