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Green gains, labor pains: the greens will need to develop new campaign methods as they make further inroads into labor''s traditional support base.

Article Excerpt
After 113 years of political life, the Australian Labor Party is very adept at running election campaigns. However, although Labor has now contested hundreds of elections, its MPs have never been seriously tested at the ballot box from the left side of politics. While Australia has a plethora of left parties, it is only with the recent rise of the Greens that Labor has encountered a significant electoral threat from a party that does not sit to its right.

Currently, in 2003, seventeen Greens MPs hold seats in Federal, State and Territory parliaments. Most of the Greens' electoral gains have been in the Senate and State upper houses; but in a few once-safe Labor lower house seats the Greens are snapping at the heels of Labor MPs. Polling a strong primary vote, Greens candidates hl State seats, such as Melbourne and Port Jackson (in Sydney) were almost successful but preference flows were insufficient to push them ahead of the ALP. However, the Greens' win in the House of Representatives seat of Cunningham (near Wollongong, NSW) in a by-election in October 2002 shows what can be achieved.

With the two-party preferred vote between Labor and the Greens narrowing in these inner city seats, key Labor MPs were forced to consider how to stop what many see as inevitable: the loss of more once-safe Labor seats to the Greens.

Since the Victorian and NSW State elections, the polls have shown the Greens hovering around 8 per cent nationally. This suggests that in the Labor-Greens marginal seats the Greens' electoral support is holding....