Labor flees to Opposition in Tasmania

The Greens have been a growing threat to the Labor vote ever since the world's first Green party, the United Tasmania Group, formed in 1972 in a bid to stop Labor flooding Lake Pedder. Rather than green up in response, Labor has driven itself further away under the banner of resource exploitation.

But the electorate has moved way past hydro-industrialisation and resource exploitation as economic panaceas and resonates far more clearly with the Greens message of clean, green, clever industry. The battle over the proposed billion-dollar pulp mill in the Tamar Valley wine district was the last resort.

The Greens have also bought with them a push for open and accountable governance and an end to shady deals with favoured Labor mates that have dogged the Labor government in recent years and cost Ministers and Deputy Premiers their jobs, which has been tough for a nine-member Cabinet.

When David Bartlett was brought in as a clean skin Premier following the departure of the scandal ridden Paul Lennon, he brought with him Michael Field as a mentor. With Field came all the bad blood with the Greens and the baggage following the fall out of the Field minority government.

It will be Michael Field, now as a respected party elder, despite the drubbing received by David Bartlett in his care, who will be leading the flight into Opposition, where he would reckon that Labor can sit it out and watch a failed minority government deliver Labor back into power within two years.

And besides, the reasoning would go, Labor can dedicate itself to undermining a Liberal minority government and any arrangement it has with the Greens, and so accelerate its own return to power, as it did between 1996 and 1998 when the Liberals were last supported in power by the Greens.

The irony is that while Labor has the most to gain in electoral terms from attempting to reintegrate the green vote by addressing its own out of step environmental and development policies, it has instead dedicated itself to a burning enmity with the Greens borne of history and bad blood.

Labor's strategy will only work if history repeats itself. If the Liberals do not strike any deal with the Greens, the Labor caretaker government may be called on by the Governor to test their power on the floor of the House.

They can't give away government, but they can be voted down in parliament.

The Liberals are, however, ready to assume Government, and need to consider whether they would after 12 years in opposition court another election by failing to strike an arrangement with the Greens. If such an arrangement convinces the Governor and survives in the House, and then goes on to offer stability, longevity and policy productivity, then Labor's carping from the sidelines will fail.

This could be a turning point in Tasmanian politics.

If a deal between the Liberals and the Greens does deliver stability, reform, and fiscal responsibility, as has the deal in the ACT between Labor and the Greens, then the Liberals will have found their pathway to majority government, the Greens will garner respect, and Labor will become irrelevant.