Quote:The preponderance of evidence still suggests a slide and eventual irrelevance of the Greens. There is nothing to suggest that anything has changed from 100 years of thrid party history.
Lets try this one. The difficulty in this argument from my perspective is because you like to redefine terms such as 'third-party'. You call the libs and ALP third parties which rather makes any genuine debate impossible.
So let's try and be a little bit generous and grant you your preposterous assertion above. What sets the ALP and Libs/Nats from other parties? Simple answer: the ability to win govt, lose govt and then come back again and form govt. IN short,
resilience in the ebb and flow of the electoral cycle. This has set up the two-party system that we currently have where only two parties - the ALp and libNat coalition have that resilience and history of 70+years of ebb and flow. the 'third party' is another party that wants to elbow its room into this duopoly and forge a long-lasting resilient party that can at least genuinely compete for govt if not actually succeed. A third party is called thus because there are two roles in parliament - government and opposition. Unless a party can occupy one or other or at least be a genuine contender for same, they are a third party
Are we on the same page still or have I already lost you on my definition of major and third-parties?
For a third party to muster in on the territory of the two majors they would need to be:
1) have some substantial history (decades) or lacking that, have a high primary vote and be a genuine competitor for government or opposition.
2) have resilience in the normal ebb and flow of politics. That would mean that if they have a poor showing at one election they could reasonably be expected to improve at the next or near future based on a previous record of doing so.
My position is that the greens are just another third party because they fail on every criteria. They dont really have longevity and even if you think 20 years is a long time, the vast majority of that time was spent getting a handful of percent of the vote. Do we call Family First a major party because they have 15 years history of getting 3%?
Resilience: This is demonstrated by the ability to rise and fall and rise again. So far, the Greens have risen from a 2010 high and then started to fall. that is not resilience. That would be if in future years their votes increased again. Maybe it will, maybe it wont. But we cannot call them a long-lasting resilient party until they are both long lasting and shown resilience.
Now to hark back to the rather silly assertion that ALP and libs were once a minor party. lets grant that for a moment and see why they are no longer considered thus. they are long lasting (70-100 years). each has had ebbs and flows.
but there is one other criteria for major party status - the ability to compete for govt or opposition. The greens have never even gotten close to achieving that goal missing by the proverbial country mile. Even in a landslide, the opposition would have garnered at least 20 seats. the greens have only ever won ONE seat and even then only by preferences.
My assertion is that the Greens are just another minor party and based on all the evidence, there is no reason to believe that they wont follow the same track as most other parties and have a single rise and single fall and never even threaten for govt or opposition. to date that is EXACTLY what he Greens ahve done so far.
now feel free to debunk my analysis and tell me why you think the Greens are a special case despite demonstrating not one single attribute that separates it from the Dems/NDP/DLP etc that have come before.
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Are the greens no longer seen as an "alternative"? (Read 19431 times)
