Bob Brown has vowed to raise personally with Julia Gillard her swingeing attack on the Greens, when she alleged they did not share the values of ''everyday Australians''. The Greens leader lashed out at Ms Gillard yesterday, saying her comments were ''an unfortunate and unwarranted and gratuitous insult''.
''It's not becoming of a prime minister to be talking in those ways about millions of other Australians … for some reason, the Prime Minister has turned her fire on the very people who have supported her in government,'' he said.
It would certainly appear that PM Gillard has taken on with increasing gusto the need to differentiate the Labor Minority Government from the Greens Party despite their role in providing the numbers in the House of Representatives to enable Labor to govern. The Greens Party will soon have the numbers in the Senate to make or break legislation and given that the Opposition opposes at all cost it is likely that the Greens will increasingly be seen as in 'coalition' with Labor. This will have its downside for both parties as they seek to differentiate their policies especially in a polarised political world. Labor can no longer count on the Greens providing preference votes that matter and the Greens can no longer expect disaffected Labor voters to support them. The NSW election proved that Labor supporters can vote Liberal. Given Labor's difficulty in retaining its traditional base of support the Greens may offer the only way for Labor to retain and gain government in the future....a coalition maybe in the offing!
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