Nationals v Greens – the real story in the regions
03-September-2010
Source: Warren Truss, MP –
For some months now, The Greens have been claiming that this party of the left is now the friend of farmers around Australia. Greens leader Bob Brown even went as far as to say during the election campaign that The Greens had more supporters in the regions than The Nationals.
The election results tell quite a different story.
Let’s look to the ledger. The Nationals won 12 of the 24 seats contested. The Nationals achieved an average primary vote of 38.8 percent, and recorded a nationwide primary vote swing of 6 percent.
Of 150 seats stood in, The Greens won one (in inner city Melbourne). The Greens average primary vote was 11.6 percent, or a swing of 3.8 percent. That swing fell to 1.6 percent in the seats where Nationals and Greens ran head to head.
The vast majority of Greens support appears to have come from former Labor party voters, whose support reached catastrophic lows in many regional seats. For example, in New England Labor’s vote collapsed to 8 percent, and in some Nationals-held seats was below 20 percent.
In the three rural seats held by independents, The Greens achieved an average primary vote of 3.9 percent, amounting to a swing away from The Greens since 2007 of 0.52 percent. Of 245,000 constituents in these three seats, less than 10,000 people voted for The Greens.
The outlandish claims of The Greens need to be placed in perspective against the results of this election. For every policy of The Greens that might meet the approval of some rural voters, there another 100 that terrify them.