Gerrymander cruels upper house chances

LYNN MacLAREN admits there’s some soul searching going on amongst Greens after the party was steamrolled by the conservatives at the state election a fortnight ago.

On Tuesday this week the south metropolitan veteran was confirmed as one of only two Greens MPs to survive in the upper house.

Ms MacLaren again snagged the sprawling region’s sixth spot on the back of preferences from Labor and independent mental health campaigner Keith Wilson.

Despite losing party heavyweight Giz Watson and veteran Alison Xamon, the party won’t be ditching its values, she says.

The rethink will be more centred on matters like communication and tactics.

There could also be renewed efforts to pick up a lower house seat, given the upper house gerrymander has entrenched the conservative vote and given the Greens little chance of ever again holding the balance of power.

When Labor was in power in 2005 the Greens briefly held the balance of power in the upper house, which then-attorney general Jim McGinty used to get one-vote one-value through for the lower house.

However, to his surprise and alarm he was unable to convince the Greens to back upper house reform as well.

As a result, an MLC for mining and pastoral region still only needs half the votes that someone in south metro requires, effectively giving regional voters twice the voting power of Perth voters.

Mr McGinty once bitterly told the Herald the Greens had condemned themselves to a generation of irrelevance.

With the upper house now overwhelmingly dominated by socially conservative Liberal, National and Shooters’ MLCs, it is unlikely to pass socially progressive legislation for the forseeable future.

Ms MacLaren was tight-lipped on the Greens’ thinking, other than to say Mr McGinty hadn’t offered regional voters compensation for losing their unequal representation.

Nonetheless she maintains her party supports one-vote, one-value. She believes the malapportionment played little part on March 9.

“I think the biggest factor was that we’ve got a strong economy while there’s a globally precarious economic position and people were nervous to change,” she says.

She says Fremantle still remains in reach for the party, despite the 8.9 per cent swing against it, and notes it polls well in Willagee, Perth, Mt Lawley and Maylands. The Kimberley has proved a good hunting ground this time around, with opposition to proposed industrial development giving the party a sniff of victory.

But a closer look at Fremantle shows the Liberals score only slightly less than Labor on primary votes (36 to 38.2 per cent), so it’s hard to see the Greens (18.2 per cent) clambering above either to avoid early elimination. As for the other seats, the Greens suffered a 6.5 per cent swing in Perth, 3.6 in Mt Lawley and 6.7 in Maylands—all of it going to the Liberals.

Ms MacLaren said another tactic the Greens may employ is to comment more on bills introduced to the lower house.

She says the media often doesn’t think to ask the Greens’ thoughts on issues until bills reach the upper house, by which time public debate has moved on.

“It’s difficult for us to get our message out, because we have scarce resources,” she says. “What was missed and what went under the radar during the election were issues the Greens led on like affordable housing and renewable energy.

“I mean, Scott [Ludlam’s] renewable energy package managed to get one story in the West.”

Ms MacLaren bemoans the fact the environment didn’t feature in the campaign. “No-one in the campaign raised climate change other than us,” she says. “Where was the vision and where was the media? The media was absent.”

And as to the Greens’ hopes for this electoral cycle: “I’m hoping that we can weather the storm in the next four years.”

She says this will be a bad time for democracy, as the government’s domination of parliamentary committees means there’ll be less real scrutiny.

Even in his first term leading a minority government Colin Barnett showed little enthusiasm for the committees, she says. The premier has also stopped referring bills to the children’s commissioner, which she says is a travesty.

by STEVE GRANT