Greens leader Bob Brown. Photo by Rodger Cummins/The Age. ?
Labor and the Coalition need to recognise that the Greens are part of political reality, writes Norman Abjorensen. These are unusual political times. A government without a majority in either house of the parliament clings to office with tenuous support from two rural independents, a maverick and a Green - not the sort of arrangement that suggests longevity or any sort of basis for a coherent legislative program. Partly as a result, the ship of state is wallowing in the political doldrums. Opposition leader Tony Abbott has made no secret of the fact that he isn?t content to sit back and wait for the election in 2013, and if he can force an early poll then he will do whatever he can to achieve it. To date, he has been singularly successful in setting the agenda to which a hapless government is forced to react, most notably on the issues of the carbon tax and asylum seekers. The political effect of Abbott's unrelenting pressure ' and while he might be light on in the policy stakes he is a formidable political warrior - has been to drive the government further to the right and close any perceived gaps between what it says and does and what the Coalition defines as orthodoxy.
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