Labor announced its preference flows for all five Tasmanian Lower House seats on Monday, with the Greens listed as the party’s third preference in three seats.
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This limits the ability of the Greens to seize the vulnerable Melbourne Labor seats of Wills and Batman, the latter held by David Feeney, and the NSW seats of Grayndler and Sydney.
“While we think the Labor Party can do a lot better on the issues that matter to many Australians, like climate change and treating people seeking our help with decency, they are a better choice than the Liberals and Nationals”, a party spokesperson said. That’s good for the Blue team.
“The big risk in this election is that we would end up with an unstable, chaotic, Labor-Greens minority Government as we’ve seen before”.
Liberal preferences in 2010 helped elect Adam Bandt as the Greens MP in the seat of Melbourne.
The Liberals have dealt a blow to the Greens after preferencing Labor ahead of the environmental party on how-to-vote cards in lower house seats.
Dr Brown says Senator Xenophon, whose party poses a strong threat to the survival of Greens Senator Robert Simms, is a “very clever politician” but lacks substance on key issues.
Malcolm Turnbull declared on the weekend the Liberals would preference the Greens last across the country. Or are the Greens and the National Party getting screwed over? Green said Labor’s past record in controlling preferences in seats of this type was poor, largely because it didn’t campaign much in them. Former minister Jamie Briggs is most in danger losing his seat of Mayo, but even science and innovation minister Christopher Pyne is facing a close ballot in his seat of Sturt. Sources said the ALP at this stage had done no preference deal with either the Liberals or Xenophon in SA and is having an open ticket for the start of pre-polling. “This deal does everything it can to protect the duopoly the two major parties enjoy”.
Labor has confirmed it will run open tickets in South Australia when early voting opens on Tuesday but the decision has not placated Nick Xenophon, who has accused both major parties of behaving like a cartel.
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Victorian Liberals had been negotiating a deal with the Greens for several marginal Labor seats and state party president Michael Kroger said the decision to help Labor had been hard. In return, Labor would seek preferences in the seat of Hindmarsh, which is lost in the 2013 election.
