Unlikely bedfellows are lovers no more

Sync says:

10:15am | 31/10/12

No…of course not.

After all, why on earth would blockading a building site and locking out honest emplyees, nevermind intimidating & threatening people who cross the blockade to earn their pay and feed their families, be a Bad Thing?

Jeff says:

10:28am | 31/10/12

The garbage in this post.

1. “Bedfellows”? Occasional allies at best, and only in the sense that they both oppose pretty much everything the LNP stand for.
2. The Greens’ “opposition to competitive sport”? What a total lie.
3. “refusal to compromise on refugee policy” - you mean that they didn’t agree with the ALP’s sell-out scheme that has demonstrably not worked anyway.
4. “the Greens are in decline in the polls” - yaaawn. We hear that every election. It does seem unlikely this election will be a highpoint for any smaller parties, but that doesn’t mean the Greens are in decline.
5. “disregard for protecting people’s jobs” - rubbish. The Greens stand for better workplace protections for workers than the old unions like the CFMEU. The CFMEU’s only interested in pushing for industries that are genuinely in decline, and against industries that actually have a future.

Anyway, Greens voters are long used to this sort of bullsh*t, and it hasn’t stopped us voting for the only genuinely, reliably progressive party in the Australian parliament. There’s certainly nothing that the ALP and Liberals have done recently to win our votes over.

Jeff says:

10:32am | 31/10/12

...although I will ask one other thing.

Who says the Greens would even WANT to join with Labor? Why would they want to sell out to the Labor Right the way the few Labor left MPs have?

craig2 says:

11:33am | 31/10/12

Jeff: thanks for the laugh today, nice riposte of delusion from a party whose survival ties with the fortunes of the labor party. Keep wasting that vote Jeff, I’m sure the democrats never saw their demise as well.

Climate Emergency says:

12:05pm | 31/10/12

Jeff speaks for many I’m sure, I for one couldn’t agree more. Unlike the ALP, we Greens are a genuinely grassroots democratic movement, and I’ve no doubt the first question many of us would ask is how could we join a formal alliance with a centrally directed party, let alone whether we’d want to. We are not there to keep the bastards honest, we exist to replace the bastards. The only fair and decent thing to do is to follow in the footsteps of most genuinely civilised democracies, and introduce a What-you-vote-what-you-get system of proportional representation in all Houses of Representatives. Or be honest and rename them as Houses of unRepresentative Gerrymanders?

paul says:

12:14pm | 31/10/12

@Jeff The greens are getting obliterated across the states, ACT were they should be very safe saw them lose 3 seats. Yaaaawn another know it all all.

Gordon says:

12:46pm | 31/10/12

@CE please don’t wish proportional representation upon us. Even more fragmented politics and little splinter groups influence-peddling. OK we have that with internal factions in the main parties now, but we can at least vote the bastards out en masse. Israel has PR and they are beholden to tiny far-right religeous conservative groups that trash the peace deals.

PR benefits small groups by handing them the balance of power. Their influence outweighs their level of support. This is why the Greens and the Christian Right want it and nobody else does.

lower_case_andrew says:

01:25pm | 31/10/12

@Jeff

“4. “the Greens are in decline in the polls” - yaaawn. We hear that every election.”’

Not really.  The story for the Greens over the last decade has been growth, growth and more growth.

It’s really only been the last few years that the Greens vote has started to slip.  And only now that we’re just starting to get some kind of media accountability levelled at the Greens. 

(For such an important Party, with the balance of power in the Senate, and a vital vote in the Lower House, the Greens really have gotten away without scrutiny over the years, particularly by its friends at the ABC and Fairfax. Bob Brown, in particular, was coated in Teflon.  And when he was finally confronted with the consequences and contradictions of his own policies, he resorted to calling out the “hate media” and “hate speech”.)

It’s pretty clear now that their partnership with Labor—who hate them even more than Labor hate the Coalition—has been a bad move for the Greens.

Which, I’m fine with.  All it really means is that Labor’s natural constituency is returning to them.  Most of these votes were never going to go to the Coalition.

Jim says:

05:38pm | 31/10/12

“Media accountability”?

I suspect you mean the Daily Telegraph style campaign of outrageous lies and shameless smears. Like the one in this post claiming that the Greens “oppose competitive sport”. What bullshit.

But the Greens have been receiving that sort of “media accountability” for years anyway. Their voters are largely immune to it. They might lose some of the swingers who came across in 2010, but their core vote continues to build.

As for PR - the present system ignores voters in safe seats and basically steals votes from smaller parties. The Greens got 12% of the vote in 2010, but fewer than 1% of the seats. In fact, they only just got that one seat, and only bc the Libs preferenced againts Labor. But they should, on their vote, have had 17 seats. The other 16 went to Labor bc the Greens’ vote was spread out across the country, and not concentrated in those 17 seats. In contrast, the Nationals got considerably fewer votes than the Greens (about a quarter of it), but because theirs is concentrated in a few rural seats they got 6 times as many seats.

That’s not democracy.

Oh, but it makes sure we have majorities, you say? Well, sure - it creates majorities in parliament for parties that do not actually have the support of a majority of the population. And then you whinge about how out of touch the Labor and Liberal parties are.

Why would they change, when they can still get a majority in parliament, and all of their legislation passed automatically, with 60-70% of the country voting against them?

Richard says:

09:32am | 31/10/12

What Australia really needs is a “keep the bastards honest” party.

We had one it was called the “Australian Democrats”  and it imploded and now longer doesn’t exist. The Greens will go the same way as I believe their focus is too narrow and some of their other policies are too extreme. The greens are not a mainstream party

I hate pies says:

09:16am | 31/10/12

There needs to be governance laws regarding unions. The CFMEU have been telling their members and the media out and out lies for years, but they aren’t held to account. Of course, this isn’t to their benefit, because they wouldn’t be able to convince their members that their employers are their enemy; but it would be a good thing for the country. Example - the “safety” representation issue at Grocon was all to do with controlling someone elses business, and nothing to do with safety.

Louise says:

09:22am | 31/10/12

lower_case_andrew, you always give such good, sensible advice.

I agree: they need to stop bloody r-Abbott-ing on.

(And what is it with these “Greenie” socialist ex-investment bankers?? delayed-onset Misguided Conscience Development Syndrome perhaps.)

lower_case_andrew says:

01:29pm | 31/10/12

@David C

There’s been a lift in several polls.  Nielsen, Newspoll and Morgan have all shown gains for Labor.

Sadly, the overall trend over the last 6 months has been in Labor’s favour.  Team Gillard has been regathering those lost swinging votes from the last election.

BTW, I’d normally discount Morgan—they are infamous for getting it wrong, badly—but their numbers are in line with the more reputable pollsters.

Two Cents worth says:

03:35pm | 31/10/12

@ J.Hopper. Who needs to read the policies of any Party,the Greens in particular. It’s what the Party/ies deliver when empowered to do so that counts, and we haven’t seen too much value coming out of the current ramshackle Labor/Greens/Independent fiasco.
Likewise, the LNP Coalition, if elected, will need to sharpen up the tools and get this country back on an even keel before we list over into the mud.
In my opinion the Greens are little interested in running the country, but happy to push their agenda on euthanasia, same sex marriage, one world government, shutting down any industry that bears a resemblance to pollution output, closing pulp mills, stopping any form of forestry etc;etc;
In this day and age we have come too far to go back a few centuries when life seemed simpler and industry did not impose upon nature or bespoil the Earth. We now need to look at ways of doing things “cleaner”, not shutting industry down completely - unemployment is growing too fast no matter what the Government statistics state.
We show an aversion to nuclear power generation, yet we are happy to sell uranium to India. Who has the better chance of building safe nuclear power plants? Where is nuclear material less likely to fall into the hands of extremists? Look at the employment opportunities in building this infrastructure and what it could do for Australia. These opportunities disappear quickly in the hands of the Greens as they want one foot in the past and the other in the future but don’t care much for the present, which incidentally is where we all live day by day.
A vote for the Greens should be the last thing in the minds of sane, rational people come election day. I would rather endure the pain of the Labor Party all over again than have the Greens pulling the strings.
We have all seen how dangerous they are when they become drunk with power.

SOTON says:

11:18am | 31/10/12

An own goal

Esteban says:

01:55pm | 31/10/12

We have had the problem of these so called intelectuals for a long time now.

It would be ironic if the source of these intelectuals was the ALP’s own policies regarding tertiary education.

Of course when the intellectuals were spread evenly through the burbs they never had the electoral clout to influence the ALP.

By concentrating them in inner city suburbs they have created their own electoral power.

Thank you for raising these confronting issues.

In terms of self reliance it is frightening if you review stories with your grandparents on how much self reliance we have lost in the last few generations.

Jim says:

05:42pm | 31/10/12

Wait, the ALP went too far to the right, then somehow became dominated by the left even though it hasn’t done anything left wing for years?

In what way is the offshore processing “left”? What “left” immigration and population policies”? Since when has pursuing low wages been “left”?

Mad.

ghanga darin says:

02:53pm | 31/10/12

Minister Penny Wong epitomizes the ALP’s problems. She knows no national or cultural loyalty. She is primarily loyal to her homosexual and Chinese identities. It is not racist or sexist to tell the truth. The sad truth is that most people are most loyal to what makes them rich and powerful and pays their wages. That is simply human nature, more so in the context of a borderless globalised and diverse multicultural world where no strong national identity exists and affirmative action based on minority status and identity is the passport to economic and political success. Affirmative action and minority identity politics has made Ms Wong rich and powerful. She has every legal right to hold these loyalties dearest. But as a public servant and politician these views are poisonous since identity politics is deeply divisive. Ironically is the ‘new ALP socialists’ who now wish to champion identity politics which makes a united, integrated and harmonious society, impossible. In the name of socialism these new labor extremists are destroying society!

lower_case_andrew says:

01:34pm | 31/10/12

“The ALP has plenty of decent people - Plibersek, Roxon, Wong, Garrett, Rudd, Ellis, Lundy e”

Just my opinion, but this list encapsulates most of what is wrong with modern Labor.

This list is a roll-call of self-promoters, ideological warriors and handbag police from the Department of Thoughtcrime.  Many of them with very little work experience in the real world; campus politics going in to law, comfy union gigs moving in to staffer jobs, branch stackers, union selectees, in to Parliament.

In comparison, the union dinosaurs look positively benign and tolerant.

We need less of the likes of Wong and Rudd and Plibersek.  And more people who are centrists, who live in the real world, who aren’t consumed with personal ambition, who don’t use weasel words even as they dictate the language and behaviour of others.

Jim says:

05:47pm | 31/10/12

Have they been adopted by the Greens? No? Then they were just proposals, and the Greens may have decided against them after receiving the costings. The only reason News Ltd wants them is so they can run misleading smears claiming the Greens are going to do something they they may have decided against once it was costed.

I have no doubt the policies they go to the next election with will be costed.

Tator says:

03:58pm | 31/10/12

So you would rather have a government like the Gillard Government which has to borrow more money creating more government debt because they stuffed up the 2011/12 budget by underestimating the deficit by $21 billion that will cost around $1 billion a year in interest payments alone. And you are whinging about the state government finding an extra $1 billion in treasury.  Nice priorities because as a net taxpayer, I prefer a government who is more accountable with taxpayers money than one who just blows their budgets further into deficit because they cannot predict what effect their policies will have on the economy.