Global warming is advancing. The local environment is being killed. We’ve a rolling water, extinction and land clearing crisis. The built environment is being crush-loaded. The Greens vote has fallen from 15% to 9% and its leadership is in sinking into chaos.
Say what? Yes, amid perfect conditions for a green-led political revolution, The Greens vote is going backwards, and no wonder. The party zigged towards the centre just when the polity has zagged to the Left. As well, by doing so, the Fake Greens have pushed away from their core reason for being, embracing a centrist policy platform with massive population growth at its heart, making it the most environmentally destructive party in Canberra. I mean, seriously?
Inevitably this total ideological and policy failure is now becoming its own political problem. The party is increasingly disintegrating into public factional bickering. We’ve seen open warfare between Lea Rhiannon and the leadership, and the more recent Batman debacle is ongoing, via Domainfax:
Four Greens councillors in Melbourne’s inner-north, including the Mayor of Darebin, have been confirmed as among the 18 party members who tried to take out their own candidate for the recent Batman byelection before the race had even started.
Darebin Mayor Kim Le Cerf and councillors Trent McCarthy, Steph Amir and Susanne Newton face calls for their expulsion from the Greens over their alleged roles in the sabotage of the failed campaign of candidate Alex Bhathal.
The four were among 18 signatories to a 101-page complaint against Ms Bhathal that was delivered to party authorities in the run-up to the byelection and then leaked to the media once the campaign was under way.
An official party process looked at the complaints and cleared Ms Bhathal of any wrongdoing.
However, supporters of Ms Bhathal have called on all 16 signatories of the document who remain Greens members to quit the party, alleging that the complaint was more about settling personal scores within the party’s Darebin branch, with the central aim of removing Ms Bhathal as the candidate for Batman.
This looks set to get worse not better. Last week the factional wars ruptured policy with Richard Di Natale throwing Hail Mary passes to the party’s Left on universal basic income and a public ponzi-bank that alienated many of its own media supporters.
Over the weekend the tensions mounted further, via The Australian:
The NSW Greens are pushing a hard-left policy manifesto that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, heavily tax the nation’s wealthy and cap the salaries of chief executives.
The manifesto also supports starving private schools of public cash, cutting the standard working week, abolishing higher education debts and making university and public transport free.
The policy document, released by Greens NSW MP David Shoebridge, threatens to further undermine national leader Richard Di Natale and expose the party to ridicule in the lead-up to the next federal and NSW elections.
…Although Mr Shoebridge backs Senator Di Natale’s push for a $250bn-plus universal basic income, he is critical of the party’s failure to capitalise on a reduced Liberal and Labor vote at the 2016 federal election.
…“There is a false perception that the Greens focus almost entirely on the environment at the expense of other economic and social issues, which are more important to likely and former Greens’ voters,’’ he writes. “This perception is a barrier to growing our vote.’’
Some of these ideas are good: the billionaires tax, free university and public transport plus cutting private school subsidies. The problem is the manner in which the debate is playing out via a wildly spinning ideological compass and, moreover, the party’s total lack of political strategy to contain it.
None of these ideas is going to get any community traction while they are no more than a debate. Indeed, while they are in formation it is political suicide to be floating them. Di Natalie looks weak. His party looks divided and bitter. And, fatally, what is supposed to be a values-driven movement appears as cynical as the major party factional machines.
It’s true that the Greens need a point of difference (and need to be further Left to get it) to grow. The tide of history is clearly on its side for such a push.
There is no reason why this could not also include a wider policy platform, either.
The question is what kind of Left must this be? Is it the cultural Marxist wowser-Left of Di Natalie fully equipped with a hand-wringing media echo chamber in The Guardian (which is the perfect reflection of the “loon pond” Coalition/Murdoch alliance)? Or is it the real Marxist Left focused on the workers and environment being laid waste by globalisation and population growth?
The polls offer the very obvious answer.
