Greens' Christine Milne blames Labor Party for election woes Refusing to accept responsibility for fall in vote ... Greens Leader Senator Christine Milne with Senator Sarah Hanson-Young and ACT Senate candidate Simon Sheikh. GREENS Leader Christine Milne has refused to accept personal responsibility for her party's slump in support and instead blamed Labor division and lack of support from the environment movement. The party suffered a 27 per cent slump in its vote in the election but held Adam Bandt's House of Representatives seat and is on track to win four Senate seats. This is expected to increase the number of Green MPs from 10 to 11. However the party saw its national vote slashed from its 2010 high of 11.7 per cent to 8.5 per cent after the retirement of its popular leader Bob Brown. Adam Bandt retains seat of Melbourne for The Greens Tony Abbott's nightmare: Minor parties claim Senate seats Ms Milne yesterday refused to accept personal responsibility for the decline in support instead holding the environment movement and Labor responsible. There was not a strong nationwide environment campaign running at this election as there has been in the past. I think that is one of the factors that was different in 2010 to 2013," she said in Melbourne. She said voters were also "disillusioned" by the infighting in the Labor Party. "There has been a tide of support come in for conservatives across the country," she said. "There were some people who were disappointed by all the shenanigans in the Labor Party and that some of that has rubbed off on the Greens, there is no doubt about that," she said. The party had done well to be going back to Canberra with more elected members than before, she said. "I think you can say that's a success," she said. Ms Milne denied the retirement of former Greens leader Bob Brown was a factor in the decline in the party's vote. Bob retired and what we've got in the Greens, as Adam just showed here in Melbourne, is a very strong membership base and active volunteer base," she said. Deputy Greens leader Adam Bandt who achieved a 10 per cent swing towards him to hold on to his Victorian House of Representative seat of Melbourne denied he had leadership ambitions even though he is the most popular Green in the country. "I've just managed to do something together with my team that no-one else has done and we have won a seat in the lower house in the face of Labor and Liberal and one of the reasons I was able to do that was because of the great leadership of Christine Milne," he said in Melbourne. Greens insiders say part of the reason for the fall in the party's vote was the sheer number of candidates contesting the election. A record 1,188 candidates contested yesterday's House of Representatives election and there were 529 people competing for Senate seats. This gave people the opportunity of casting their protest vote with other parties besides the Greens, they said. The party was also hurt by its involvement in a power sharing deal with the Gillard Government, Greens Senator Richard Di Natale said. "We lost a bit of the protest vote and a lot of the anti-system, anti-party vote because we became part of the system," he said. However he said this was not a reason to shun working in Coalition with the major parties in the future. "Why else are you doing it?" he asked. "You're doing it to get stuff done," he said.