National context, local history?
The Australian political context
In launching into any history of the formation of the Australian Greens, and the stories of the various state and local parties, a brief excursion into Australian political history is equally required, if only to provide the context of why particular parties arose in the way they did, and what structural opportunities helped facilitate the small localised Green parties to form and to coalesce. We need to understand the ground rules of Australian politics—if not in detail then at least as a broad brush overview that provides some context into which we can inject the Greens.
While much could be written about the structure and nature of the Australian political system, the various small Green parties that appeared in the 1980s arose out of particular circumstances within Australia, although those circumstances are not necessarily unique to Australia as a Western industrial democracy. Australian Government, like other Westminster governments (i.e. New Zealand, Canada, India), grew out of the British colonial system, but was also a system imbued with the values of late nineteenth-century British political culture, values that were suitably utilitarian. This can also be noted in the Australian Constitution, with its strong emphasis on the freedom of trade and in the protection of states’ rights. However, judicial interpretation of the Constitution since Federation in 1901 has slowly eroded the power of the states. At the same time, while Australia inherited the Westminster notion of responsible government, it also inherited a familiarity with parties, even if those parties were quite loose associations in the 1890s. Although before Federation in 1901 parties had played a largely minor role, following the emergence of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the 1890s and the precursor to the Liberal Party in the first decade of the 1900s, parties became an established part of the parliamentary system.1
The institutional framework established by the Australian Constitution provides for two houses of parliament: the House of Representatives (HoR) and the Senate, replicating the British Houses of Commons and Lords. In the Australian case, both houses of parliament were elected from their inception, unlike the British House of Lords, which remains composed of hereditary and appointed members. Each of the original states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania) also had two houses at the time of Federation in 1901, although Queensland abolished its Legislative Council in 1922. Indeed, the abolition of Legislative Councils, by their composition and method of appointment or election often tending to a conservative political complexion, remained an article of faith for the ALP. The abolition of the Queensland Council was one product of this policy, as was the attempted abolition of the New South Wales Council by Premier Jack Lang in 1925, 1926 and 1929. Those attempts failed, and Queensland remains the only state to have lost its upper house. When self-government came to the two territories (the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory), they were established with single houses subordinate to the Commonwealth Parliament. Each of the states and territories was also free to adopt the electoral system it felt appropriate, which has allowed for a variety of electoral experiments, with the end result being the multiplicity of electoral systems across Australia.2
That said, although the major party division in Australian politics is between the ALP and non-ALP parties (including the Liberal and National Parties in coalition), the rise of minor parties and independents has been noted as influencing elections and parliamentary processes since World War II. Minor parties and independents have entered state parliaments and especially state upper houses (which tend to have more favourable proportional representation electoral systems). On occasion minor parties have also won lower house seats, but the lower house electoral systems, usually single-member electorates, have tended to favour independents over minor parties. The more diffuse nature of support for minor parties acts as a barrier to winning single-member electorates.3
In this context, the Australian Greens follow other minor parties such as the Democratic Labor Party, the Australian Democrats and the Christian Democratic Party in being primarily successful in upper houses. However, an emerging concentration of Green voters in inner-urban areas is allowing for electoral breakthroughs into federal and state lower seats, as can be seen in table 3.1.4
Table 3.1: Sitting Green MPs in Australia (2015)
Notwithstanding the recent Australian Greens’ breakthroughs into state and federal lower house seats, Australian electoral politics has continued to be dominated by the ALP and Liberal/National Party coalition. However, the agreements between the Greens and the ALP in the ACT, Tasmania and federally, have achieved stable governments, and delivered ministerial positions to the Greens in Tasmania and the ACT. These coalitions and agreements suggest a continuation of the potential of non-major party actors being involved in the formation of governments. Certainly, independents and minor parties have, at various times, reached agreements with the major parties at state levels in the post-war era of party stability, which have led to important legislative achievements, such as the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). These arrangements and agreements have also been criticised; power-sharing with independents has been questioned as largely unaccountable. However, with a shortage of compelling alternatives, the decline in major party support appears to have stabilised and ‘the party duopoly is a long way from being finished’.5
The Greens—local history6
So where did the Australian Greens start? As we have seen, it is often suggested that the Greens started life as the United Tasmania Group in May 1972. The first formal registration occurred with the Sydney Greens in 1985, but the Australian Greens didn’t come into existence until 1992, and even then with parties only from New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania. The ACT and Victorian Greens joined the following year. It was not until 2003 that state parties from all eight states and territories were finally members of the Australian Greens.
Yet, not unlike the long engagement of the Greens/Green Party USA (G/GPUSA) with the Association of State-based Green Parties (ASGP) before their eventual unification as a single entity, there were green, ecology and alternative parties in existence across Australia through the 1980s and 1990s. However, the engagement and breakup of the relationship between the G/GPUSA and the ASGP’s successor, the Green Party of the United States (GPUS),7 with its acrimony and continued division, was evident within Australian Green circles only between 1990 and 1996. As Tony Harris, the first registered officer of the Greens (who oversees the party registration), noted in relation to early attempts to deal with the registration debates, they were ‘a political problem relating to the outcome of the debate over the nature of a Green political entity and the need to deal with issue such as proscription’.
The Tasmanian Greens
Brown and Singer, among many others, claim the United Tasmania Group (UTG) as the world’s first green party, on the basis of its foundation date and New Ethic charter. Irrespective of whether they were the first such party (the Values Party in New Zealand claim they were the first national green party, forming a few months later, and the ‘Movement for the Environment’ in Switzerland formed six months earlier, but at a local level), a new party with a wholly different focus from other Australian parties had emerged. The UTG would grow slowly, stutter and eventually be transformed into what we now know as the Tasmanian Greens, by way of Bob Brown and his group of ‘Green Independents’ in the Tasmanian parliament.8
The story of the Greens in Tasmania really starts after Bob Brown’s election to the Tasmanian parliament in 1983. Brown had been at the forefront of the Franklin River dam campaign, and had been arrested at the famous blockade, spending Christmas 1982 in a gaol cell. Australian Democrat state MP Norm Sanders resigned his seat at this point, to protest the actions of the state government and to run in the 1983 federal election. Sanders had been elected to state parliament at a by-election in 1980 following a disputed state election, and retained the seat at the 1982 state election. He was also director of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society with Brown, and has sometimes been called the first ‘green’ MP. His resignation, however, caused a count back to determine who would take his seat in the Tasmanian parliament. Bob Brown, who had stood as an independent and polled 8.6 per cent in the multi-member electorate of Denison, the same electorate as Sanders, was elected. Brown then famously emerged from Risden Prison to take his seat in parliament.9
The election of the Hawke ALP government in 1983 paved the way for the halting of the Franklin Dam. The emergent grouping around Brown managed to get elected a second MP, lawyer Gerry Bates, at the 1986 state election even while continuing to campaign around such issues as the Wesley Vale pulp mill, where future Australian Greens leader Christine Milne would emerge as a community leader.
Following the election of the five Green Independents to the Tasmanian parliament in 1989, it became increasingly evident there was both a need and a desire for a formalised Green Party in Tasmania. The Tasmanian Greens emerged as the project of five MPs seeking to form a party. Tony Harris, the Greens’ original registered officer, states that there was a request from Bob Brown in 1989 for access to the name Green, and the AEC has the Tasmanian Greens as registered from 1989, although a formal party was not established at the state level until 1992, and the new party contested the 1990 federal election under the UTG name. The success of the Green Independents and then Tasmanian Greens between 1989 and 1998 prompted the Labor and Liberal parties to eventually cooperate on electoral reform to reduce the Tasmanian parliament’s size, reducing the ability of Greens to be elected, which subsequently reduced representation of the Greens from four to one. Christine Milne, MP since 1989, and leader of the state party by this time, lost her seat, leaving the Denison MP Peg Putt as the sole remaining Green.
However, the party recovered at the next election in 2002 to again win four seats, and repeated this in 2006 before moving on to win five in a tightly fought 2010 state election. The close balance between the Liberals and the ALP at this election led Premier David Bartlett to offer the five Green MPs the opportunity to join his ALP government, and from this Nick McKim became the first Green in Australia to be elevated to a ministerial position. A second Green MP, Cassy O’Connor, became a cabinet secretary, bringing two Greens into state cabinet. However, the experience of state government was not entirely successful, and at the 2014 election the government was swept from power, with two of the five Greens losing their seats. The first experiment in Green government was over.
Bob Brown’s story, however, had moved to the federal level, when he resigned in 1993 to contest the federal seat of Denison at that year’s federal election. Although he failed at that election, he was elected to the Senate in 1996, and re-elected in 2002 and 2008. In 2005 Brown became the Australian Greens’ first Parliamentary Party Leader. Brown continued in parliament until he resigned in 2012 and was replaced in the Senate by Peter Whish-Wilson, and in the leadership by Christine Milne, who had entered the Senate after the 2004 federal election. Milne was re-elected in 2010, resigning the leadership in 2015 with the intent of bowing out of politics when her term ends in 2017.
The Greens NSW
The story of the emergence of the Greens NSW is one of conflict and confusion, with many people claiming to be original members and founders of the party. The original registration ‘the Greens’ was taken out by Tony Harris, an ex-ALP member who had tried to create a ‘Green Labor’ grouping within the ALP. When he and others had supported an expelled ALP member running for Leichhardt Council, Harris was also expelled. He had seen the success of Jack Mundey and the Green bans in Sydney in the 1970s and understood the potential for bringing labour, community and environmental activists together.10 Local activists, including Harris, held a public meeting in 1984 to form the Sydney Greens and contested the federal seat of Sydney, winning more than 5.5 per cent of the vote. Even as the Greens were forming, some commentary was already suggesting that the party was quickly moving into old-style electoral politics. Importantly, a number of the activists involved at this time were former ALP and Communist Party members. This has also been criticised by some, such as former Queensland Greens candidate Drew Hutton, as pushing the party too far to the left. This is in contrast to a number of the early party activists who wanted to move towards a more community-based politics.11
This initial registration, taken with the expectation that it might lead to greater electoral outcomes, did not, however, immediately lead to further success. The Greens ran in the 1987 federal election, and although only polling 1 per cent in the Senate, assisted in the election of Robert Wood from the Nuclear Disarmament Party. By 1990, there were eighteen green parties and groups in New South Wales, which formed the New South Wales Green Alliance Senate Ticket to contest the 1990 federal election, polling 1.9 per cent. In August 1991, the Greens NSW was formed. Ian Cohen was elected to the Legislative Council in the 1995 state election, followed by Lee Rhiannon in 1999. In the 2004 federal election, the Greens NSW achieved 4.1 per cent and elected their first Senator, Kerry Nettle. Before that, however, the party managed to win the first federal lower house seat for the Greens in Australia. In a 2002 by-election, Michael Organ won the HoR seat of Cunningham, although the seat was subsequently lost in the 2004 general election. And although Nettle lost her seat in the following 2007 federal election, the Cunningham victory foreshadowed a continued rise in the Greens vote across both elections. The 2007 state election again saw a rise in the Greens vote, to more than 9 per cent, and the election of two Legislative Councillors, the party’s best result to date. The 2010 federal election saw the party win back the Senate seat lost three years earlier, with Lee Rhiannon being elected to the Senate on a vote of 10.7 per cent.
The Cunningham victory also presaged the eventual winning of the state lower seat of Balmain in the 2011 state election. This election, which also saw three Legislative Councillors elected to join the two sitting members, yielded the party’s best state-wide vote in New South Wales to date at 11.2 per cent. The election was also notable for the Greens NSW second lower house victory in the seat of Balmain. Jamie Parker was elected, defeating the sitting Education Minister Verity Frith from the ALP. This election was, however, marked by the collapse of the ALP vote and, although providing a further rise in the Greens vote, saw the election of a conservative government under Barry O’Farrell. The aftermath of the election saw criticisms of the party from sitting MLC Cate Faehrmann, who castigated the party’s approach to an attempt to win the seat of Marrickville.12
The party was now represented by a total of six state MPs and, although not solely holding the balance of power in the Legislative Council (this being shared with two conservative parties, in the Christian Democratic Party and the Shooters and Fishers Party), the additional MPs allowed the party to cover more issues effectively. Planning for the next set of elections would, however, be held in the shadow of a rampant Liberal campaign against the federal government of Julia Gillard.
The 2013 federal election did not provide any further boosts for the Greens NSW, either in terms of vote share or the election of an MP. The attempt to win a second Senate seat to join Rhiannon did not succeed, with MLC-turned-Senate candidate Cate Faehrmann failing in her campaign, and the party was left with a vote shrunken to pre-2007 levels at 7.8 per cent. An equally ambitious plan to wrest the seat of Grayndler from the ALP also failed, with the Greens losing ground across the state.
However, the 2015 state election provided the Greens with a new opportunity to improve their position, both against the previous federal election, and on the impressive 2010 successes. This time a Liberal-National Party coalition, wounded by donations scandals, faced an ALP still weighed down by its own scandals but looking to recover its position. In this context, the Greens targeted a number of seats, as well as the new seat of Newtown (nominally a ‘Green’ seat after a redistribution) and the existing seat of Balmain.
The election provided a salutary moment for the Greens, as their vote fell in the Legislative Council, only re-electing their two sitting members up for election. However, an effective grassroots campaign, based on extensive doorknocking and responding to community concerns regarding proposed massive road-building (the Westconnex project), saw the Greens storm to a memorable victory in Newtown, with Jenny Leong polling a record vote (for the Greens) of 45.6 per cent. Coupled with Jamie Parker being returned in Balmain, and the truly remarkable victory on the north coast of New South Wales, the Greens had weathered the swing back to the ALP of more than 8 per cent. The victory of Tamara Smith in Ballina was off the back of an anti-coal seam gas backlash against the National Party, and represented a very distinct set of campaign outcomes. In the neighbouring seat of Lismore, the Greens’ Adam Guise came within 2.5 per cent of defeating another sitting Nationals MP, placing that party on notice that coal seam gas was an issue of concern to a broad section of the electorate. Although the Greens’ Legislative Assembly vote had remained static, they had managed to win three lower house seats, and substantially consolidate their inner urban vote.
The Greens (WA)
The Greens (WA), currently federally and state registered, were formed by a merger of four parties and groups.13 This merger was of two federally registered parties, the Vallentine Peace Group of Senator Jo Vallentine and the WA Green Party, the state-registered Alternative Coalition, and the unregistered campaigning group Green Development. Both the WA Green Party and the Alternative Coalition had contested the 1989 WA state election but without success. The formal merger and creation of the Greens (WA) occurred on 1 January 1990, but just before this the Vallentine Peace Group, Alternative Coalition and Green Development conducted a preliminary merger to create the Alternative Electoral Coalition. They had originally attempted to register the name ‘Green Alliance’, but it had been rejected by the AEC.14 The final merger to become the Greens (WA) created a party with, at least on paper, more than a thousand members, but this proved to be a phantom membership. By July 1990, when membership renewals were due, membership had reduced to less than 350.
Each of the four parties/groups brought a distinct campaigning element to the merger. The Vallentine Peace Group was a support base for Senator Jo Vallentine, who had originally been elected in 1984 on a peace platform as part of the Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP). When the NDP appeared to be in danger of being taken over by the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), a Troskyist Fourth International Party, at the first national conference of the NDP, Vallentine and other leading members of the NDP (including future ALP politician but then singer in the rock band Midnight Oil, Peter Garrett) walked out on the party. While other organisations followed the NDP (and the party itself continued for a number of years, even being successful in electing another senator in the 1987 double dissolution), Vallentine severed her ties with her old party, and continued as an independent. In this mould, she continued her peace activism, participating in a variety of peace campaigns and actions, both in Australia and overseas, during the 1980s.
The Alternative Coalition (AC) brought left-wing social justice campaigners, including members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA)/New Left Party, the Socialist Party of Australia (a 1968 split from the CPA) and the DSP, as well independent left-wing activists and a local group called the Vic Park Carlisle Greens who ran a candidate in support of Jo Vallentine in 1987. The Alternative Coalition also contained a number of people who would go on to be MPs for the future Greens (WA), including future Senator Christabel Chamarette. Chamarette’s campaigning centred on Fremantle, a port city with a long history of activism, particularly trade unionism and workers’ rights activities. Although a bastion of the ALP, the city and electorate could always cause problems for the ALP, whether through the Communist Party or, as the ALP discovered in a 2009 by-election, the Greens. At this stage of the party’s history, however, Fremantle provided a strong core of activists for the AC.
Green Development was based in the south-west of Western Australia and consisted mainly of environmentalists and forest activists. Its core groups centred on activities within regional towns and cities of the south-west, particularly around Denmark, but also into the slowly gentrifying area around Margaret River. The Campaign to Save Native Forests (CSNF) was strongly supported by Green Development members, and the CSNF would later fold into the Western Australian Forest Alliance, a campaigning organisation that had an at times rocky relationship with the Greens (WA). Nonetheless, Green Development members, committed to alternative lifestyles centred on environmentalism and respect for native forests, continued their campaigning both within and outside the party.
The last group, the WA Green Party, had been established after a visit by the leading German Green Petra Kelly in the mid-1980s, and took their charter and basic ideals from the German Greens. The WA Green Party, although the smallest of the four groups, also held a registration for the name Greens, granted by Tony Harris as registered officer of the parent registration in 1989. They had good contacts through a teacher newly arrived from New South Wales, Danny Bessell, who was a member of the original Greens in Sydney, and who provided useful contact with the Sydney party. Bessell and other WA Green Party members were informed by the debates within the German Greens and other European green parties regarding structure and agency, but generally adopted a more pragmatic line in respect to acting as an electoral vehicle. The party also managed to maintain an office in North Fremantle, which provided an effective base for negotiations with the other parties in the lead-up to the 1990 federal election.
The formation of the Australian Greens in 1991 saw the beginning of protracted debates within the Greens (WA) about whether to join the newly emergent Australian Greens or to remain a separate entity. These debates mirrored in some ways the long-standing debate of Western Australia’s continuation as a state within the Commonwealth of Australia, especially in relation to the perceived loss of power and potential income to an eastern states entity.15 In late 1991, a vote was taken within the Greens (WA) as to whether or not to join the Australian Greens. The vote failed by a wide margin. The next vote to join the Australian Greens was in 1999, which narrowly failed, before finally being passed in 2003.
Electorally the Greens (WA) have suffered ups and downs. Initial success came with Vallentine’s election to the Senate in 1990, followed by Dee Margetts in 1993, and then Jim Scott to the Legislative Council in 1993 state election. Vallentine retired in 1992 and was replaced by Christabel Chamarette, who subsequently lost the seat in the 1996 federal election. Margetts then lost her seat in 1998. Federally, the Greens (WA) would have to wait until the 2004 election to win back a Senate seat. However, in state politics the Greens (WA) elected three MLCs in 1997, and then five in 2001. A polarised 2005 state election brought disaster, with the Greens reduced to just two MLCs, although the party retained the balance of power in the upper house. In 2007, an upswing in the vote enabled the Greens to win a second Senate seat, followed in 2008 by a total of four Legislative Council seats, and in 2009, in a state by-election for the seat of Fremantle, a Legislative Assembly seat.
The apparent upswing in support for the West Australian party continued into the 2010 federal election with the election of Rachel Siewert to the Senate. As with the national experience of an agreement with the ALP government of Julia Gillard, the Greens (WA) vote fell away in the 2012 state election, and the gains of 2008 were lost with only Lynn McLaren and Robin Chapple being returned to the Legislative Council, and Fremantle reverting to the ALP. The 2013 federal election began to appear as if it too would be a losing election for the party, but a catastrophic error by the AEC in losing 1300-odd votes saw a by-election declared by the Court of Disputed Returns for the West Australian Senate seats. Scott Ludlam, having six months previously apparently lost his seat, now staged a barnstorming reversal of fortune, easily claiming the Senate seat, and in the process elevating his national profile (particularly with internet-savvy younger voters) to new and dizzying heights. The party was back on track.
Queensland Greens
The history of the Queensland Greens involves only one registration but a long road to any form of success.16 The party was initially formed as the Brisbane Greens in 1984, and Drew Hutton contested the 1985 Brisbane Lord Mayoral election under their banner. However, by 1987, the Brisbane Greens were not interested in engaging with a national party process, and remained quiescent until 1990, when the Queensland Green Network (QGN) was formed.
The QGN stood two candidates in the 1990 federal election, in the seats of Forde and Capricornia. Following this campaign, the QGN formed a ‘Green Alliance’ for the Queensland Local Government election in 1991, at which they ran sixteen candidates and received between 7 per cent and 26 per cent of the vote. QGN was also represented by Drew Hutton at the August 1991 meeting, which explored forming the Australian Greens in Sydney and also decided to proscribe the DSP from the emerging Australian Greens. The QGN then changed its name to the Queensland Greens, and were launched by Senator Jo Vallentine in late November 1991 and achieved federal registration. However, the Queensland Greens struggled to establish itself, with no state upper house, and alternative electoral politics largely corralled behind the Australian Democrats. However, it could count on good results in the seats clustered around the inner-Brisbane area.
The period between the establishment of the Queensland Greens and the collapse of the Australian Democrats vote in 2004 proved to be tough years for the party. Although at times rivalling the New South Wales Greens in membership numbers, the party was hampered both by the electoral system and by internal divisions. Drew Hutton, founder and mentor of the party, found it necessary to intervene at times in disputes and debates, but even through this the party remained focused on election campaigns, scoring good results in such seats as Mount Coot-tha, Indoorapilly and Brisbane South. The lack of a state upper house, however, has continued to disadvantage the party.
The collapse of the Australian Democrats vote in 2004 changed this dynamic, and the recruitment of the former Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett in 2009 completed the party’s repositioning. Although the Queensland Greens were unlucky not to elect a senator in 2007, the defection of state ALP parliamentarian Ronan Lee to the party in 2008 galvanised the party and raised its profile within the state. While Lee was seen as a polarising personality, particularly given some of his more conservative positions on reproductive rights, that the Queensland Greens had an MP meant the party was no longer seen as an also-ran party. However, Lee was not able to retain his seat in the state general election little more than six months later. The 2010 federal election finally brought the sought-after Senate win as the Queensland Greens finally achieved their own electoral success with the election of Larissa Waters to the Senate.17
South Australia’s early registration and involvement needs to be considered in light of the personality of one person, Bob Lamb, in much the same way as Queensland is associated with Drew Hutton (although more negatively).18 Lamb was a former member of the Communist Party of Australia, and an early adherent of the ‘Fundi’ style of green politics, drawing on the experiences and campaigns of the Fundi faction in the German Greens. The original green group to form in South Australia, the Green Electoral Movement, evolved into the Green Alliance SA (GASA), although it quickly split into two competing registrations, GASA and the Green Party of South Australia (GPSA). The former were controlled by members of the DSP and the latter by Lamb.
The Green Alliance formation was intended to build a broad-based coalition of groups to compete in elections, but the 1990 federal election saw both the DSP and Green Alliance run separate campaigns. This eventually led to the two green parties competing against each other in the 1993 federal election, to each party’s detriment. Lamb was supported in his building of the GPSA by Allie Fricker, and the pair kept the party functioning during this period. The two parties again competed for the green vote in the 1993 state election, with the Lamb-led GPSA gaining 1.3 per cent, but not electing any candidates. The GASA ran a smaller campaign and polled 0.4 per cent, with a DSP member at the top of the ticket.
However, by 1996 this registration issue had been resolved. The key factor was the formation of the Australian Greens in 1992. With Green Alliance SA (along with the other Green Alliance registrations in Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT) considered ‘proscribed parties,’ members of these parties were barred from membership of the Australian Greens. Although the Green Party of South Australia did not join the Australian Greens at this time, it was tolerated along with the Greens (WA) as a state-based green party. However, increasing difficulties with Bob Lamb over membership, local groups and branches, and the structure of the Greens across Australia, saw a group of former members in South Australia ask Bob Brown to intervene. Brown had by this stage (1995) left the Tasmanian state parliament and was preparing to run for the Senate for the Tasmanian Greens.
Although intending to take part in the election, Lamb was involved in a serious road accident just before the beginning of the campaign period, and this prevented him from being active during the election. With their leader sidelined, the GPSA eventually contested no seats in the 1996 election, and with less than 500 members was subsequently deregistered by the AEC. The path was then clear for a new party to be formed, which was officially launched by Bob Brown later in 1996. The party opened an office off Hindmarsh Square, above the Left Bank Café, and began campaigning with Stephen Spense, state secretary of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union that covered arts workers. Spense himself was at times seen as a divisive character, generating some internal dissension, but despite this the campaign generally ran well.
The 1996 federal election saw the Coalition under Howard romp to comfortable victory, and the Australian Democrats under Cheryl Kernot did very well. In South Australia they polled 10.20 per cent, comprehensively outpolling the Greens at 2.95 per cent.
The candidate to run in a potentially winnable position for the Australian Greens (SA) was Mark Parnell, when he nominated for the Legislative Council in 1996. Although Parnell was unsuccessful in 1996, he would eventually enter the Council as a Greens representative ten years later in 2006. His success was followed by that of former Amnesty International staff member Sarah Hanson-Young, who was elected to the Senate in the 2007 federal election. The 2009 state election brought former Democrats staffer Tammy Jennings into the Legislative Council alongside Parnell, and in 2010 Penny Wright was elected to the Senate. Although the Greens (SA) have not been able to expand their existing list of MPs, they have managed to retain them through each election, with Hanson-Young retaining her own seat in 2013, even with a dramatically reduced primary vote.
Australian Greens Victoria
Although the Australian Greens Victoria did not officially form until 1993, two precursor parties existed. One, the Victorian Green Alliance, existed as a DSP front party, but also involved other social movement activists. The other, the Rainbow Alliance, stemmed from a group of left-wing academics around La Trobe University’s Joseph Camilleri, proposing a multi-focused movement-building process, and campaigned against such projects as the proposed Multifunction Polis in South Australia. Although the Rainbow Alliance did try to expand to other states, they never really experienced any growth outside their home base of Victoria. However, following the formation of the Australian Greens in 1992, a small group of environmental activists came together to form the Australian Greens Victoria. As Greg Barber, Victorian Greens MLC since 2006, notes, the first meeting to form the Greens was held under a tree in Fitzroy’s Edinburgh Gardens. Their first electoral contest, the 1993 federal election, consisted of one House of Representatives seat, La Trobe, with the Victorian Green Alliance running in the Senate.19
The first full election campaign of the Australian Greens Victoria was in 1996, which started with high hopes but ended with the relatively meagre Senate result of 2.9 per cent. The party was left handicapped by debts from the campaign, but by the 1998 election were debt free, although that election brought no success. The 1998 election result itself might have been seen as a setback, as the Greens vote had not lifted significantly anywhere, and in Victoria fell by half a percent, leaving the party as it had started—without representation or financial backing.
These setbacks were partly rectified in 2001 when the party achieved 6 per cent of the statewide vote in the Senate and qualified for federal electoral funding. Federal funding in the large states of Victoria and New South Wales is a significant amount of money for small parties, so the party now at least had a firm financial base to work from. The 2001 election, overshadowed by the destruction of the World Trade Centre on September 11 and the Tampa affair, were therefore conversely a good election for the Greens, with increased funding and a doubling of the party’s membership.
Through this period the Greens also ran in the Victorian state elections of 1998 and 2002, although in both cases without any success. The lower house is made up of single-member electorates, and it was a difficult task to secure seats. The Victorian Upper House at this time used a ‘province’ system of twenty-two two-member electorates, elected at alternate elections. At the 1999 state election, which saw the ALP’s Steve Bracks elected Premier, the Greens reached an agreement with the ALP over who would contest the very conservative province of Templestowe. The calculation at the time was that the Greens had a better chance of winning the seat than the ALP, and it would provide an opportunity to win extra seats in the Legislative Council. Although this did not eventuate, the Greens polled 36.1 per cent of the primary vote and, combined with the Australian Democrats’ preferences (the Democrats polled more than 10 per cent in the province), ended up with 44.3 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. Although not a victory, it certainly galvanised and invigorated the party.
The 2002 state election also saw little electoral joy for the Greens, although their overall vote lifted, along with that of the ALP. Indeed the ALP’s vote lifted so far that it was able to win seventeen of the twenty-two Council seats up for election, winning control of the Council and enacting its election promise to abolish the province system and introduce eight multi-member electorates, in a system similar to Tasmania’s lower house. At this election, an interesting development—and a sign of things to come—was the Greens’ near-victory in the Council province of Melbourne, where the Greens ended up with 47.2 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. Melbourne would now be on the Greens’ electoral horizon.
However, the Australian Greens Victoria still had to wait until the 2006 state election before electing their first MPs to the state Legislative Council, the feat of electing three being repeated in the 2010 state election. The 2006 election saw the Greens get close in several inner-Melbourne seats, but they eventually fell short. In the 2010 federal election, the party managed the double victory of winning both a Senate seat and the House of Representatives seat of Melbourne. Melbourne marked the first win in a single-member lower house seat for the Greens in a general election, and followed the victory in the Cunningham (New South Wales) by-election eight years previously.
This feat was repeated at the 2013 federal election, with Adam Bandt winning from a primary vote of 42.6 per cent and Janet Rice being elected to the Senate. The following year the Australian Greens Victoria celebrated the state election with five members elected to the Council and two lower house seat wins, in the electorates of Melbourne and Prahran. These wins were seen as unprecedented, and heralded the consolidation of the Greens’ inner-urban heartland. Although the party fell short again in several other seats, including in Richmond, where they led on election night, the win in Prahran was considered especially sweet as it was a liberal-held seat, and required the Greens to outpoll the ALP before racing past the Liberals to record a narrow victory.
NT Greens
The first green candidate, Debra Beattie-Burnett, in the Northern Territory (NT) ran as a ‘Green Independent’ in a 1989 by-election in the Territory seat of Wanguri, polling 16.7 per cent. The by-election had been caused by the resignation of the sitting Country Liberal Party (CLP) member, and the resulting backlash against the CLP government of the day delivered the seat to the ALP. In the 1990 federal election, another ‘Green Independent’, Illana Eldridge, stood as an ‘Ungrouped’ candidate polling just over 1 per cent. Eldridge was to play a continuing role in the NT Greens through the 1990s and 2000s.
The next electoral outing for the fledgling NT Greens was in the 1994 NT election, where they ran in one seat. In the 1996 federal election the NT Greens fielded candidates for both the House of Representatives and the Senate, although the party was in reality still a collection of independent activists working under the banner of the Greens, with Eldridge as the nominal state convenor. However, this election was notable for the Greens’ lower house candidate (the Northern Territory at this stage only had one House seat—Northern Territory) being the prominent voluntary euthanasia campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke, who polled 6.3 per cent, a vote mirrored in the Senate.
The nature of NT politics, dominated for three decades by the conservative Country Liberal Party, coupled with an unfavourable electoral system, has meant that the NT Greens have never been elected into the Territory parliament or to the Senate. Although Territory electorates generally comprise fewer than 4000 electors, there has never been a sizeable party membership, nor the critical mass to turn the party into anything approaching the electoral vehicles of the CLP and ALP, in either supporter levels or finances.
However, the party has had more success in recent years at a local government level with the election of councillors to the Darwin and Alice Springs City Councils. The party can boast three councillors. Greg Jarvis scored the party’s first success in Darwin, in 2008. Jarvis died suddenly in early 2010, and was replaced in the subsequent by-election by another Green, Robin Knox. At the same 2008 election, Independent-turned-Green Jane Clark was also re-elected, but Clark later left the party. The 2012 Council elections saw the NT Greens Darwin representation double with the election of Simon Niblock to join Knox, and the election of a new councillor in Alice Springs, Jade Kudrenko.20
ACT Greens
The party in the smallest state/territory, ACT Greens first met in a Canberra suburban lounge-room in mid-1992, with the intention of standing candidates in the 1993 federal election.21 However, the party’s history starts six years prior in 1986, when a number of environmentalists and bushwalkers held preliminary discussions about forming a new party. Although nothing came of this first attempt at party formation, many of the people holding those first informal talks became involved in the formation of the ACT branch of another left-leaning, pro-environment party in 1987, the Rainbow Alliance, although their first electoral outing failed to win a seat in the 1989 ACT Assembly elections. In this same period, a group of individuals associated with the DSP ran a ticket under the banner Green Democratic Alliance in the 1990 federal election, gaining 3.3 per cent of the vote, demonstrating the potential of a ‘green’ party in Canberra.
The formation of the Australian Greens, which held its first National Conference in Sydney in August 1992, with observers from the ACT, spurred those former members of the Rainbow Alliance to come together in September 1992 to form the ACT Greens. The following year, in the 1993 federal election, the ACT Greens celebrated their first electoral outing by polling more than 6 per cent, although with the ACT only electing two senators at each election there was no chance of being elected. However, in the 1995 ACT elections the Greens broke through for Assembly representation with 9.1 per cent, electing Kerrie Tucker and Lucy Horodny.
Although the Greens still polled well in subsequent ACT elections, they were only able to retain Kerry Tucker’s seat in the 1998 and 2001 Northern Territory elections. Tucker stepped down just ahead of the 2004 Northern Territory elections to contest the 2004 federal election, although she missed out on election to the Senate even after polling 16.4 per cent. Deb Foskey was elected in the 2004 Northern Territory election, again as the sole Green representative. However, the federal result in 2004 showed that Territorians might be inclined to vote in considerable numbers for the Greens. In the 2008 ACT election, the ACT Greens proved this to be correct, gaining 15.6 per cent of the vote, and four seats in the seventeen-member Territory Assembly. Subsequent to the election, the four MPs, now led by Meredith Hunter, signed an agreement with the ACT Labor Party regarding government formation. They were also able to secure the election of Green MLA Shane Rattenbury as Speaker of the Assembly, a first for any Green MP in Australia. Although the Greens did not hold any ministries (nor occupy the government benches), the Agreement between the ACT Greens and ACT Labor Party provided for set outcomes and consultation processes between the parties, and established the basis for a productive period in the ACT Assembly.
The following election brought the ACT Greens very close to a coup, when the party polled more than 22 per cent for the Senate in the 2010 federal election. Lin Hatfield Dodds went agonisingly close to unseating former ACT Liberal Party leader Gary Humphries for the second ACT Senate seat, missing out by only a few thousand votes. However, the two good elections in 2008 and 2010 were to be overshadowed by the 2012 ACT election.
Although this period of government was seen as productive for the ACT and for the Greens, a resurgent Liberal Party under national leader Tony Abbott polarised the ACT electorate. The 2012 ACT election was held under the cloud of federal politics, and the Greens saw their vote slump to 10.7 per cent, with the loss of three seats. So finely balanced was the election, though, that the sole remaining Green MLA, Shane Rattenbury, was now left in the position of being able to choose which party was to govern. Rattenbury negotiated an agreement with ACT Labor leader Katy Gallagher to move from the crossbenches into formal coalition with Labor and take up a ministerial position. In doing so he became the second Green to take up a ministerial position after Nick McKim in Tasmania.
The following year, in which the federal election was fought between Rudd and Abbott as a battle of slogans, and in which the Greens vote was squeezed nationally, the ACT Greens were able to rebound, although the resurgence of the Liberal Party meant that the Senate seat now contested by another former Liberal leader, Zed Seselja, was not seen as under serious threat. However, a vote of 19.3 per cent for ACT Greens’ candidate Simon Sheikh, although slightly lower than in 2010, meant that the count again went down to the wire, with Seselja able to secure the seat only late in the counting. The resurgence of the Greens vote, in what was otherwise a difficult election, suggests that the Greens vote in the ACT is generally solid.
Australian Greens
The Australian Greens really deserves its own history, of which this chapter would just be a part. So what appears here will be just an overview of the key elements. By the early 1990s renewed attempts were made to create a national Green party, the earlier registration process having generated too many groups that were only loosely affiliated. Bob Brown and Jo Vallentine were two key players in these first attempts to create some form of national party. However, by 1991 these attempts had exposed rifts in the New South Wales Greens Alliance between members of the DSP and others. The registration of the New South Wales Green Alliance was at this time managed by a group called the ‘NSW Registration Committee’ dominated by non-DSP members, while the separate ‘NSW Green Alliance’ group was the broader umbrella group of all the local green parties in New South Wales. The AEC at this stage then recognised the Registration Committee as the legitimate holder of the registration. This broke the hold the DSP had over a number of local parties in New South Wales and was important in ending any opportunities the DSP might have of remaining within the rapidly coalescing Australian Greens.
The national registration issue finally came to a head at a meeting of all registered green parties in Sydney in August 1991, in the lead-up to the formation of the Australian Greens. At this meeting it was decided that DSP members should not have voting rights, as they were members of another political party. This action then allowed a more straightforward process of negotiation towards adopting a national constitution and structure. The subsequent meeting in August 1992, at which the Australian Greens was formed, the new constitution was adopted, and included a proscription clause, restricting members of other parties from joining the Greens. The constitution, and the attendant structure, although still contested, became the basis of the party’s development for the next twenty years.22
Within two years all the parties aligned with the DSP were deregistered by the AEC. The remaining non-Australian Greens registrations contested the 1996 election under their various banners, but notably a number of state green organisations (ACT, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria) have since voluntarily relinquished their registrations and will run in federal elections as the Australian Greens. Further registration shake-ups following the 1996 federal election saw the northern New South Wales-based Richmond Clarence Greens and the original South Australian registered party, the GPSA, deregistered by the AEC following disaffiliation and disavowal of connections between the two parties and any other green registered parties. The last party to join the Australian Greens, the Greens (WA), finally decided to do so via ballot of their membership in 2002, becoming a member of the national organisation at the October 2003 National Conference. At that point, and after such a long struggle, all registered green parties within Australia were affiliated under the Australian Greens’ banner.
The national party has seen its representation rise from a low of one senator, Bob Brown, after the 1998 federal election to two in 2001, four at the 2004 election, then five (and parliamentary party status) at the 2007 election, which dumped John Howard from Government and parliament. The 2010 election saw the numbers of senators rise to nine and the addition of Adam Bandt as the member for Melbourne. At each of these elections, the Greens saw their vote rise with their seat share. The 2013 election provided somewhat of a correction, with vote falling nationally, but with the seat of Melbourne retained and a new senator also elected, bringing the party to ten senators and an MHR, making the party one of the most successful minor parties of the post-war period.
Conclusion
What can be said of the Australian Greens is that it is a diverse party, created from diverse elements and welded together (sometimes haphazardly) under the glare and expectation of both the electorate and media commentariat. Nevertheless, the party has survived and prospered, weathering the highs and lows of parliamentary and community politics. In many respects, the diverse elements that have helped create the party initially have been the basis on which it has been able to grow. Apart from the various movement actors who have engaged with and joined the party, many have remained attached to the broad project of progressive renewal of Australian politics, although many of the original party members and MPs might have quite divergent views on whether or not this has been achieved.
What can be said with some certainty is that the party created a structure and base for itself that lasted for more than twenty years. While the process of constitutional reform in the party, which led to the adoption of a new national coordination structure in 2014, might seem to signal a more ‘professional’ approach to politics, it is at the base of the party that the work continues. The state parties and local groups will wax and wane at times, but the core of the activist base is still available to the party. At elections many thousands of volunteers can be counted on to emerge and assist in campaigns.23 Although a number of the state parties noted a drop in their vote in the 2012–15 period, this can be seen as part of the natural ups and downs of politics, and does not detract from the party’s message, again testament to the strength of its structure. So we should now turn to the people who created this base and structure: the members and activists within the party.
Notes
1 For just some of the history of Australian politics, McAllister, ‘Political parties in Australia’, deals with issues of the colonial system; Cowen, ‘A comparison of the constitutions of Australia and the United States’, and Weller & Fleming, ‘The Commonwealth’, with constitutional issues, while Jaensch, Power Politics; Sharman & Moon, ‘Introduction’; and Marsh, ‘Australia’s political cartel’, all provide an overview of Australian party development.
2 For further discussion of the development of the state electoral systems, see Wanna, ‘Queensland’; Moon & Sharman, Australian Politics and Government; and Vromen, Gelber & Gauja, Powerscape.
3 On the influence of minor parties and independents post-war, see Sharman, ‘Politics in the states’; Bennett, The Decline in Support for the Major Parties and the Prospect of Minority Government; and Weller & Fleming, ‘The Commonwealth’. On minor party entrance into parliament, see Norton, ‘Prospects for the two-party system in a pluralising political world’, and Vromen, Gelber & Gauja, Powerscape, p. 156. On barriers, see Smith & O’Mahony, ‘The cartel parties model and electoral barriers’.
4 The concentration of Green voters has been noted by a number of commentators internationally, but in an Australian context see Bowe, ‘Green members in green chambers’, and Godfrey, Chambers & van den Broeke, ‘Wealthy residents of Annandale’s Greens vote in NSW state election a bit rich’.
5 Norton, ‘Prospects for the two-party system in a pluralising political world’, p. 47.
6 Harris, in his 2008 monograph ‘Regulating the Green mess’, sets out a complete history of Commonwealth registration of Green parties in Australia through the 1980s and 1990s. This section is intended to supplement, not replicate, his story with information pertaining to state parties and their development. See also Pybus, ‘Commentary’; Brown & Singer, The Greens; and Miragliotta, ‘From local to national’, for discussion of the UTG and early attempts at party formation. Election results, except where otherwise noted, are derived from the relevant electoral commission.
7 For further information on the formation of, and acrimony between, the two US party organisations, see Hawkins, ‘Individual members’; Berg, ‘Greens in the USA’; and Gaard, Ecological Politics.
8 Brown & Singer, The Greens. Pybus & Flanagan, in The Rest of the World is Watching, pull together the threads of the Tasmanian story well, although others have also covered this ground since. Pybus and Flanagan do provide a transcription of the original UTG ‘New Ethic’ charter, which demonstrates the shift in thinking occurring within new social movements of the time.
9 Buckman, Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles, gives an excellent account of the battles over Tasmania’s environment, and covers Brown’s activities during this period.
10 Mundey, Green Bans and Beyond.
11 See Lohrey, Groundswell; Angel, Green is Good; and Salleh, ‘A Green party’.
12 Faehrmann, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald ‘Greens won’t get much further if we repeat poll blunders’, excoriated the party for its support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, holding the view that this cost the party the seat of Marrickville. At that election the Greens came within 680 votes of unseating the sitting Deputy Premier, Carmel Tebbutt.
13 Lange, ‘Being Green’, pp. 65–96, provides a comprehensive history of the formation of the Greens (WA), including a history of each of the four parties integral to the party’s formation.
14 See AEC, ‘Review of delegates’ decision not to change the name of the Vallentine Peace Group to Green Alliance in the Register of Political Parties’, for a description and notation on this decision.
15 For a description of the 1933 Western Australian referendum, and its aftermath, see Musgrave, ‘Western Australian secessionist movement’.
16 Hutton, Green Politics in Australia, and Harris, Basket Weavers and True Believers, both cover the early period of the Queensland Greens.
17 Drew Hutton provided much valuable information here via interview with the author. There are also a number of QGN source documents among the Australian Greens archives (see Queensland Green Network, Letter to the convenors re the pre-Greens August 1991 national meeting, for instance), and the DSP’s newspaper, Green Left Weekly, commented generally on activities of the Greens nationally at this time (see for instance Brewer, ‘National green party’).
18 Comments and descriptions of the party in South Australia partly drawn on material provided by former SA state secretary and convenor (and national convenor) Paul Petit and Mark Parnell MLC. Just as with the all-state green parties, the South Australian experience has been one of fluidity and division, tempered with success.
19 A number of articles in the Green Left Weekly archive prove useful in discussing the Victorian Greens, specifically Hinman, ‘Green Party launch set’. Greg Barber references the party’s formation in his inaugural speech to Parliament, 20 December 2006.
20 Information on the early NT Greens is sparse, and apart from the recollections of Illana Eldridge, and some traces of stories in the NT News, the early days were of local activists coming together at elections.
21 Founding member Gordon McAllister has provided a summary of the party’s history in its state newsletter, Green Leaves (McAllister, ‘The history of Green politics in the ACT’, 1 & 2).
22 For commentary on the events at the 1991 meeting, including alternative perspectives on party membership, see Macdonald & Fletcher, ‘Top-down agenda for green party’; Brewer, ‘National green meeting in Sydney’ and ‘Two camps in the Greens’; and Brown & Singer, The Greens.
23 Vogan, ‘Volunteering’.