If anybody wants to know what the Coalition plan to do in Government then they need look no further than the Coalition Speakers notes 1 July 2012 for an insight of the frightening world they would hope to thrust upon us. It looks at all the topical issues including Border Protection, Communications and Broadband, Employment and Workplace Relations, Foreign Affairs, Heath Higher Education, Indigenous Australians, Multiculturalism, Population, Superannuation and Youth.
But typical of any Coalition document it focuses more on attacking the other major parties than how and what should be done. The ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ are nothing more than a bit of chest thumping. There is much more passion in their criticisms of both the Government and the Greens than there is in beating their own drum. Just the usual scare tactics, you might say.
What struck me the most about the document was their rabid hatred for everything the Greens stand for. The Greens are not my party of choice, but after reading the document I’m convinced that they stand for much more than I gave them any credit for. And if anything, I’m more determined to vote against a party that opposes – or condemns – what the Greens want for our society.
I’ve made a list of some of the reasons why the Libs don’t want you to vote for the Greens. Upon reading them, you might also ponder how much the Liberals must be out of touch with the modern, progressive Australian. Here’s the list of what the Coalition fear:
The Greens believe in legalising same sex marriages.
The Greens believe in reintroduction of voluntary euthanasia laws in the NT & ACT.
The Greens support holding a plebiscite for an Australian Republic.The Greens will legalise the use of cannabis for specified medical purposes.
The Greens moved a private members bill entitled Anti-Terrorism Reform Bill 2009 to relax terrorism laws and calls for amendments to the Criminal Code and Crimes Act.
The Bill calls for greater freedom of expression and association, freedom from arbitrary detention, legal due process and privacy.
The Greens will repeal the sedition laws and will repeal mandatory sentencing legislation.
The Greens will prohibit the use of electroshock weapons and Tasers.
The Greens want an open door refugee and asylum seeker policy.They have said that they want to increase the number of refugees and asylum seekers Australia takes, but they haven’t said by how much; they also want to decrease the number of skilled migrants and increase the number of family reunion migrants.
Abolition of mandatory detention of illegal immigrants.
Restore Australia’s migration zone to match Australia’s territory and accept responsibility for processing all asylum seekers who seek protection in that zone.
Allow illegal immigrants unrestricted movement in and about reception centres.
Immediately grant illegal immigrants an asylum application visa (AAV) and move them into community reception centres after medical and security checks are satisfied or after 14 days.
Allow illegal immigrants with AAVs the right to work, travel, income support and access to ongoing educational and medical services anywhere in Australia while their claims are being assessed.
Ensure that refusal of an AAV is reviewable by the Administration Appeals Tribunal and that the illegal immigrant is housed in a facility close to an urban area.
Closing Australian ports and territorial waters to nuclear powered vessels and create nuclear free zones, municipalities and ports;
Prohibit mineral exploration, mining, extraction of petroleum and gas in terrestrial and marine nature conservation reserves.
Ban the exploration, mining and export of uranium and the storage of low-grade domestic nuclear waste in a remote location in Australia.
The Greens want a commonly agreed national benchmark to measure poverty and reform the social security system to ensure an adequate income for all.
The Greens will increase the number of marine reserves and implement a national framework for managing recreational and charter fishing.
The Greens will introduce an Oceans Act and establish a statutory National Oceans Authority to coordinate the sustainability of ocean uses. The Authority will report to the Parliament and enforce cosystem-based regional management plans and targets.
The Greens have called for a treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that recognises prior occupation and have sovereignty enshrined into the constitution.
The Greens will pursue the conclusion of a multilateral convention based on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and enact its provisions into Australian Law.
The Greens believe in the full restoration of the Racial Discrimination Act in the NT and ending the federal intervention into indigenous communities regardless of any consequences.
The Greens will repeal amendments to the NT’s land Rights Act as they believe the amendments disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Want to abolish SES funding for private schools, which would discourage private investment in education and create more dependency on taxpayer funding to fund school education.Impose new federal controls on where new non-government schools can be built or how many students they could enroll, which would severely limit parental choice.
Want Commonwealth funding for private schools kept at 2003/04 levels, which would see many schools be forced to close or sack teachers in order to stay open.Oppose performance payments for teachers.
Believe that education unions are the appropriate industrial representatives in all educational matters.
And finally …
Will increase Youth Allowance to the level of a living wage, irrespective of the cost to taxpayers.
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yup I to agree that nuclear vessels shouldn’t be allowed to dock within australian harbors for the simple we get complacency, thinking nothing will happen is just asking for problems when an accident happens because we have nothing in place to manage a nuclear meltdown if it were to occur..
as for Nuclear Power stations I think these will be a necessary evil given the limitations on other fossil fuel powered generation power stations which aren’t in limitless supply, and I doubt solar power isn’t going to supply enough power to achieve decent power for the whole country…
I’m on the DSP and I see the need for pensions to rise to a realistic level instead of working from a 70’s base model which is currently in service…
when you a quarter of your pay to rent there just isn’t enough cash to live and pay bills and this has been the status quo for the last 15-18 years the cost of living has gone past what is socially except-able, I’m not a greedy person though trying to survive on a very limited income is hard, not everyone a degree and can afford to be on the dole where there is no work available..
I dare any politician to sit on a government benefit for a 1-5 year period and see how far they get on the pension..
while we still work on age wage type pay system I suspect nothing will change given you pay the same regardless of your age output exceed input and it will only get worser as time goes on..
I might have to vote Green after reading that…
I seem to remember that benefits used to be equivalent to the basic wage. The mindset was that people wanted to work, to be useful..then came the Howard years and the denigration of people who either via misfortune or disability (and yes there were some lazy ones there as well) – and therefore needed a good wack to get off their lazy ars*s and go get a job. Therefore investment in welfare plummeted and we were all told that we should have *planned better* have mega invested for our retirement which is fine as long as you’re not a woman and never had the opportunity.
I was also told face to face by one politician who shall remain nameless that disabled people didn’t need assistance because the majority of people with disabilities were disabled due to car accidents and so received mega payouts. I didn’t bother arguing….
That list gave me every reason to continue to vote Green, oh, and to direct my preferences well away from the Liberals/LNP.
Sounds like a pretty good list to me and we are a rich enough country to afford it.
I’m of the opinion they’re more than a little extreme in some of their positions, especially on refugees. I happily vote for them for the Senate, however I feel they need to moderate some of their positions if they actively wish to run this country on their own right. Still, they deserve more votes than they do get. They actually have things they want to do, unlike the LIberal or National Party.
Sounds pretty good to me,Labour has fallen off its moral grass roots foundations.
Jason, Your comments on the viability of solar power as an alternative and your conclusion that nuclear power is inevitable ignores other means of power generation. Already we have a CSIRO developed ‘ultra battery’ system which has been developed in the USA in association with Solar and Wind generators to extend service. http://www.ecoult.com/technology/ubersystem-configuration/ or you could investigate another Australian invention Carnegie Wave energy which is installing a unit in WA. Don’t be fooled by those who say nuclear is the only way: it is madness to create something which will require expensive maintenance for centuries, with catastrophic results if the maintenance is neglected or inadequate. Chernobyl and Fukushima are still unresolved problems.
…… and your reasons for not voting Green are? The Greens are a middle of the road social democratic party with policies entirely consistent with European social democratic parties. The fact that they are seen by so many Australians as extreme is an indication of how far to the right the Australian political debate has been dragged by both of the ‘old’ parties and the self interested MSM since the 1970s. The readiness of Australians to ‘buy’ the simplistic smears applied to the Greens by both the ALP and LNP – too pure to compromise’, ‘not a party of government’, – despite the obvious evidence to the contrary of the just concluded Parliament is tragic.
AIMN readers hate and fear the current version of the LNP with good reason. However the ALP will swap preferences with their supposed political opponent in the coming (and future) federal (and State) election(s) in an attempt to shut the Greens out of Parliament. This is a Party for which over a million Australians voted in 2010 but so great is the ALP sense of entitlement to the votes of these people that they will attempt to deny them a voice in the Parliament. Whatever it takes indeed. This is shameful but the hard men of the Right (always men) who run the party have no shame.
It is also the clearest possible indication of the determination of the determination of the faction/union powerbrokers that control this ‘pro-free-market’, ‘third way’, hollowed out shadow of the ALP to drag the Party even further to the right. Have no illusions, these people will continue to run the Party into the future despite recent cosmetic chatter about reform.
Along with everyone else who reads AIMN, I hope for an election win to the Rudd run ALP. Along (I suspect) with many AIMN folk this is because I believe this would clearly be the less disastrous of the two possibilities. This is a pretty poor state of affairs. We must decide not the best, but the least awful option for government.
Unlike Michael Taylor I am no longer an ALP voter. Six years ago I finally got sick of the Party’s constant trashing of the social democratic foundations of its reason to exist and decided to join with a million or so other Greens voters (to quote my former MP Lindsay Tanner) ‘shouting from the sidelines’. To be perfectly clear I am also a Party member.
The possibilities for ordinary Australians (even ‘rank and file’ Party members) to influence the political process are vanishingly small and decreasing steadily. The only possibility for most of us is via the vote we get to cast every four years or so. It seems to me that in this election, for ALP voters disillusioned by the internal corruption and undemocratic processes of a Party demonstrably uninterested in the participation of ordinary Australians and by policy failures on (for example) marriage equality, tax reform, asylum seekers and social welfare there is a very clear alternative.
Send a message to your preferred Party that you expect it to do better by voting Green and preferencing ALP in the Lower House. Unless you live in the Seat of Melbourne, where a Green vote just might give Adam Bandt a highly desirable second term instead of electing another right wing faction approved back-bench ALP puppet, you can be secure in the knowledge that your vote will go to Labor. If enough people stopped swallowing their doubts and decided to send this message the hands of those within the Party struggling for procedural and policy reform would be strengthened and voters who did this just might have helped to start the ALP addressing its policy and procedural problems.
Now all you progressive folk out there, can you really find a better way to allocate your vote than this?
@ Douglas Evans
Your comments summarise well my experience and feelings regarding the on-going campaign by both the Libs and Labs to disenfranchise the Greens. As you say, the Greens are very much a “a middle of the road social democratic party with policies entirely consistent with European social democratic parties” – policies and values which would dovetail well with a more switched on Labor party and National Party that actually gave a toss about the environment (farms don’t grow on trees, you know ;P).
However the swing to the right appears to have been cemented with Rudd’s unbelievably expensive off-shore processing and resettlement plan. What will be axed to pay for this piece of old White Australia policy dressed up as 21stC enlightenment? Those fawning over Rudd’s solution may well find they are paying dearly for this plan to rehouse a paltry 25,000 people per year.
Also would like to take issue with the use of the term “illegal immigrant” used so lavishly by author, Michael Taylor. Where, in the Greens policies do they refer to asylum seekers as being illegal immigrants?
Until people have been assessed (aka ‘processed’) all are deemed asylum seekers.
Douglas – my sentiments exactly. Over the years I have become thoroughly disillusioned and angered at how the duopoly lurch further and further to the right.
But the truth is, it’s all merely a game for them. A game of power, influence, money. A game of thrones.
The Libs lurching further right I can partially understand – it’s in their blood, as they watch the US system and ape it like the monkey’s they are – yes I’m talking about you Bernardi you baboon!
The ALP push to the right is tactical, of course. They know full well a vote for the Greens is highly likely to deliver them the preference, so why even bother fighting that battle? Let the greens take the left-hand edge, but disparage them sufficiently that you still create a delineation for the Labor brand. With both major parties casting them as loonies, they will only attract a small vote anyway and 98% of the preferences are likely to flow to Labor anyway.
No, the real battle in this game is on the right of centre – those voters who are aspirational but don’t like all the Lib’s policies or personalities. Every vote you steal from the Libs effectively scores two points for you – 1 for you – 1 less for them. This why why the ALP keep lurching right!
Hawke an Keating started this in the 80’s when money flowed and greed was good – they created a generation of aspirationals who saw money as the pathway to happiness. Howard built on this by fomenting the fear mentality around the boats then 9/11 and then leading us to war, ably assisted by the increasingly irrelevant MSM no longer capable of performing their job.
I lament the fact the public seems more interested in a footy match or a cooking /renovation show than understanding the policies and decisions that affect our lives. I often have an image of the general public nowadays sitting with their hands blocking their ears, loudly yelling “la la la la la.” Not willing to hear, see or be interested in anything outside their own pissy little world.
And while most of us wallow in our ignorance, powerful, malevolent forces are undermining our rights, pillaging our resources, destroying our environment, stealing our children’s future, making money from vapour, diminishing our humanity and turning us into mere consumers of commodities in a world of user-pays, where only those with money deserve to survive – everyone else is chaff.
The only people spreading the word and standing-up against those forces seems to be the Greens.
While I don’t agree with all of their policies, 90% are eminently more sensible than the “make-it-up as we go along to buy votes” policies of the duopoly and the extreme right-wing fringe lunatics.
The Greens are essentially about Economy that serves Society – Humanity before Business – Environment before Profit – Science before Faith. And those are the reasons why they get my vote.
Well said Anomander and diannaart. Unfortunately not enough of us singing from this song sheet. Despite what may be a temporary reprieve this election, the road ahead looks pretty bleak to me. The storm continues to gather strength.