The Greens leadership team, Shane Rattenbury and Jo Clay, will face members. Photo: Region.
The possibility of forming a Greens-Liberal government will be discussed at an ACT Greens members meeting on Thursday night (29 January), but it is likely to get a hostile reception.
Leader Shane Rattenbury will front the meeting to explain the state of play and sound out whether there is member backing for continuing to talk to the Opposition about a possible power-sharing agreement.
But a prominent Greens member who spoke on condition of anonymity says there is unlikely to be much support for the idea, given the lack of common ground and trust between the two parties.
“I don’t think the members of either party would be terribly happy about it,” said the member, who also gave a devastating critique of the state of government and the Opposition in the ACT.
They said the Greens could not trust the Liberals or Labor.
“And that is actually the difficulty because this whole business runs on trust and there just isn’t any,” they said.
Canberra Liberals Leader Mark Parton generally stuck to his word, but he did not have control of his own party room.
“There’s just not enough common ground for the kind of partnership that Labor and the Greens have had in the past,” the member said.
“It would have to be a different kind of arrangement for something to work, either with Labor or with the Liberals, and I don’t know if it’s even possible in the current Assembly, and you can’t go to an early election in the ACT.”
The member said the state of the ACT’s budget and a sclerotic Labor government demanded change, but there was no apparent way to achieve it.
“We’re in a situation where Labor aren’t doing anything to dig themselves out of the hole that they’ve already got themselves into. They’re just making life worse for everyone,” they said.
“Something’s going to need to change, but the question is what, and how do you do it?”
The member said the departure of Chief Minister Andrew Barr could be sooner rather than later, which would be followed by a period of instability.
“It’s going to be complete disruption and chaos because Labor has got at least four potential contenders for party leadership, and the three who are most likely to get member support to succeed are all tarnished in some very serious ways, and they’re going to have a whole lot of mess to deal with and probably be quite unfocused,” the member said.
But there was no one in Labor or the Liberals who deserved the Greens’ confidence as Chief Minister.
“Neither of them has someone who has the integrity or the skills to do the job, so how are you supposed to decide which of the two bad choices you go with?” they said.
The problem for the Liberals, they said, was that they have been out of government for so long that their MLAs did not understand how the public service or mechanics of government worked or have the skills to hold Labor to account.
The public service itself had spent so long working for Labor that its independence had been compromised.
“They don’t know how to give honest advice anymore,” the member said.
With no trigger available for an early election without Commonwealth intervention, the member did not see anything changing until the 2028 election.
“I can’t see a way around this other than we’re all just stuck with vanilla mediocrity from Labor until 2028,” they said.
