While the Greens are usually depicted as being to the left of Labor, the fact is the Greens have pressured the ALP to support policies that are popular and mainstream. It's common to evaluate the tension between renewable energy/coal, corporate tax cuts/increased public spending, bank taxes/deregulation, and a federal ICAC/trust the politicians through the prism of left versus right. But it is more meaningful analysis is to view these issues through the prism of popular versus unpopular.
While Australian political debate is so broken it can make renewable energy, corporate accountability or establishing a national anti-corruption body "left-wing issues", in voters' minds these are simply good ideas. But while the right-wing micro-parties successfully goads the Coalition into proving its "right-wing credentials", Labor simply embraces a range of popular ideas while ridiculing the Coalition for opposing a royal commission into the big banks and supporting big corporate tax cuts.
History teaches that, in politics, things never stay the same. But, for the immediate future, it's pretty clear that the political right is caught in a trap of its own making. To claim ownership of the position of "real conservatives", the Coalition is spending an enormous amount of political effort chasing a tiny number of votes.
