The new Tasmanian Labor government now includes one Green minister and one Green cabinet secretary. The discussion of this development has been too narrow, failing to learn from the ACT experiment of Green support for a minority Labor government.
This neglects useful ACT lessons, including the current productive relations between the Greens and Labor, as well as the previous effective example of Independent Michael Moore serving as a minister in the Carnell Liberal government.
The discussion also neglects developments elsewhere, including the role of Independent and National Party ministers within the Rann Labor government in South Australia until the last election. Once again this produced stable and effective government. Only passing consideration is given to the Liberal-Nationals alliance in Western Australia which supports the Liberal government of Colin Barnett.
One consequence of these oversights, particularly of the ACT Greens, is that speculation on the likely role of the Greens in the new Tasmanian government has looked back two decades to the failed Labor-Green Accord in Tasmania. This encourages extravagant criticism of the Greens as Green devils. Admittedly Labor's David Bartlett before the Tasmanian election did describe the prospect of working in tandem with the Greens as like supping with the devil. But it is a silly choice of words.
Behind this criticism is an old-fashioned yearning for majoritarian rather than consensus government. It also reflects an unwillingness to recognise the Greens as a legitimate third party, representing not just 20 per cent of the Tasmanian electorate but 10 per cent (12 per cent in the latest Nielsen Poll) of the national electorate.
The party and the people they represent are not going to go away. The major parties and all supporters of majoritarian government must recognise this. Australian politics will benefit when the Greens are better integrated into the system rather than frozen out.
The Greens represent the views of a significant minority of Australians on many current issues, including sustainable economic growth, forestry policy, peace and war, refugees and asylum seekers and climate change.
The Greens can be difficult, uncompromising partners. Moreover many Greens are anti-system on economics and politics. They prefer to stand outside the mainstream rather than to be incorporated within it.
But the time will come when Labor-Green alliances of various sorts will be seen as just as normal as Liberal-National coalitions.
They will not be condemned as unworthy because of the size of the Green vote.