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First-up, if an experienced politician such as Richard Di Natale wants to talk about leaks, factionalism and bastardry in his own party as he did on Sunday night and Monday morning, it’s because he’s less keen to talk about something else.
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The Greens banged on, during the Batman campaign, about the proposed Adani mine in Queensland so much that it reached “saturation point". Then they switched to talking about asylum seekers.
These are both issues that energise the Greens’ base, but it’s clear the campaign strategy, which was imposed on the Batman Greens by central command, failed to win hearts and minds beyond the ranks of true believers.
Lots of people in the Greens set-up don’t want to hear the message that their party is going to have to be more than a two-trick pony in these contests.
But all politics is local, as the old cliche goes and the Greens could have run that campaign in Brisbane and not had to change their electoral material that much. People noticed.
Then there's the sabotage.
Di Natale, who knows exactly who leaked against his candidate Alex Bhathal, says there will be an investigation and the miscreants will be booted out of the party.
He says that this is not the “culture we want to foster”.
If he wants to talk culture, he might look a little closer to home. The Greens have got too many people near the top of the tree who play their politics as rough and tough as anybody and then hope that the voters won’t notice.
But the days of people not knowing what goes on behind the scenes in the Greens are over. The party leadership needs to get used to it, either drop the rhetoric of “doing politics differently” or, well, just do politics differently.
Speaking of politics, Di Natale’s decision to jump on Labor’s new policy on franking credit income from share market investments by appealing to conservative voters on election eve looked both opportunist and weird.
In hindsight, it looks desperate and disconcerting for voters who are used to the Greens marketing themselves as the party of principle.
There is talk that Di Natale's leadership might be in trouble after the Batman loss and a poor run of electoral performances, Northcote notwithstanding.
The obvious successor is Adam Bandt.
While it seems strange that a party of smart people would put themselves through the agony of a punishing leadership contest between two blokes who are difficult to tell apart, stranger things have happened
It's not all grim for the Greens, though.
If another key lesson out of Batman is that candidate choice is crucial in these inner-city contests and that Labor factional machine-men are on the nose with voters there, then Labor’s Peter Khalil in the next door seat of Wills has to be a worry for the ALP and an opportunity for the Greens.
Likewise, Labor strategists will realise there are only so many Ged Kearneys in their world and at state level, the task of retaining Brunswick without the charismatic Jane Garrett, or Kearney to replace her, looks tough.
Even if Premier Daniel Andrews could find more candidates of the calibre of the former ACTU president, he looks too weak from a factional perspective to parachute them into seats, as Shorten did with his star performer in Batman.
Here’s another thing. Andrews has his critics internally and they have been quick to point out the big swings to Labor in the Batman booths, where people mostly voted Green in November.
Those voters, the theory goes, were less cranky with Bill Shorten’s federal Labor than they were with Andrews’ state outfit.
If that analysis is correct, it's ominous for Andrews who faces the voters himself in November.
So Labor enjoyed its shindig on St Patrick's day, and sure why not?
But it shouldn’t forget how the Greens love to crash a High Street party.
Noel Towell is State Political Editor for The Age
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