Blow back ... Federal Labor MP Mike Kelly says the Greens' vote was hurt by their refusal to compromise federally.

Blow back ... Federal Labor MP Mike Kelly says the Greens' vote was hurt by their refusal to compromise federally. Photo: Melissa Adams



Federal Labor MP Mike Kelly believes the tentative results of the ACT election indicate Tony Abbott's scare campaign against the carbon tax will not prove effective in next year's federal election.


Dr Kelly, whose electorate of Eden-Monaro is centred on Queanbeyan, also believes the fall in the Greens' vote in last Saturday's election is partly due to the party's intransigence on federal political issues.


He cited the Greens' refusal to consider any compromise in its opposition to sending asylum seekers to Nauru or Papua New Guinea for processing.


''The message I am getting is that people were unhappy with the Greens' refusal to engage effectively on issues like dealing with the asylum seeker problem,'' he said.


''If a party is going to be involved with delivering government then it has to show some signs of maturity in being able to work through issues and deal with the reality of situations and not be dogmatic about things.


''So I think the [local] Greens may have suffered a bit of blowback from that,'' he said. ''There's also been some concern building about the realism of the Greens' approach to budgets and costing of programs.''


He conceded the Canberra Liberals ran a strong and relentless campaign under the ''triple rates'' banner. However, he believed their ads were deceptive, disingenuous and untrue.