Christine Milne says support for Labor minority government hurt Greens at election

Updated

Greens leader Christine Milne says supporting the Labor minority government has adversely affected the party.

The Greens' primary vote fell at the election and it is on track to lose at least one Senate seat.

Senator Milne says she takes full responsibility for the result and she now intends to speak to voters and ask what the Greens need to do to win back their support.

Speaking on Sky News, she said history showed that each time the Greens enter power-sharing arrangements or support a major party, their primary vote declined.

"When we have no political power to deliver outcomes in the Parliament, we build our political capital and then when we go into some arrangement which delivers excellent outcomes - like the clean energy package for example - we spend some of that political capital and we have to build it up again," she said.

Senator Milne last week denied that it was a "fundamental strategic error" for the Greens to help Labor form a minority government in 2010.

"It wasn't a fundamental strategic error in making an alliance with Labor because it delivered the clean energy package, it delivered Denticare, it delivered the Parliamentary Budget Office - a whole range of things," she said.

"I think there are a number of reasons for [the 2013 election result]."

She also denied that the Greens needed to readdress their strategy in light of the recent election, where they lost more than 500,000 voters.

The Greens' poor showing in the election and the resignations of several of her senior staff raised doubts over her leadership, although she was re-elected unopposed during a mandatory leadership spill.

Senator Milne's chief of staff, Ben Oquist, was among those who quit. He released a statement saying he resigned due to "fundamental differences of opinion on strategy".

But Senator Milne played down the statement saying the differences of opinion were related to office matters rather than party strategy.

Support for the Greens dropped 8 per cent in Tasmania, with Senator Milne partly blaming her party's poor result in Tasmanian seats on the state's high unemployment rate.

Tasmania's deputy premier Bryan Green says Senator Milne's leadership style is to blame for the result.

Topics: political-parties, federal-government, greens, christine-milne, federal-elections, australia, tas

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