Coming of Age? Australian Greens After the GFC

Despite Australia surviving the GFC better than most OECD nations, there was a voter backlash against the incumbent Labor government to the extent that Prime Minister Rudd was deposed by his deputy, Julia Gillard. The backlash benefited the Australian Greens, who, after the 2010 election, gained both a share of the balance of power in the Lower House of Representatives and the balance of power in the Australian Senate. This paper examines this ‘coming of age’ of the Australian Greens in terms of reaching the threshold of parliamentary representation (Pedersen 1982; Muller-Rommell 1998,2002), and considers the extent to which green economic policies may have been a factor. Green political history and electoral trends in Australia are examined, as is the Green policy response to the GFC, and influential factors in the 2012 election campaign that may help to explain the Greens’ political success. It is argued that the Australian Greens are a pragmatic party, which has been successful over the last two decades in expanding the scope of its threshold of relevance beyond environmental issues. The Greens have had a major recent impact in negotiating the adoption in 2012 of a carbon tax, but only since the GFC have they turned their attention to the need to develop economic credentials.