Greens snub may help Labor cling to power

Two polls at the weekend showed the danger facing Premier John Brumby's Labor Government. Photo / Getty Images

The Greens juggernaut that appeared to be gathering pace across Australia has hit an abrupt wall in Victoria, which goes to the polls on Saturday week.

Dissatisfaction with both Labor and the Coalition has seen support rise for the party in most states, soaring in the August federal election to undermine Prime Minister Julia Gillard's Labor Government and help produce a hung Parliament.

The Greens won their first Lower House seat, and from next July will hold the balance of power in the Senate.

Polling trends suggested similar support in Victoria could put four Greens MPs in the State's Legislative Assembly and increase their present total of three Upper House seats.

But a surprise decision by the Coalition against directing preferences to the Greens in any of the 88 Lower House seats has all but destroyed the party's ambitions, and may even help the 11-year-old Labor Government cling to power.

Before the Coalition's announcement, Victoria appeared to be heading towards a hung parliament in which the Greens were likely to have become kingmakers.

Premier John Brumby's Labor Government was under fierce and telling attack on its financial management, its water and environmental policies, and rapidly rising costs, especially for electricity and gas.

Two polls at the weekend showed the danger facing Brumby.

A Newspoll in the Australian put two-party preferred support for Labor at 51 per cent, only two ahead of the Coalition.

In the Age, a Nielsen poll widened Labor's lead to four points, with the Government's two-party preferred vote at 52 per cent against the Coalition's 48 per cent.

But the poll - which still put Brumby well ahead of Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu as preferred leader - predicted the Greens would win 16 per cent of primary votes and gain Lower House MPs for the first time.

Those gains would have been made at Labor's expense, taking marginal inner-city Melbourne seats from the Government as Adam Bandt, the party's first federal MP, did in the August election.

But it was a complex equation. Labor needs Greens preferences to win sufficient seats to hold power, as it did at the last state election, and the Greens need Labor preferences in the Upper House.

But to win Lower House seats the Greens needed to attract Opposition preferences, in return for which the Coalition wanted the Greens to deny Labor support in marginal seats.

The politics were brutal. Labor had decided to put the conservative Coalition party Country Alliance ahead of the Greens in some regional Upper House areas, last week sparking retaliation in which the Greens intended to direct preferences away from Labor in two Lower House marginals.

Relations between the two parties dived to a new low.

Within the Coalition, anger was rising at the prospect of supporting the Greens in any way, even if some kind of preference deal could help defeat the Government. The Opposition has now decided to act alone.

Political analysts say this all but dooms the Greens' hopes of winning seats in the Legislative Assembly, and boosts Brumby's chances.

But the Greens deny they have been stumped and believe voters in key inner-city marginals will ignore the main parties and support them.