Scott Morrison has turned the volume to 11 in the Coalition’s intensifying campaign to scare voters off voting for the Greens or independents.

The treasurer has launched a new Liberal advertisement with a loud rock soundtrack entitled “The Greening of Labor” which, in the fine tradition of the fabulous faux documentary about the fictitious rock band Spinal Tap, stretches the “attack ad” genre to the point of parody.

Its central message is that Labor is being “infiltrated” by Greens’ activists who are plotting and waiting to clinch a post-election deal between the parties if the Coalition does not win an outright majority in the lower house. (Yes, Morrison used the word “infiltrated”.)

Labor is being “pressured by Greens activists”, his ad asserts, as the music crescendos ominously, such as “the Labor Environment Action Network” (the picture shifts to a partially obscured newspaper article where pretty much all you can see is “Lean boasted that it had secured the support”.

Let’s freeze the frame there for one moment. Lean was actually founded by former Labor party president and now New South Wales Labor senator Jenny McAllister and the former NSW Labor premier Kristina Keneally to promote climate and environmental policy within the ALP. So no “Greens activists” there. And no infiltration.

And the threatening policy this organisation was “boasting” it had secured support for? Turns out to be a target of 50% renewable energy by 2030 – which is now Labor policy. Polls have indicated this policy is backed by a majority of Australians and that many would like to see change occur even faster. So the Lean connection is not a Greens conspiracy but rather an internal Labor grouping successfully advocating a popular policy choice.

Deal and no deal: decoding Turnbull and Shorten's double talk on minority rule | Lenore Taylor Read more

Pressing play again, the ad moves on to the claim that “Labor has former Greens candidates and green wannabes”, with the backdrop showing the names of Tammy Solonec, an Indigenous lawyer who is standing for Labor in Swan and stood for the Greens in the Western Australian state election and Anne Aly, Labor’s candidate for Cowan, who was a federal candidate for the Greens in 2007 – although she withdrew before election day. It doesn’t mention Kado Muir, the WA Nationals lead Senate candidate who has stood for the Greens in two federal and two state elections. Oh no, the infiltration is everywhere!

It ends by asserting that Labor is “adopting Greens policies … ready for a Greens/Labor deal”, although no evidence for this is provided.

Asked if it was a scare campaign, Morrison insisted it was a “truth campaign” before claiming that the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, had confirmed the whole Labor/Greens plot in his debate with Morrison on the ABC’s 7.30 program on Tuesday night.

In fact, Bowen said: “We will not be entering into deals, arrangements, concessions with the Greens, with Nick Xenophon or anybody else: anybody else. We will govern alone or not at all.”

He also said that “if there is a hung parliament, I imagine the prime minister would seek the confidence vote of the parliament”, which is the normal process in such a situation.

And while both Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten have signed a “solemn pledge” drafted by the Daily Telegraph ruling out a “deal or alliance” with the Greens, neither has ruled out seeking to govern in the event of a hung parliament if enough of the crossbench agreed to the two basic prerequisites – to support the money bills needed for the government to function and not to support a no-confidence motion moved by the other side.

The idea of any formal agreement with crossbenchers was already unlikely because most of the non-Green independents with a reasonable chance of winning have categorically ruled out striking such a deal with either major party, and both major party leaders have ruled out such a deal with the Greens – despite Morrison’s claims.

But no government since 2004 has had an absolute majority in both houses, which means every government has had to do deals or enter into arrangements with the Greens or minor parties or independents to get each piece of legislation through the upper house.



And after this election, even if the Coalition wins a majority in the lower house, it is almost certain to have to govern with the support of Nick Xenophon and a few other assorted independents in the Senate – all of whom will have agendas they want to advance, just like the Greens do. (Xenophon, for example, says the Coalition’s tax cuts should not extend past companies with a turnover of $10m and he also opposes some of Morrison’s changes to superannuation.)

If we are being asked to accept that a Labor government, relying in part on Greens votes in either the lower or upper house to get legislation through, would automatically accept every Greens’ policy (which is what Morrison is suggesting) should we similarly assume that a Coalition government would adopt every policy advocated by the Nick Xenophon Team or Jacqui Lambie or whichever other parties it has to rely on in one house or the other to legislate its agenda?

Morrison says there is another “chaotic cast” looking to assemble should Labor form government, expecting we’ll forget that there is a potentially eclectic bunch of senators with whom a Liberal government would have to deal to get its agenda through, and an outside possibility that it would have to deal with some independents in the lower house as well.

Why are Labor and the Greens at war? - Australian politics live podcast with Lenore Taylor and Katharine Murphy Read more

And despite the nonsensical ad and the nonsensical arguments being made to support it, in reality the Coalition has been happy to do “deals” with the Greens in the past.

The Tasmanian Greens, under then leader Christine Milne, supported a minority state Liberal government between 1996 and 1998. In the last parliament the Coalition negotiated with the Greens to pass tax disclosure laws, Senate voting reform and in the previous parliament to sink Labor’s proposed “Malaysia solution” for asylum seekers arriving by boat.

This whole ad campaign would be funny if the treasurer wasn’t deadly serious in advancing it.

The real message from his effort is probably that the election is closer than we think.