You mean “fixie sipping, pencil riding, latte reading GreenLeftWeekly pusher”.
Damn. I never win.
No, not really. Just a bit over anyone being surprised at the result.
I have argued for years within the ALP that Greens are there to take our seats, and Labor wrote them off as a fad.
Labor at least in Victoria, gave up on Local Government giving the Greens a valuable and viable platform to build grass roots support, and to get their Candidates media time and political experience. In fact, Labor in Government has treated Local Government poorly, as a reaction to one Labor dominated Council being controlled by crooks.
I have never seen a Greens MP contribute anything worthwhile in Parliament, and they compromise their principles and policy often voting with LNP regularly. The recent vote to stop social housing is a prime example.
The only good thing in all of this, is that the Liberals strategy of not running Candidates in these seats will lose them support everywhere.
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Have not had a drink. Just thought the result was always going to happen, and Voters do get what they deserve.
Bacchus, do we really need to post the stats on how many times Labor has voted with the coalition compared to how few times the Greens have?
Because I can do that if you like.
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Remember, when the greens vote with the LNP it’s ‘compromising their principles’ but when the ALP do it’s ‘sensible measures with bipartisan support’
You know, like the Manus Island concentration camp.
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Northcote-ian here,
Can someone help me out by untangling this ‘Greens voting with Libs to block social housing’ BS?
Greens seem to be saying ‘Labor trying to privatise public housing’ or ‘Labor trying to help out their developer mates’.
Labor/Fairfax seem to be saying ‘Greens in a bloc with Libs’.
I don’t like it.
And data retention.
Greens vote too much with Libs and get the fringe left vote labor should…
Magicians
From what I understand, the government was proposing to sell the vacant land from the demolished Ashburton housing estate, subject to conditions that a percentage of the new development would be reserved for social housing ( not sure whether fixed rent subsidised by government or government owned arising from the revenue generated from the sale of the land).
It is a model that has been used elsewhere. I suppose the Green view was that the government should just rebuild government owned social housing on the site.
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Salty
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Thanks for that explanation. Makes sense now.
Except it is not how many times that is important, it is what the matter is about.
And you know that.
To be fair, the only thing the Greens have ever done better than Labor is about refugees. And as I have said many times that the Labor populist position is morally bankrupt
Probably worth putting marriage equality on the list I’d reckon.
And corporate tax avoidance.
And Adani.
And Iraq.
Not at all benny.
Hell, I have doing these elections since 1971 and we have lost a great deal in that time. I was really pis sed in 1975, and unhappy when Keating lost, but I am a realist now.
Democracy is bullshite and the way the media operates hardly makes elections fair for anyone. I have some ideology issues with the Greens but my contempt stems from personal experience dealing with local Greens who have no principles and screwed me over.
As I said above, I have argued that Labor gave up inner City by ignoring Local Government and in fact also have had so very average local MPs as well.
Maybe benfti, when you are running the Greens, I can change my views, Dickie does nothing for me.
Labor policy has always supported SSM. Rudd and Gillard ran the Federal Caucus, and it was a conscience vote, but neither had the balls to fight the Catholic Labor Mafia, but that is history now by a Bill Shorten decree
No-one has the ticker to rewrite all our tax laws, including the Greens. I could fix it in 24 hours.
Labor does not support Adani
And I thought it was John Howard who took us into Iraq and Afghanistan. Though I agree that Labor has too willingly agreed with US wars.
Condundrum for the Greens. If they take votes from Labor and get conservatives - whose policies are anathema to the Greens - into power, what have they achieved?
if the Greens had not blocked the Malaysian solution in the Senate, we might have had a fairer refugee policy.
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To the ALPs credit, Crean opposed Australian participation in the Iraq war. Though I do think both Rudd and Gillard missed out on the opportunity to investigate the process by which Howard took us there. Both the US and UK have had inquiries about this (and a Royal Commission about the AWB stuff is way overdue too), we’ve just let it slide and will no doubt leap with both feet into the next dumb and counterproductive military.adventure proposed by an inadequate US president.
It tends not to happen that way. If the Greens take a seat off the ALP, then the Libs don’t gain that seat and so are no closer to a governing majority. It DOES however force the ALP to negotiate with the Greens to take power rather than governing in their own right though, and that can give the greens some more leverage to institute at least SOME of their policies. Of course this sort of arrangement can be problematic, given Gillard and Brown’s experience, and the experience in Tassie…
In theory, if the Greens helf the balance of power could try to get the major parties in some kind of bidding war before they decided who to support. In reality, given the strengthening influence of that faction of the Libs which denies basic climate science and hold some seriously regressive social views (and that portion of the Libs which is NOT regressive socially, like Mr Turnbull, tends to be corporatist to the extreme), there’s no way that the Greens could support a Coalition govt in the Coalition’s current form. If they did, I think the next election would be their last as a party. Kinda like the death spiral the Democrats went into after Meg Lees ticked off Howard’s GST, against the opposition of basically her party’s entire voter base.
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I will bet you anything you like that if Greens had opportunity to be in a Coalition with LNP then they would grab it with both hands.
And while the Qld Premier says she will never do any Deal with PHON, I just wonder !
The Greens DID have the opportunity to be in a coalition with the LNP. In 2013. They didn’t take that opportunity (they didn’t even consider it), and I think the probability of it ever happening diminishes over time as the LNP gets more extreme and delusional on climate matters in particular.