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The return of the political wedgie: is this the Greens' GST moment?

By Reece Kirwin - posted Monday, 29 June 2009


This kind of pressure raises the question of whether the issue of climate change, and the government’s attempt to wedge the Greens might well be their own “GST moment”.

There are important differences in terms of this wedge. The politics of climate change has revealed simmering ideological tensions within the Liberal Party: the absence of a strong leader; a determined Labor Government; and a community wanting serious action on climate change meaning these tensions will cause continuing problems for the Coalition.

However, the environment movement is a different prospect. The history of environmental politics in Australia demonstrates remarkably little ideological discord within the environment movement, particularly in recent years where the Howard government’s agenda served to solidify a progressive environmental agenda. Indeed the policies of the environment movement are broadly similar to that of the Greens and are in stark contrast to the two major parties. The strength of the Greens is their lack of ideological discord which is remarkable for a party of the left. The divisive politics of the Howard years served to solidify the ideological coherence of the Greens, and so far the Rudd Government’s climate change agenda has only caused further strengthening rather than produced any meaningful divisions.

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In this respect the wedge formula will not work against the Greens on the politics of climate change. The differences here are not so much ideological but strategic. Indeed, if one looks at the two environmental camps on the issue of climate change, they represent the traditional strategic differences within the environment movement: between organisations such as WWF and ACF which are predisposed to working within the corridors of power to effect political change, and organisations such as Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society who have traditionally taken an activist and extra-parliamentary strategy to effect political and social change.

The policies between these two camps remain remarkably similar, and the rhetoric of figures such as Bob Brown and Don Henry has been conciliatory rather than combative. This is in stark contrast to the divisive, and one would think, irreconcilable rhetoric that defines the split within the Coalition on this issue.

The politics of climate change highlights the evolving role of the Greens in the Australian political landscape. It is unlikely that the politics of climate change has created lasting ideological differences, and the strategic differences are not insurmountable. Into the future, Green politics will be characterised by the management of this strategic tension between their activist identity and their new role as parliamentary operators. However, their ability to smooth over strategic differences is due to their agreement on basic principles and policies and in the near term this will mitigate the destructive formula of wedge politics.

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About the Author

Reece Kirwin is a PhD candidate in politics at the University of Melbourne. He is writing a thesis on the ideological transformation of green parties in Australia and Germany.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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