Much is being said about the Greens’ ‘failure’ in the Queensland election. At the time of writing, the Greens have failed to win any new seats and likely lost one of the two seats they held. Already, mastheads are proclaiming that federal Greens leader Adam Bandt has been put on notice.
As Queensland Labor congratulates itself for holding its inner Brisbane seats – glossing over the slashed margins in those once-safe electorates, not to mention the outer suburban and regional seats that fell to the LNP and drove Labor out of government – there is a glaring truth hidden in plain sight.
Only one person has come close to acknowledging what happened: Michael Berkman, Greens MP for the university-dominated seat of Maiwar.
On election night, wedged between bouts of predictably overblown grandstanding about how the Greens had really, truly, if you hold it at arm’s length and squint, done exceptionally well, Berkman made a comment that exposed how far Labor has drifted from its once-proud status as the party for ordinary people.
He observed that in politics, winning can take many different forms, and sometimes you can still win even though you lose seats. He went on to say that whatever the final count, the Greens – and the constituency they represent – have won, because Labor has adopted so many of their policies.
He was right, but he also pulled back from the full truth, one that – curiously – pollsters, pundits, and self-styled political gurus have omitted from discussion.
There is no real need for people to vote Green anymore because the Labor left is firmly in ascendancy around Australia.
This is not just about Labor coddling a few vacuous, tattoo-covered women who are so desperate to be liked that they will adopt any cause going. Nor is it about tactically deploying a handful of policies crafted to placate the massively over-privileged vegan latte set. Sorry, I mean, ‘being progressive’ as left-leaning commentators like to term it, particularly when they call for more of it.
What has happened to Labor runs far, far deeper.
Climate lunacy. Astonishing attacks on farmers, miners, and the other industries that keep this country going. Transgender issues. Genuflecting to Indigenous mysticism. Sheer loathing for the rednecks outside the cities. A war on ‘masculinity’. Public health fascism. The endless Nanny state.
There is a reason why Labor around the country has adopted, wholesale, almost all of the Greens’ obsessions, prejudices, and hatreds. As a surprisingly honest Laborite once let slip to me: ‘I joined Labor rather than the Greens because I want real power.’
Labor’s left and the Greens are indistinguishable. They have the same perpetual whining and pious thought bubbles, the same bandwagon-jumping, and the same never-ending obsession with identity and victimhood. They are one united, sanctimonious bloc that just happens to operate under two brands. The reason for this is because they come from a shallow – and narrow-minded – pool of people.
The dead giveaway in Queensland is that despite a few token mumblings about needing to do better outside Brisbane, still-standing Labor members appear unconcerned to see their colleagues losing seats in the outer suburbs and regions. They don’t like losing government, of course, but they seem oddly sanguine about how the geographic aftermath of that loss looks.
A real Labor party would care deeply about losing touch with the masses and start doing serious work to reverse its endless procession of city-centric, damaging, and alienating policies. A Labor-branded branch of the Greens would not, because having to govern for plebs outside the cosy intelligentsia bubble means having to moderate one’s views, genuinely listen to different opinions, and accept that diversity is about more than recruiting firmly Woke middle class professionals who have slightly differently coloured skin.
A counterfeit Labor party would, in fact, be glad to lose those awkward seats. Getting rid of them means less schism, less pressure, less dissent within the party room, and a clearer run for ever-greater flights of self-indulgence inside the echo chamber where the perennially petulant feel most at home.
Labor’s faux-attacks on the Greens, in Queensland and federally, are just a diversion. A cynic could even suggest that Labor doubling down on its own ‘progressivism’ is intended to draw attention to how well the Greens branch of Labor is operating, and damn the consequences for MPs outside its precious city enclaves.
Labor’s real voter problem lies within itself. Its already shrivelled right shrinks further by the day, and its false flag left thinks maintaining war on that emasculated right, along with perpetuating undergraduate ideologies and petty grievances, is the only game in town. Whether Labor can excise its gangrenous core is doubtful, and in all probability, it will not really try. But until and unless it does, it has little chance of regaining credibility with the very Australians it now needs the most.
Lillian Andrews writes about politics, society, feminism and anything else that interests her. You can find her on the site formerly known as Twitter @SaysAwfulThings.
