The new aspiration of the Greens to be seen as an alternative party of government, rather than as a left-wing prod on the Labor Party flank is a worthy one, capable over time of being realised. It's not inevitable.

It requires reorientation of the Greens, at both parliamentary and organisational level, and more unity of purpose and policy development. But its future cannot be defined by a sneering Labor Party.

It would involve a new working relationship or set of bargains around the achievement of Labor's agenda. And as well, a Greens agenda. Labor itself should consider an entirely different approach.

The attractive point about the Greens for potential supporters is continuing policy idealism and purity of heart, particularly on a few key issues such as the environment, human rights, immigration and open, honest government. Its adherence to such principles has seen it labelled a mere party of protest, impractical and a party prepared to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Anthony Albanese, whose electorate is in a natural Green heartland, is particularly fond of finding points of difference with the Greens. He paints himself as the one whose fierce practicality pushes him to follow his head rather than his heart when jobs are at risk, or, as he would put it, when ideology has gone mad. All too often, however, his arguments have been mere rationalisations for often shameless retreats from principle, and from the evidence in front of his eyes.

Albanese has shifted his party sharply to the right in pursuit of his aim of making Labor "the natural party of government". Doing so is helping to squeeze the Coalition between Labor and Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. Not coincidentally his policy shifts have made Labor more attractive to an array of fundamentally anti-Labor vested interests and put Labor in their thrall. Mates, cronies, party donors, lobbyists and insiders work to the disadvantage of the interests of the constituencies he has pretended to champion. Albanese knows this but thinks he can get away with it.

Those fashioning the pitch for the Greens as a party of wider influence would argue that Albanese and Labor can no longer be seen to be a progressive party, or a socially democratic one. Labor's internal administrative structures have atrophied, to the benefit of party insiders, who have always included Albanese himself. The party conference is about as responsible to or responsive to a wider Labor membership as the Chinese Communist Party. As in China, party meetings are stage-managed to predetermined conclusions.

Is this an Albanese Liberal government, or a Labor one?

Many of Labor's old constituents see the broad policies of the Albanese government as being in no significant way different from those of the Coalition parties which preceded it.

It has become at least as deceitful and dishonest about sincere action on climate change. It is now the party of big coal and big gas. Nearly always, more frequently under present environment management, the interests of the fossil fuels industry, and their subsidiary the West Australian government, will be preferred over environmental, heritage or Aboriginal interests. That the handmaiden of this surrender is the environment minister sharpens the raised digit to the Greens and Australians who care.

Greens wanting to be regarded as an alternative party of government must wrench votes from Labor, and by sharp criticism and differentiation. They must want to become the main player in a governing coalition, or to knock Labor out of the ring altogether.

The latter might seem an impossible goal, but the fate of the Liberals, and probably soon too, the National Party, provides an Australian example of how quickly circumstances can change.

Elsewhere around the world, old mainstream parties of the centre-left and centre-right are collapsing. Demagogues such as Trump have captured their parties. The rise of One Nation (or, in Britain,........

© Canberra Times