The Tasmanian election in March created history. For the first time the Greens polled over 20% of the vote in a state wide lower house election and as a result Australia has its first Greens Minister in the new ALP/Greens government.

While the media wallowed in superficial explanations – the Greens had an ‘articulate and electable leader’ and appealed to the mythical ‘middle ground’ they completely ignored the impact of the third party ‘Our Common Ground’ campaign run by Environment Tasmania and The Wilderness Society (ET/TWS) and other community organisations.

In doing so they failed to understand the strategy behind the first environment campaign since the WA Election in 2001 that has influenced the outcome of an election. Before that you have to go back to the 1990 Federal Election. In between times environmental election campaigns have generally failed to gain traction or worse backfired harming the party supporting the environment. Comments »