Answers:
This is not an attack on the Greens; I have some questions that I cannot find answers to on their site. I support the Greens for what they are trying to achieve, but my vote and heart lies elsewhere.
1) Do the Greens support Methadone as a way to reduce the number of people on Heroin? If so why. If not; do they have another option for those who want help beyond safe injection rooms.
2) Are the attacks on Garrett connected to a perception that he has somehow betrayed the Greens by supporting the party he is now a member of or an attack because he no longer is a Green but jumped ship (did a Kernot) in the hope of raising the profile of environmental issues in Australia?
3) For a group that advocates many of the same things that the Democrats do why are they dividing the vote between the two parties and not trying to reconcile the differences in a hope of gaining more power? (Historically my understanding is it has been the Democrats who open a topic in Parliament and the Greens who get the publicity; if we could harness this I feel we must surely be able to become a strong viable third party option. Is this my naivete? First person to raise the royal fucking over we got from a former member when she was leader gets tied down and talked to about Liberal policy and voting vs. selling out and being screwed over.)
4) Must you vote along party lines if you are a parliamentary member? Why?
5) Is it just media bias in the way they report the aftermath of a Green defeat or are the Greens totally unable to accept that some of the not getting people in to Parliament blame lies within the party? (As I said; this is not an attack. I feel the bias against reporting on the Dem's is costing us as much as some bull shit decision from ten years ago, so i can understand how the Greens might perceive it. I'm mostly curious.)
Admission:
OK; at about this point I should probably ask someone to edit this to remove wordiness, pretty up presentation and try to reduce the poorly worded thought processes. I'm not going to as I will be away from the computer for about a week (Honeymoon and Wedding.)
The last time a political piece I wrote was edited by someone other than me it was manipulated to fit a meter that didn't exist and resulted in stanzas not making sense so I am paranoid about editors too. (Hey, you try to get attention to a party not ALP in a Labor safe seat and tell me how you'd do it? Beyond eating pies and cross promoting Jester's Pies; animal products and gluten :( prose seemed a natural choice for me, especially as I was a regular performer at the Dan Poetry on Saturday for a year or more.) The fun one site has had with the poem amuses me. (Concatenate for those curious.) Still I stand by every poorly worded line in that piece. (FUCK! I think I've just really come out of the political cupboard... still, anyone using my full name will be edited. Unfair? Yes, but I respect others right to be anonymous to their own degree, I hope others will respect mine.)
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3 comments:
Hey there
Peter Garrett was never an Australian Green. He was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation which makes him part of the 'small-g' green movement but that is distinct from the Greens political party.
I did however notice that on his entry into Labor a lot of greens (whether small or big 'g') felt betrayed - almost as if he belonged to them - rather than see this as a part of the process of greening the major parties.
One other thing - there are lots of differences both philosophically and practically between the Democrats and Greens and we attract overlapping but different sets of voters. They have as much a right to exist as us. Of course somebody needs to tell them the same thing in reverse.
So you're the one responsible for that awful poetry! I didn't realise.
May I suggest you never do that again? Imagine how a violinist would feel if someone with no idea how to play stood in a mall and plucked strings. It's an insult to the art form, and diminishes it's standing in society.
May I also suggest that such tactics are counterproductive. The fact that the Democrat candidate has no idea how to write poetry but tries anyway surely raises questions about their judgement. It would not be unreasonable to assume they also have no idea about politics, but decided to give it a go anyway.
1. Not sure.
2. No, they're connected to the disconnect with our previous idea of him as an honest, ethical person, and the reality demonstrated in the recent campaign that he'll tell any misleading lie if it helps the ALP. If he'd opposed us on the ground of actual policies, that would have been different.
3. The Dems don't represent the same ground as the Greens at all. Half the Dems wanted to be to the left of the ALP, yes, and they've now joined the Greens. The rest of the Dems wanted to be in the middle, to the left of the Libs but to the right of Labor. The Greens are a progressive party seeking to build a base on the left. The moment they start trying to compromise their principles to get right-wing votes is the day I give up on them.
4. Not if it's a conscience vote.
5. This is a meaningless question. Obviously the Greens are considering what they could have done better. But the main reason the Green vote wasn't higher was the relentless smear campaigns from all the other political parties and the Murdoch press. That the Greens maintained 10% in spite of all the "if you vote Green, Bob Brown will inject your child with gay heroin" bullshit, is quite an achievement.
Cheers.
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