Daniel Andrews and the Labor party have held government during a tumultuous period. A time which has seen sizeable far-right protests calling for Andrews’ head, right-wing independent MPs calling for him to be turned into “red mist,” and the children of parliamentarians being stabbed by fascists. 

Despite his membership of the so-called Socialist Left faction and his popularity with liberal-minded ‘drips,’ Dan Andrews has overseen the slashing of wages for public sector workers, the demolition of forests and sacred sites for toll roads, increases to police powers and funding, and sell offs of public housing. He has now been returned to power with an almost identical number of seats in parliament.

The Liberal party has been and continues to be in shambles in Victoria, and looks more like a bizarre piece of performance art than an effective organisation. It horrifies its liberal supporters with far-right candidates and allegations of infiltration by religious fundamentalists and fascists, but still fails to inspire the extremists in its base. As a result, most speculation before the election focused on the minor parties and independents, with a frenzy of headlines about minority government rather than any serious contemplation of the Liberals gaining a majority. 

The results of these minor party and independent contests were generally of minimal interest: the far-right who so vociferously protested Daniel Andrews failed to get popular support, the touted ‘teal’ independents have failed to beat the shambolic Liberals at their lowest point, and despite online enthusiasm from the Greens and Victorian Socialists… almost nothing has changed for them by anyone’s metric. 

Greens leader Samantha Ratnam has oddly proclaimed the result a “greenslide,” after winning one additional lower house seat on preferences from the Victorian Socialists and the Liberals. A significant factor in this result was that, for the first time, the party ran a candidate for this seat who wasn’t a Sex Worker Exclusionary Radical Feminist (SWERF) detested by their own membership. The Greens even allegedly forgot to do a ground campaign in some of their strongest seats, like Preston and Footscray, and pitched to the right of the Liberals on public transport. This follows a string of own goals by the Victorian branch of the party, as they have reduced the rights of members to participate internally and refused to expel far-right transphobic extremists.

The Victorian Socialists have gained a credible vote for their social democratic platform, and would have been the most principled party to vote for. They out-campaigned the Greens, and organised the largest door knocking effort by a minor party in Victorian history, which mostly won over disillusioned Greens voters and secured about 1.7% of the vote across the state, with a positive swing of almost 2% in their target seat. This is a clear improvement upon their federal results, and would’ve been enough to elect a representative in the NSW or WA system if they contested those states.

Despite joining an unprincipled preference harvest deal with Reason (teal-ish sex industry bosses), Legalise Cannabis (anti-vaxxers who like weed), and Animal Justice Party (vegans from both left and right), the Victorian Socialists were unable to get elected. However, their preferences were able to boost the Greens to second place in some lower house races, and assisted Legalise Cannabis to defeat the Greens in an upper house race. They were also able to assist Fiona Patten from Reason in the effort to defeat the Democratic Labour Party and possibly retain her seat.

So what was the end result? The same government, the same parliament, and the same Premier who will crush striking workers despite the flaccid and frenzied social democratic election campaigns by the Greens and Victorian Socialists respectively. This offers those of us in NSW a lesson for the March 2023 state election, where Labor leaders are aspiring to enter government and show us how they too can crush worker power – sometimes even more effectively than the Liberals, who cannot as easily rely on union officials to quell industrial action. 

The Greens will likely be the most principled vote for workers to lodge in the upcoming NSW elections given they are the only party in parliament opposed to supporting a Liberal government and their pay cap on public sector workers, and the only one not to take bribes from the corporate bosses. But door knocking to get the Greens into the balance of power won’t resolve the conflict between the ruthless bigots and profit-seeking capitalists and the working class, even if seeing corporate shills lose their seats may be satisfying to watch.

The only way to actually strike out the Liberals is for unionists to keep on striking. This is why our members in the nurses and teachers unions will keep on pushing for industrial action against the government now, as well as after the election in March. We will also be taking to the streets for Mardi Gras in the fight for queer liberation. Victorian workers deserve better than what Daniel Andrews is offering, and NSW workers deserve better than Chris Minns. There’s only one way to get what we want: strike until we win.