The 47th Australian parliament sees a seismic shift in the centre of political gravity from the conservative right to the vexed space between Labor and the Greens.
Most of those reading this column will love the sound of a progressive government. We will admire the work of elected representatives from both the ALP and the Greens and find ourselves agreeing with them on most things, most of the time.
As the lady behind the bar at Bob’s Country Bunker explains to the Blues Brothers when they rock into Kokomo: “We got both kinds [of music]: we got country AND western!”
But the closer you get to the centre of power in these two parties, the differences in genre become a chasm and the mutual disdain for the other band is visible. At its core the visceral enmity can be palpable.
Labor believes it does the heavy lifting of winning power and then governing. It doesn’t have the luxury of hardline conviction politics because it is charged with convincing the majority to trust it with office. To the Greens this just looks like a sellout of principles in the pursuit of power.
The Greens believe it has a right and, indeed, an obligation to demand better when an urgent intervention is required to save a threatened world. To Labor, this is indulgent performative politics that plays straight into the hands of conservatives.
These dynamics will come to a head with literally the first act of this new parliament: Labor’s bid to legislate its election commitment to end a decade of backsliding and legislate a carbon reduction target of 43% by 2030.
The size of the target was part of Labor’s election-winning strategy to minimise the sort of coal-Coalition scare campaigns of previous election cycles by building an incremental path to energy transition focused on action from the ground up like rewiring the energy grid.
The breakdown of climate negotiations in 2009 has become part of both parties’ lore. Labor has never forgiven the Greens for voting against the carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS); the Greens rightly counter that Labor refused to engage with them until the 11th hour after Turnbull was rolled by his own colleagues.
Regardless of who is right, and there is evidence they both are, it was a combined disaster that contributed to the premature destruction of a first-term Labor government and, ultimately, gave the Coalition a further decade of climate stasis.
Now we face déjà vu all over again, with the Greens demanding a negotiation of Labor’s legislation, arguing more ambition is necessary if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe.
According to this week’s Guardian Essential Report, twice as many Australians support the proposition that the legislation should go through with a minimum of fuss, providing the floor for more ambitious targets in the future.
What’s also striking in these numbers is that only 25% of voters support the Coalition position of doing nothing: this is actually the bigger story that the internal machinations on the left is clouding.
And here’s where it gets really interesting: in a separate question asked of only those 75% who support some form of action now, there is pretty much an even split between those who want the targets to be extended and those who think 43% is sufficient.
For both Labor and the Greens this will legitimately become a point of constructive friction over the life of this parliament. And it is how these differences play out that will have a profound impact on the ability of this centre-left government to govern sustainably.
In the past too often both sides have ended up regurgitating their real opponent’s (AKA the Coalition’s) attack lines on the other – that the Greens are mad extremists, that Labor is really no different from the Tories – until every policy disagreement becomes a moral judgment.
A similar tone is already being set. When the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, last week released the state of the environment report that the previous government had shamelessly sat on, it instantly became “a test for the minister” rather than “a crisis we need to work together to address”.
Meanwhile, otherwise sensible progressives tweet inanities such as “centrism is a death cult” and accusing Anthony Albanese of employing “the logic of a drug dealer”. For its part, Labor’s followers fall into treating the Greens as somewhere between an errant child and a bullied younger sibling who really belongs in the naughty corner.
Seriously! While Labor and the Greens are competitors for votes at election time, they are not opponents for government and should never become enemies.
It starts with recognising that once you take the helicopter out of the mire, these are two very different political movements, pursuing different theories of change.
Labor was created by unions at the end of the 19th century to form government to represent the interests of working people. The Greens are part of a late 20th century global protest movement that galvanised around specific environmental interventions, from acid rain in Germany to the damning of the Franklin in Tasmania.
Of course, they will attack issues where there are common values with different strategies; but at their core these objectives should be mutually reinforcing.
The next election will not be a contest over whether Labor should have done more on climate change. It will be about whether Peter Dutton can convince those bearing the brunt of an economic downturn that Labor has done too much.
To prevent this happening, both parties will have to recognise the best intentions of the other: the Greens will need to concede that Labor can deliver meaningful energy transition; Labor will need to affirm that the Greens are right in demanding we strive for more.
When explaining the differences between the two progressive parties I’ve sometimes turned to another celluloid musical classic, The Wizard of Oz: the ALP is the Tin Man in search of his heart whereas the Greens are the scarecrow lacking a brain.
Maybe the challenge for both parties is to take the journey of the lion and find the courage to risk their own subgenre in the interests of the broader progressive melody.
• Peter Lewis will discuss the latest Essential Report with Guardian Australian political editor Katharine Murphy and The Australia Institute deputy director Ebony Bennett at 1pm on Tuesday. Free registration here
