If Labor Wants to Win, Why Don't They Just Team Up With the Greens?

The only thing everyone agrees about this federal election is how damn boring it is. The uninspiring battle between Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten has failed to capture the public's imagination, with more Australians tuning in to watch MasterChef than our two potential prime ministers going head-to-head in a policy debate.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon even dubbed this year's campaign the "Seinfeld election"—an election about nothing at all.

But scratch beneath the surface and there are some genuinely fascinating ideological battles underway. Because what's way more exciting than the federal contest between the Coalition and Labor, is the fight between Labor and the Greens that's playing out across the inner city Melbourne and Sydney.

Labor kicked things off by accusing the Greens of doing a preference deal with the Liberal Party. The Greens responded by accusing Labor of doing a deal with the Liberals right back. It's been a brutal, messy fight. But why are these two seemingly aligned parties so intent on tearing one another apart?

Well, the catalyst for the fight is the rising power of the Greens. After winning the federal seat of Melbourne in 2010, the minor party has gone on to win Melbourne and Prahran in the Victorian state elections, and Balmain, Newtown, and Ballina in NSW.

This year the Greens are targeting seats such as Batman and Wills in inner city Melbourne, and Grayndler and Sydney in inner city Sydney—seats that have traditionally been safe territory for Labor. The ALP is desperate to hang onto these seats, not least because they're home to politicians touted as future party leaders like Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek.

The end game is a situation where both parties are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars smashing each other to bits, while the Liberal and National parties work together in a formal coalition—all of their resources focused on winning government.

The obvious solution would be to team up—create a progressive coalition that would easily win the election, going by recent poll figures. Right now Essential Research puts the Coalition's primary vote, pooling support for the Liberals at the Nationals, at 41 percent. Labor is trailing with 36 percent, but could get a nine percent bump from the Greens—coming out with the 45 percent primary vote.

Adam Bandt, the federal member for the seat of Melbourne—and the only current Greens member of the House of Representatives—declared he was open to a Greens coalition with Labor on a recent episode of the ABC's Q&A. But he admits to VICE that while "progressive voters would like to see Labor and the Greens co-operating…many in Labor would prefer working with the Liberals than the Greens."

However, the Greens and Labor have teamed up before. Of course in 2010, when they helped Julia Gillard form government, as well as right now in the ACT, where the two parties are governing as a coalition. Still the idea of a more formal, ongoing federal partnership seems remote.

"The reality is Labor and the Greens are stuck in a 'prisoner's dilemma,'" explains Shaun Crowe, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University researching the relationship between the two parties. He's talking about the popular economics concept—part of game theory—that says two actors would be better off if they co-operated, but human selfishness and fear of risk ends up leaving both worse off.

"The ideal scenario involves cooperation, but each party knows if they're the first to move, they might lose out completely," Shaun says. "For Labor, it means losing prize seats. For the Greens, it means halting their slow march into the House of Representatives."

Bandt says it's Labor that's being aggressive towards the Greens, and sees this as a sign that the party is feeling the heat. "Some within Labor have sharpened their campaigns a bit more this time around and they are really feeling the pressure," he told VICE. "Labor thinks there are votes in distancing itself from the Greens."

But, of course, the aggression isn't all one way. And while both parties defend their attacks on one another, there's no question they are locked in trench warfare across the inner cities of Melbourne and Sydney.

Shaun Crowe at the ANU thinks that in an ideal world Labor and the Greens would be able to pool their resources together to fight the Coalition, rather than taking aim at each other. But this would require more "maturity from Labor and magnanimity from the Greens."

"I'm not holding my breath," he says.

Over the next month it's likely we're going to see the tension between Labor and the Greens increase even further. As the contest in the key inner city seats gets tougher, the campaign will get messier and more personal. Even though the Liberal and National parties have their fair share of policy fights and disagreements, they tend to keep them quiet during election campaigns and focus on the bigger picture—winning government.

Rationally, it might make sense for Labor and the Greens to work more collaboratively during election campaigns, and in Parliament. But politics has never been about acting rationally—it's a pursuit dominated by emotion. And in both parties, competing emotions and values run high. Well, at least it's adding a bit of excitement to this dull and dry election.

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