Thursday, 29th of November, 2007

There’s some really interesting discussion going on over at GreensBlog about the Greens’ chances in the senate, which are stronger than you might think. At Larvatus Prodeo late last year, Paul Norton explained that the media regularly underestimates the Greens’ electoral success because they tend to do considerably better out of pre-poll and absentee votes than the Coalition. You can follow the links to see some theories as to why this is - but this post of Tim’s gives us some figures:

For those who like detail, check out the AEC’s data from the last election by vote type. The numbers show the total Greens vote at just under 7%, but almost 11% of absent, almost 10% of provisional and almost 8% of pre-poll. Given that these three account for just under 12% of all votes cast, and they are all counted after election night, you can see why it stands to reason that the Greens vote might seem lower than expected at first, but climbs steadily as the count moves on.

This is fascinating, and the good news is that as those pre-polls and absentee votes come in, the Greens are doing very well in ACT — potentially enough for Kerrie Tucker to overtake the Liberal candidate! In Victoria, Richard di Natale has a good chance too, especially considering there were three very Greens-friendly events on that weekend: Queenscliff Music Festival, Earthcore and the Great Victorian Bike Ride.

If they can pick up at least one of these seats, they would represent one fewer Liberal senator, meaning that Labor wouldn’t have to negotiate with Family First (they’d still need all the Greens and Nick Xenophon, or a National or Liberal to vote with them); if they pick up both of these, the Greens would hold the balance of power on their own, meaning that they would be the only group (other than the Liberals) who would have the power on their own to negotiate with Labor over policy details. As it stands, Labor would either need the Libs to vote with them, or would need all the Greens plus Xenophon plus Family First in order to get anything through the senate…

In the comments to Tim’s senate post (which also accounces the awesome fact that the Greens are projected to end up with something like 1,080,000 first preference votes in the Senate — yes, well over a million!), there’s a discussion initiated by Rob Mailler (who apparently has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about this) suggesting that the Greens should moderate some of their “lower priority messages” in order to gain a small proportion more of the vote (and presumably thus get an extra senator through). The discussion has revolved around whether the pragmatic choice of toning down other policies in order to best serve the climate change agenda is desirable.

I’m interested in this question of “principle vs pragmatism”. I think there’s an issue that all “framers” face, which is one of identifying what one’s ultimate aim is. Framing is all very well if you’re attempting to convince a group of people of one or two simple points. You find a way of coming at it from a point of common ground, using terminology that simply and effectively makes your point of view attractive. It’s like that with all rhetoric; it’s not meant for conveying nuanced, complicated matters, nor for convincing people of a multitude of policy matters all at once.
In the science blogosphere lately there’s been lots of heated argument about framing vis-à-vis “The New Atheists”. Some feel that the strident promotion of atheism by various recent writers damages the chances of promoting science to more moderate/open religious believers, tainting it by association by implying that science equals atheism. To best represent science to the masses, we should downplay our atheist beliefs.
There are two things to point out here to the so-called “appeasers” (a horrible term, by the way). First is that with works like Dawkins’s The God Delusion and others recently, the aim is to help atheists “come out” - quite literally to “promote” atheism; if this conflicts with science-framers’ perceived maximisation of science’s attractiveness, then so be it, the atheism-popularisers might say.
But of course the other issue the atheists will bring up is whether the science-popularisers are right about atheism’s unpalatability - i.e. does strident atheism really taint science? Both of these points have meant that the atheists and the science-framers have been arguing at cross-purposes, but there is a very real problem in working out how to keep on-message about a number of issues at once.

In any case, this might be a bit of a furphy when it comes to “New Atheism vs framing of science”; there should be — and is — room for many different voices, and the occasional clashes that occur when one voice says “taking science seriously must mean abandoning belief in God” and another says “Look here, your belief in God doesn’t preclude taking evolution seriously!” are acceptable. Most people have minds of their own, and can choose to say “Well I don’t like that Dawkins chap, but the nice Mr Wilson is saying some interesting things. Maybe I should give evolution another look!” (This would be sad, since Dawkins is one of the most misrepresented thinkers in the world, but that’s another blog post…)

A political party, however, needs to present a coherent and united front. Indeed, some Greens candidates & party members’ failure to stay on-point has been mentioned as a drawback for them, and it’s true that the Greens should make sure their representatives don’t muddy the waters. In the case of this discussion, what’s being suggested is that they take a pragmatic approach whereby they become more populist in some of their policies in order to give themselves more of an opportunity to effect real change with regards to what might be considered their “core” policy of combating climate change.
But of course the fact is that the Greens don’t want to be a single-issue party. In fact, being just the “climate change” party is damaging to the Greens — having detailed, well-thought-out policies across the board is a real plus. Certainly if it turned out that some minor policy point was turning away a significant number of votes that they might otherwise capture (such as an Inheritance Tax), it might be worth dropping. But I would’ve thought that there are worse barriers to mainstream acceptance: their eminently sensible and undroppable drugs policy, focusing on harm-minimisation is one, as the murdochs never hesitate to bring up the spectre of “injecting rooms on every corner”. Here’s a case where if they dropped this policy they could very well grab a bunch more votes, but that’s the last thing they’d want to do!

How the Greens can combat the frankly ridiculous idea that they’re “extreme Left”, that they’re just a bunch of drug-loving, tree-hugging hippies, or a socialist front, I’m not sure. But the best way is simply to get more and more air-time to publicise their views on a whole range of matters, which will come with balance of power (hopefully!) and the gradual increase in votes. Finding ways whenever they’re given air-time to convey simple facts like the inaccuracy of early media reports on the Greens’ success, finding ways to frame harm-minimisation that can strongly combat the “War on Drugs”/”Tough on Drugs” imagery that’s been so effectively framed by the right; these are important. I’ve been mostly very impressed with Bob Brown when I’ve seen him or heard him in the media of late, but I think there’s still plenty of room for improvement…
Plus of course an excellent initiative like GreensBlog can only help :)

Here’s to the future!
(and methinks I really should become a member of the Greens so I can stop talking about them in the 3rd person…)

4 Responses to “Greens senate chances and pragmatism”

1. Benjamin says:
   November 29th, 2007 at 12:31 pm

   points well made - you should join indeed.

   there’s an interesting idea in here, if not particularly well put:

   http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/11/28/1196036982629.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

2. Michael says:
   November 29th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

   If they don’t want to be tainted as a “one policy party” then the first thing the Greens should do is change their name. The second thing they should do is *not* have a whole lot of “stop the pulp mill” placards (and nothing else) behind Bob Brown when he’s crossed to during an election broadcast. The Greens should be big enough and experienced enough by now to either attract and/or hire enough sensible media minders to not come across as the “loony left tree huggers” that they unfortunately still present as occasionally. (Mostly even?)

   As the Democrats have imploded over the last 5 years or so their old voters have obviously been split between Labor and the Greens. I’d hazard a guess that it’s stuff like the above which sent most of the Labor-defectors in that direction.

3. Peter says:
   November 29th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

   It may be that having “stop the pulp mill” placards was a bad idea, but I guess the pulp mill *was* a huge issue in this election. I don’t think it’s going too far to suggest that people voting Green as a protest against the pulp mill helped deliver the election to Labor. (I’m not suggesting it was the deciding factor.)

   The “Greens” name is perhaps a challenge, and I’m sure there’s heated debate about that in their policy rooms. But then, “Labor” is a reasonably charged name too, and one that in a sense allows the conservatives to bring up the spectre of union control all the time. I’m sure that most Greens would be happy to accept environmentalism as central to the Greens platform, and I’m not sure the name in itself is a liability.

   Loony left tree-huggers as the primary image of Greens supporters I can see being a bad thing, sure. That said, I’m pretty sure that *the* major reason that the Greens didn’t pick up as many of the Democrat cotes this time is that a lot of people just felt that “it was time” for Labor. And unfortunately a lot of people don’t understand that they can vote for Labor by voting Green.

4. Michael says:
   December 5th, 2007 at 9:38 am

   Was the pulp mill really that big an issue? In Tasmania, maybe. But it didn’t affect Turnbull in Wentworth at all, and Labor obviously did quite alright with a “Yes” to the Pulp Mill stance, but a stronger anti-Climate Change policy. This was a “big issues” election, and the pulp mill ended up being a local issue.

   Really, when you think about it, there’s not a correctly named major party in Australia: The Liberals are no longer liberal, the Nationals only represent a fraction of the nation (though in some states they’re still known as the “National Country Party”, which is more accurate, so long as you equate “country” with “bush”), the Greens are no longer just about being Green, and the Democrats certainly haven’t been helping democracy for quite some time.

   At least with the “Pauline Party” you got exactly what was on the label!