From today’s Crikey email:
Here in progressive inner city Brisbane, we’re proudly in advance of the rest of the nation in actually having an election – we vote on Saturday in the Brisbane Central by-election caused by the resignation from Queensland Parliament of Peter Beattie.
In many ways, it was a pity that the Family First candidate didn’t show up for the candidates’ debate at the New Farm Neighbourhood Centre’s Politics in the Pub at the Brunswick Hotel last night.
He might have questioned the prevailing narrative that the Greens always line up on the left.
Greens candidate Anne Boccabella has been open in Brisbane media that she is seeking Liberal votes in the by-election the actually existing Liberals are either too cash strapped or too cowardly to contest, depending on which story from the leaky Liberal boat you believe.
Labor’s Grace Grace is the current secretary of the Queensland Council of Unions, and previously worked as a staffer in the Keating government and as a union organiser for the FSU. The Greens are keen to highlight her background and to point out that her candidacy was imposed on local branches by head office. But Greens candidate Anne Boccabella is also at pains to highlight her own background running a small business, and she’s making much of the contrast with Team Bligh member Grace.
Boccabella emphasises that the Greens “transcend Left and Right� but she also hammers the point that the Queensland ALP parliamentary ranks contain many former union officials. It’s hard not to hear an echo of the Howard/Hockey line about the “union domination� of the federal ALP.
There were some odd federal parallels at work last night. Boccabella, like Rudd, went to ANU, and spent time working for Foreign Affairs. Grace Grace responded to questions about local issues relating to liquor licensing, property development and Beattie’s international Sunshine State biz spruiking by explaining that she hadn’t “been briefed�, just as Kevin who’s also from Queensland and who is here to help may have said.
Pragmatically, Boccabella’s line of attack on Labor makes sense. Bligh’s honeymoon popularity means that many of the state issues that may have inspired a protest vote have been dissipated precisely because Beattie is gone. The Greens might have been better positioned for a win in Brisbane Central had the Libs got their act together and run a candidate. But the most appealing tactics – to an electorate largely disinterested and turned off politics by the never-ending federal phoney campaign – are to hammer Beattie as having neglected the local in “local member�. Hence Boccabella emphasises her record as a community activist.
Brisbane Central can’t be taken for granted in the long term by Labor. But Grace Grace will probably cruise to victory on Saturday. Interestingly, though, one of Boccabella’s talking points is that she faced a contested preselection while Grace was imposed on Labor branch members by head office. What this points to, along with Boccabella’s sincerely held pro-business views, is that the Greens are a more interesting and complex beast than the caricature of “the alienated Labor Left�. It’s worth remembering that the German Greens, in some Länder, govern in coalition with the centre-right Christian Democrats.
Update: Videos of Grace and Boccabella’s speeches and segments of the questions have now been posted here.
“Labor’s Grace Grace”
What’s her middle name?
Interesting.
As a slight diversion, I picked up “Greenvoice”, 8 page Greens newspaper/leaflet this morning on the train in Sydney. The March edition of Greenvoice is at this link: http://nsw.greens.org.au/materials/Greenvoice.pdf – NB the current edition doesn’t seem to be on their website.
What struck me about Greenvoice is how similar it felt to Green Left Weekly – much of the rhetoric seemed similar. For example, the first two paras of the lead story “Shred WorkChoices” are:
Why do you think this, Mark? The Greens may well pick up a lot of otherwise Liberal tactical votes and a lot of Liberal preferences may have exhausted if they had stood, assuming that the Greens were ahead of the Libs at the key point in the count.
The Nats and Libs have copped a roasting over the past two days in Question time for not standing a candidate but the wierdest thing has been the Libs attack on a Gold Coast needle Service by the Member for Currumbin and Flegg.
Hard to know if it is a determined push to lower health standards by the Libs or another case of them being lost and out of touch. See page 3335. Scary stuff!
“to an electorate largely disinterested”
Without meaning to be petty, but actually being petty, I think you mean “uninterested”.
Sacha, probably because the Liberals know that they only got a few more points than the Greens at the election proper last year. If the Greens had’ve ended ahead of the Liberals, I’m sure enough Liberals would like to stop a union official being elected to raise the Greens’ vote a bit. It’s not a guarantee that the Greens would win, though, but it certainly raises an interesting anti-ALP question.
In the Victorian state election, the rumour was that the Greens and Liberals had done a deal for the inner city seats. Knowing that they didn’t stand much of a chance, the Libs preferenced the Greens in an attempt to unseat Labor members. Labor faces criticism from “the left” in the Greens and from “the right” from the Liberals. I’m sure the Greens would rather see Labor elected than the Greens but it’s looking like the Liberals would rather see the Greens elected than Labor (Tasmania of course, being the quite obvious exception).
I think the Libs are spineless for not running in the recent by-elections. It makes it look like they’re afraid to face the electorate. I also think it’s poor form on the part of Family First to not participate in the recent forums (QCC’s “Our Future” and last night’s “Politics in the Pub”). Perhaps they are banking on people voting for them based on their friendly name and happy smiles and that if the actual meat of their policies got out, they’d be completely out of the running.
Last night wasn’t too bad, all in all. I still don’t understand why Grace Grace’s family cheered so much when she responded to my question with a promise to vote along party lines no matter what. Is party unity that much more important than principle? Rudd (with McClelland) and Garrett (with nukes and Pine Gap) seem to indicate that to be the case.
Your petty pedantry pays off, Mr Lefty. Right you are!
It was interesting when I attended this meeting that national party supporters were saying that the Greens candidate was their choice. I’d guess that this is the ABL (anyone but Labor) stance. But I could be wrong.
She doesn’t know me very well, does she?
Whenever I hear someone say the Greens “transcend Left and Right” (or more often “neither left nor right but out in front”, my immediate question is whether they don’t understand the Greens, or don’t understand what left and right mean.
Fortunately, in the majority of cases, its the latter. You get some very interesting responses when you ask people to define “left” – most come out with responses that don’t stand up to even a moment’s thought.
I don’t know whether Boccabella simply hasn’t thought out what the terms mean, actually has politics that are well to the right of most Greens, or is just putting this spin on because with no Liberal candidate those are the voters worth targetting. Hopefully its the first.
I think it may be all three, feral.
Update: Videos of Grace and Boccabella’s speeches and segments of the questions have now been posted here.