A Labor attempt to smear the Greens ahead of Saturday’s election in Tasmania will alienate mainstream voters, according to a political expert.
The Labor party has been accused of handing out controversial flyers in the week before the state election depicting the Greens as having extreme policies such as the legalisation of heroin. Campaign flyers issued this week as part of an ALP campaign strategy depict hands on jail bars. The hands, accompanied by a syringe, are tattooed with the words “Extreme Greens.”
Greens leader Nick McKim, whose party is on course to hold the balance of power after Saturday’s vote, dismissed the extreme label adding the flyers strategy will alienate heartland Labor voters disappointed with the ruling party’s tactics.
“It is clear that Labor’s heartland is horrified and outraged by Labor’s smear,” McKim said in a Greens statement this week.
“I say to Labor’s true believers that the Greens have stood up for people struggling to make ends meet, and we will restore trust and integrity to Tasmanian politics. A vote for the Greens on Saturday is a vote for the values that they hold true,” Mr McKim said.
He said the Labor party smear tactics would have the reverse effect on voters.
“Peddling messages about hard drugs to children is a step too far, even for Labor, and I assure Labor’s true believers that it is now safe for them to vote Green.”
McKim’s claim that the strategy would backfire was backed by Griffith University politics expert Paul Williams who said many voters would see it as major party bullying tactics.
Griffith University politics expert Paul Williams says such tactics will have the reverse effect on voters.
“But the behaviour these days only exacerbates voter cynicism and, in turn, increases minor party support for voters sick of what they see as major party bully-boy tactics,” he said in an AAP report.
“It actually backfires. The more the major parties do it the more it disenfranchises ordinary voters who are then more likely to go to alternatives out of sheer bloody mindedness because they don’t like the tactics.
“The way to woo back voters is for the major parties to eschew their divide-and-conquer tactics and instead be more accommodating of minor parties,” he said.
With latest opinion polls showing Green support strengthening, the campaign tactics have divided the Tasmanian Labor Party.
ALP backbencher Ross Butler was reported in today’s Fairfax newspapers as saying he was appalled with the campaign attacks.
‘I’m just appalled that some of the lightweights on the campaign committee have had too much say in this campaign,” he said.
By Rich Bowden
Source: theAngle Australasian/Pacific News Coverage
Net News Publisher for World News
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