Learning nothing from their humiliation in Prahran, Greens will march on

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The only party that still has the tinted glasses on is the Greens.

If they were a party with serious aspirations to govern, the Greens would be mortified by the message delivered to them by Prahran voters.

At the 2022 state election, more than 10,000 people voted for Labor in Prahran. In Saturday’s byelection, the Labor Party didn’t stand a candidate. This meant there were roughly 10,000 votes up for grabs.

It is reasonable to assume that these voters, having supported Labor at the last election, hold to basic Labor values. Yet none of them, in the absence of a Labor candidate, was willing to doss down with the Greens.

Some of them knocked on the door of Liberal candidate Rachel Westaway and nearly 4000 parked their vote with Tony Lupton. He is a former Labor MP who believes the Greens, since the October 7 attacks in southern Israel, have fuelled a hateful protest movement and inflamed antisemitism in the community.

For all this mass migration of votes in Prahran, the Greens primary support barely budged. Angelica Di Camillo’s share of the vote marginally shrank, and her party’s 10-year hold on a hip, inner-city electorate came crashing down.

In response, Greens leader Ellen Sandell offered a range of excuses. She blamed Lupton for preferencing the Liberals. She blamed the timing of the election, which coincided with the tail-end of university holidays. She blamed a low voter turnout and a lack of absentee voting.

“If you look at these results on this primary vote, it bodes very well for the Greens,” she insisted.

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Instead of making excuses, Sandell should be asking why Labor voters can’t stomach her party. She should be asking why Lupton directed preferences to the Liberal Party.

She should question whether her party’s focus on the protracted and miserable conflict in the Middle East is worth the pain it is causing Jewish people.

But on Sunday, Sandell rejected that the Greens vote had suffered because of a concerted anti-Greens campaign backed by right-wing lobby group Advance, which accused the minor party of fomenting antisemitism.

“I don’t believe it made a dent because of the high primary vote,” Sandell said.

And she should question whether the Greens are content to keep devoting their efforts into Gazaprotests, or into extending their appeal to mainstream voters.

Nothing Sandell said on Sunday suggests she is asking any of these questions.

Byelections offer a rare opportunity for self-reflection. Within the Victorian Greens, it appears the never-ending campaign will simply march on.

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