Can the Greens take Balmain and Marrickville in 2011?

Will 2011 see the Greens break a 38-year electoral drought for minor parties? The Greens’ task may not seem too difficult. In 2007, the Greens won 30 per cent of the first preference vote in Balmain, behind Labor’s 39 per cent but ahead of the Liberals’ 24 per cent. In Marrickville, the Greens won 33 per cent to Labor’s 47 per cent, with the Liberals on just 12 per cent. After preference distributions, Labor won against the Greens in Balmain by 54 to 46 per cent and in Marrickville by 57 to 43 per cent.

It may seem obvious that the Greens will do better in 2011 than in 2007. Labor’s support in the polls has slumped across the State and looks unlikely to recover by March 2011. Nonetheless, Greens seat gains in 2011 are far from certain. They depend on five things.

The first is the local factor – the profile of candidates, the strength of local party branches and the nature of local issues.

By these measures, Labor Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbut in Marrickville seems to have an easier task than her colleague Verity Firth in Balmain.

The second is the parties’ campaign capacity. In 2011, Labor will have just fought an expensive federal election campaign and may well be left with few resources to help struggling sitting members. The Liberals will save up resources for a state election they hope to win but won’t throw much at Balmain or Marrickville. The Greens, however, are likely to target resources at these seats.

The third factor is where the disaffected Labor vote goes. Some Labor voters will turn to the Greens but others will see the election as a contest about who should govern NSW, and will shift to the Liberals.

This second possibility helps the Greens in Marrickville, where the Liberal vote is very weak, but may not help in Balmain, where a boost to the Liberal vote might push the Greens back into third place.

The fourth factor is the Liberal how-to vote card. The Greens would have won Port Jackson in 2003 and Balmain in 2007 had the Liberals decided to preference the Greens. Will the Liberals bite the bullet and preference the Greens in 2011? There are risks in doing so; however, they seem much smaller than the problems such a decision would cause Labor.

The final factor is the unpredictability of politics. The DLP’s 1973 victory in Gordon occurred only because the sitting Liberal MLA, Harry Jago, forgot to lodge his nomination form. No one is likely to repeat that elementary mistake; however, there will be other idiosyncrasies in the Balmain and Marrickville contests that make the outcome hard to predict.

Dr Rodney Smith teaches Australian Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Source: South Sydney Herald July 2009 www.southsydneyherald.com.au