Green loons are Pauline Hanson’s best friend

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From Crikey comes founder of the Sustainable Australia Party William Bourke:

New South Wales Greens MP Jenny Leong’s recent New Matilda article entitled “Fascism Might Sound Like A Joke, But It’s No Laughing Matter” strengthened my view that the Greens actually sustain One Nation.

In the article, Leong absurdly lumps the political party I founded, Sustainable Australia, in with Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Pauline Hanson to represent ”the rise of fascism”. Why?

Because like the National Roads and Motorists’ Association (NRMA) and other transport experts, Sustainable Australia links immigration (the main driver of population growth) to traffic congestion. Presumably these experts are also to be thrown into Leong’s basket of fascists.

To be clear, Leong is wrong in both fact and logic. The Sustainable Australia campaign poster that Leong referred to in New Matilda actually called for “better public transport and lower immigration” to help ease road congestion, as we are supportive of a holistic approach that prioritises public transport investment over roads. But the opportunity to smear a centrist party was obviously too great for Leong. She wanted to create a perception that Sustainable Australia simply blames immigrants for traffic congestion.

Sadly for Leong, we don’t. We actually blame Coalition, Labor and Greens politicians for mismanaging this country and arrogantly dismissing complaints about declining living standards as fascism. Leong’s elitism actually breeds this discontent and drives people into the arms of the right-wing parties we now see gaining or regaining interest from middle Australia.

Some claim that our rapid population growth would be manageable if only we invested in ever more mass public transport. But that laudable goal is unrealistic.

Firstly, humans love the convenience of cars, and Leong has not convinced people to abandon them to get to work, the shops or to their kids’ sporting fields on a Saturday morning. And secondly, “diseconomies of scale” in our built-up suburbs has created a situation in which major new infrastructure is unaffordable due to its skyrocketing per unit costs.

This is particularly important as it is the Greens’ pet project to densify our existing suburbs with more apartments, in response to also unsustainable sprawl. We cannot cost-effectively drop in new hospitals, schools, recreational green space, train lines and roads throughout existing suburbs. We would need to sell off our public assets, increase rates and charges, cut back services and destroy our environment in a futile attempt to pay for such things … Oh wait!

But supply and demand economics goes way above the idealistic head of Leong.

When the Australia Institute reviewed all Victorian political parties’ — including the Greens’ — state election promises on public transport, it concluded that “it was evident no party had based its promise around meeting passenger demand induced by population growth”.

So how did the modern party come to this?

Green Left Weekly reports that we have to go back to the 1990s when the original Greens members supported exactly the same population policy that Sustainable Australia does now: “stabilising” population numbers (hence the same call for lower immigration).

For fear of being branded racist — or perhaps even fascist — by the far left, the Greens cleared the path for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation by vacating the middle ground on immigration numbers. It allowed John Howard to double immigration (more customers and cheap labour) for big business while using the distraction of stopping asylum seeker boats. The Greens have been played like a fiddle on immigration.

Most people agree that the community division exacerbated by Hanson’s comments about minority groups is highly regrettable, and it certainly rails against Sustainable Australia’s inclusive values. But polling shows that the community is overwhelmingly opposed to Australia’s rapid population growth. If our political elites refuse to address issues of importance to everyday Australians, more and more will turn to political alternatives. Cue Pauline Hanson from stage right.

For political advantage, when it comes to immigration, all Greens politicians ever want to talk about is refugees. This is bizarre given the fact that refugees only make up around 10%t of Australia’s record permanent immigration intake of over 200,000 per year, and also given the environmental origins of The Greens. Sweeping 90% of the immigration issue and our growing population growth pressures under the carpet not only betrays sustainability principles, it builds legitimate community frustration.

The Greens should now join Sustainable Australia in calling for lower immigration, from 200,000 permanent migrants per year back to the long term average of 70,000. This would have no impact on our refugee intake, and indeed could make room for more.

I agree with Leong that fascism is no joke, but when it comes to the environment, it’s the Greens themselves that are threatening to become one.

100% correct. And the Green loons should hang their heads in deep shame because this is what its mad social justice agenda is doing to its raison detre, from the ABC:

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has been ridiculed for visiting a healthy section of the Great Barrier Reef while denying the effects of climate change.

Senator Hanson and other One Nation senators donned wetsuits, snorkels and masks for a tour of the reef in a show of support for Queensland’s tourism industry.

Senator Hanson disputed claims from the world’s leading scientists that the reef experienced its worst ever bleaching event in 2016.

She said the publicity surrounding bleaching events was hurting the tourism industry.

“If you actually go deeper, 12-20 metres deeper in the ocean, the reefs there are in pristine condition,” she said.

“And they’re growing all the time.”

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And Nine:

Pauline Hanson’s bogus claim the Great Barrier Reef is healthy is placing at risk up to 70,000 jobs, which will be affected by damage cause by climate change, the Greens say.

The One Nation leader has been accused of selecting a part of the reef unaffected by coral bleaching when she went snorkelling off Great Keppel Island on Friday and later had a crack at environmental groups for telling “untruths” about the reef’s health.

But Greens Senator Larissa Waters has accused One Nation of misrepresenting the health of reef and the future of the tens-of-thousands of jobs which depended upon it.

“Reef scientists are unanimous in saying the biggest threat to the reef is global warming, which caused the recent devastating coral bleaching,” she said on Saturday.

“One Nation are insulting reef tourism workers by visiting an unaffected area of the reef and claiming everything is fine – because they don’t even accept that global warming is real.”

Senator Waters said 22 per cent of corals on the Great Barrier Reef had “just died from the worst ever bleaching event on record”.

“One Nation is putting the jobs of 70,000 Queenslanders in jeopardy,” she said.

…But the trip has been criticised by conservationists.

They say Ms Hanson selected a healthy section of reef unaffected by unprecedented coral bleaching caused by high water temperatures.

Instead, the trip should have been to Lizard Island – more than 1000km away – where the severe coral bleaching begins, according to the conservationists.

“The trip is like taking journalists reporting on a conflict to a five-star holiday resort miles away from the actual war zone,” the Climate Council’s Professor Lesley Hughes said.

Ms Hanson has admitted she isn’t an expert on the reef but does believe humans aren’t responsible for coral bleaching and said agenda-driven groups were pushing “untruths” which were harming tourism.

Congratulations Greens. Your raging intolerance of intolerance is now condemning the environment to the governance of anti-science fruit loops.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.