Ok, so the Australian Greens are poised to make history on Saturday 21 August. Diversity in the political landscape in Australia is always a good thing. But, what do the Greens really stand for and who are the people behind their nascent surge...?
Information about the Greens is readily available on Wikipedia, their official website, news sites and myriad other sites. What I am presenting here is simply new information that has become available recently coupled with my thoughts, so hopefully it is error free.
It is great to see that the Greens have a full range of policies. They are just not a one-issue party. But after having a look through their policies and looking at the related coverage, I have to agree that they have been confirmed, in my eyes, as hard socialists. If things go as predicted, I look forward to the grandstanding of "we have a mandate" from the Greens even though I doubt that all the people who will vote Green agree with all their policies (the same goes for the major parties – this whole "mandate" thing gets really annoying).
Now we have news that a rather large donation by the Electrical Trades Union (previously aligned with Labor) has gone to the Greens. Do we really need another union-backed political party in Australia?
Finally, we have GetUp's not-so-subtle endorsement of the Greens with their issues scorecard. Funny how no issues where the Greens fail are presented. For example increasing the tax-free threshold or having a fairer distribution of public funds between government and non-government schools (granted, all major parties fail on that, I think). If GetUp were genuinely interested in advancing the prospects of progressive and moderate candidates they would do more than this token gesture.
Image credit: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Sphere: Related Content
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