By Paul Strangio
The preference decision reflects the impossibility of a Coalition-Greens alliance.
Since Adam Bandt's historic victory in the federal seat of Melbourne in August, the spectre of the irresistible march of the Greens has hung over the Victorian state election, spooking the major parties and bewitching commentators. Yet, in a single stroke, the Liberal Party, if not exactly exorcising that demon, has given it a far less ominous hue.
The Liberals' decision to preference Labor before the Greens in all Legislative Assembly seats has drastically reduced the Greens' prospects of winning the inner-city electorates that have been the focal point of so much calculation and speculation in the election campaign.
To highlight the implications of the decision, it is instructive to revisit the results of the 2006 state election in the seats of Melbourne, Richmond and Brunswick, where the Greens went closest to victory.
In the two-party preferred contest between Labor and the Greens, and with Liberal preferences directed to the latter, the ALP only narrowly prevailed, despite winning 44.6 per cent of the primary vote in Melbourne, 46.4 per cent in Richmond and 47.7 per cent in Brunswick. The corresponding votes for the Greens were 27.4 per cent, 24.7 per cent and 29.7 per cent.
This time, however, the scenario will be effectively inverted - it is the Greens that will require a primary vote above the 40 per cent range for victory, approaching a 20 percentage point increase on their 2006 result.
Interpretations of the Liberal decision are likely to vary. For the party, it provides the guise of having stood on principle by refusing to fraternise with an implacable ideological foe, and potentially shrouds Ted Baillieu in a statesman-like aura for having risen above the expedient compromises that are the stuff of preference arrangements. Baillieu's reticence yesterday, however, in owning the decision undermined that advantage.
Clearly, there were also pragmatic imperatives behind the decision. Baillieu has consistently said he struggled to conceive of a Liberal-Greens alliance in a situation in which the Greens held the balance of power in a hung parliament, and this belief would have been reinforced by Sunday's news of a preference arrangement between the ALP and the Greens.
The logical extension is the Liberals have assumed that to form government following November 27, the Coalition has to win 13 lower house seats in its own right and not rely on the Greens to make up any shortfall. The decision on preferences formalises this reality and clarifies the contest.
Furthermore, by not directing preferences to the Greens, the Liberal Party has, at least in the short term, cauterised disunity in Coalition ranks. Since the federal election, it has been clear that powerful elements in the Liberal Party regarded what had happened in the federal electorate of Melbourne - when Bandt was elected on Liberal preferences - as the equivalent of supping with the devil, and they were determined that this not be repeated at the state election.
We should also not overlook the National Party's influence. In an election in which the Greens have hogged the minor-party limelight, the Nationals have been almost reduced to the forgotten player, and the reformation of their coalition with the Liberals has been overshadowed.
Relations between the Liberals and Nationals have historically been tempestuous in Victoria and, most recently, they endured a prolonged estrangement following the Kennett government's defeat. In a repeat of the cycle of the 1980s, an extended spell in opposition has forced the Liberals and Nationals to recognise that their best chance of regaining government is to join forces.
But the reconciliation would have come under pressure over any preference arrangement between the Liberals and Greens. On a whole range of policy questions, the Nationals regard the Greens as anathema.
For the Greens, meanwhile, the decision is already being construed as further proof that the practices of the major parties resemble those of a cartel that will resort to dastardly means to preserve their duopoly. The Greens are also insisting they are still capable of seizing inner-city seats.
Yet they will realise that their best chance of representation in the Parliament lies once more in the upper house, which is elected on proportion representation rather than the single-member preferential system of the lower house. It was Labor's landmark 2003 reforms to the upper house that made this a reality - changes that the Liberal and National parties bitterly resisted. Like the Liberals' decision on preferences, it's a reminder of which players in this race are the more natural allies - and which would be strangest bedfellows.
Paul Strangio is a senior lecturer in politics at Monash University .