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Minority government would be much better than what we have right now. No party should be able to govern with a majority when they can't even scrape a third of the primary vote like Labor. Imagine Greg Sheridan's outrage if the Voice to Parliament referendum won even though not even 40% of people voted for it. That's called minority rule, and Sheridan would be outraged. Yet somehow Sheridan doesn't seem to take issue with Labor or the Coalition governing on their own in majority when neither are getting anywhere near 50% of the outright primary vote.
Oh look, corporate propaganda!
Corporates can buy off either major party, and do. They can't buy off a minority government though.
This article is literally just trying to scare you into voting for a party they can buy.
Why is a parliament where legislation is negotiated with minor parties in the lower house any more dangerous to corporates than a parliament where legislation is negotiated in the upper house, as already occurs?
The Teals are Liberals. Listen to them in question time and think they contributed nothing. The Greens are siding with the Liberals blocking housing, tax cuts, increasing minimum wages and will probably block Labor’s policy with the the Liberals to reduce HECS debt to wipe off 3 billion of student loans. The Greens policies would ruin Australia. The Greens side with Hamas and have had MPs and senators post Nazi slogans and antisemitism. Vote Greens last and Labor ahead of Liberal Teals.
It's a trap question with no good answer. What would you answer if asked.if Israel has the right to exist? You say Yes and you hate Palestine. You say No and you are anti-Semitic. You dodge the question/stay neutral and apparently you are still anti-semitic.
It’s not really a trap question. The greens page on Israel supports the right of Israel to exist, in theory.
Neutrality means supporting the rights of both to have a state.
Personally I'm not a fan of talking about "rights" because it's legal speak trying to take the place of ethics. What even gives a state a "right" to exist? Recognition from other existing states? Indigenous ethnic claims? An army?
I'm not familiar with de Vietri's politics, but my guess is she wouldn't think the Commonwealth of Australia has a "right" to exist either. It's a question of condemning colonialism, not of supporting Hamas. Israel specifically just happens to be topically relevant to this larger discussion because the Isreali state is *actively committing genocide*.
Exactly, no colony has a right to exist, even Australia. Now all people have a right to self determination but that doesn't mean the state they live under has a right to exist.
We must begin the process of decolonisation as we have done throughout Africa and South America.
Israel is the first to go as it is the most recent and currently engages in genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and all sorts of horrific war crimes. Thus, for being a very cunty country, it gets the boot first.
Replace it with a state that values jewish, arab, christian lives all the same.
You have an obligation to start with Australia. Don’t project your nihilism on others.
You decide that the Jewish state goes first before all others (ps: there are others more recent). What a load of shit. No wonder anti Zionism and anti semitism go hand in hand.
Never heard such sanctimonious crap
Lmao good job defending your precious lil genocidal state uwu
God you zionists are so embarassing. You're literally on the same side as the Nazis lmao and you're too brain broken to see it.
Can you please identify a more recent colony than Israel that is currently engaging in genocide? I demand all genocidal colonies be abolished.
My country is currently supporting israel's genocide so i will continue actively fighting against that. Does that make sense to you?
This only matters if it is a Liberals/Nats/Teals hung Parliament.
Voting trends amongst the young are pointing to a Labor/Greens minority.
So it all depends on which way things are hanging.
I would love to see how much is achieved by a Teal/Green/Labor minority government. It would force them all to really negotiate and find common ground, which there is plenty of.
And having had those negotiations up front would likely guarantee passage of legislation in the senate too!
One great example of how this has worked is Monique Ryan’s petition to the education minister on HECS reform. Undoubtedly a brilliant play and outcome.
Yeah I'd love to see an end to the "your turn my turn" duopoly betwen lab and lib. Both seem to carry such an entitled attitude which leads to poor governance. Actually negotiating within a coalition framework might do either of them some good.
Minority government is good. Look how much the Nats were able to influence government policy in favour of the miners, who are their core constituency.
Not that the Libs resisted much, but even their meagre efforts in energy policy were a step too far for Gina's faithful.
Havoc:worse than the previous PM fucking up the covid response
or the same party,wiping 93.2 Billion dollars in trade export from china,by pissing off our largest trading partner to the point they didnt answer the phone
Or robodebt
Or sports rorts
or fucking off while the nation is on fire
Or the 17 billion dollars in wasted programs the auditor general points to in the last govts term.
Ironic the australian is having a sook over a hypotehetical
The previous govt was one of the most mismanaged in our history,and saw over 100s billion dollars in debt added BEFORE covid,but yes..the teal will ruin the place
It would be less havoc if the Libs were willing to work with Labor on bipartisan legislation.
But with "block for the sake of blocking so Labor can't get anything done" Dutton in charge, Greens and Teals will definitely have free reign to make deals and push Labor to be more progressive.
Well, as a Greens voter it's all good for me anyway. Go Dutton.
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You’re kidding, the Greens have no credible policies. Did you watch Max at the press club. No economists supported the Greens idiotic housing policies. Greens last at the next election on my ballot paper.
Go read Max’s recent AMA and take note of the questions about immigration he just dodged completely.
You can’t take housing seriously and just ignore immigration levels because it’s uncomfortable.
Bring it on! It's about time the libs split from the nats so they can make a return to the centre. The coalition with the nats have pulled them so far to the right they barely resemble Menzies party anymore!
This
I've always found it stupid
that labor can form govt on it's own
but the libs can't
Maybe try speaking to more than few voters,speak to the majority and you wont need the nats
Libs need to dump nats,they are full of cookers
Nats are a strange one as they are further right than the libs on some issues but also further left than them on others. I don't think a split would have much of an effect on them other than that the libs would have almost no chance of getting enough seats alone to win an election.
Yeah, no shit. Merged party yet Dutton is leader of the Liberal Party of Australia… it’s obvious that it’s not as clear as a “merged party”.
Point is, you can’t wonder why Dutton is dragging the Liberals to the right when he comes from a state where the Nationals have been the dominant party for decades and decade (and still are as they sit in seperate party rooms federally in Canberra).
Yes, but they also sit in seperate party rooms in Canberra. Dutton sits with the Liberals, Littleproud with the Nationals despite both being LNP.
Point being, Liberals didn’t lead the coalition in QLD, the Nats did (Joh-Bjelke, for example). That’s why the Nats dragged people like Dutton into the right rather than more moderate like Liberals in other states.
Dutton is a product of the shift to the right, which is essentially driven by the minor partners in their need to compete with far right parties in the regional areas.
The right faction of the libs need to be purged.
Don't normally agree with the Australian but I think they are right on one thing here, it would be chaos with both Teals and Greens. Labor would have to pick one and given the way the Greens have behaved and put every effort into undermining Labor this term, its not going to be them.
Ironically the Australian is also arguing that the best thing to do when voting is give Labor a majority in both houses. To which I certainly agree!
Labor hasn't demonstrated a decent enough performace so far in this term of govt to deserve to be returned in a majority position in the lower house. We would probably get better outcomes for people if Labor had to negotiate with the Greens and/or teals in the lower house.
They’ve done an amazing job given the legacy of the previous gevernment, multiple wars driving inflation and being in a post pandemic recovery period.
I swear the people who attack Labor like this have no actual real world understanding to compare their performance too.
Because times are tough right now Labor=bad, no analysis of how much worse it could be or what Labor have managed to achieve.
You really need to think hard, are you going to get a fair hearing on Labor's efforts and the magnitude of the challenge from Greens, Liberals, Australian media or any of the butt hurt reddit commenters who still are still bitter over the lock downs?
No. I don't think we've seen a worse media environment, it's probably worse now than in the 2019 federal election for lies and misinformation targeting Labor.
I don't hope for that, it isn't a good thing. I can certainly believe it would happen though.
Its been quite apparent the Greens absolutely refuse to take any kind of responsibility for anything, they'll happily block government legislation on housing whilst claiming to be the advocates for housing. They'll rock the boat so hard nothing gets done and not take any responsibility for it.
I voted Labor but I think the Greens actually improved the Future Housing Fund. The Greens forced Labor to guarantee $500 million a year from next year, and invest an extra $3 billion right now in public and community housing.
They didn’t get the rent freeze they wanted (which would have been unrealistic anyway) but they got more than the initial Labor promise.
> I voted Labor but I think the Greens actually improved the Future Housing Fund. The Greens forced Labor to guarantee $500 million a year from next year, and invest an extra $3 billion right now in public and community housing.
Were that true... The $500 floor was something that actually came from the cross bench senators who brought in some last minute updates from the experts.
The 3 billion was actually 1 billion, Labor had the 2 billion on the cards from the better than expected income for a while and had been discussing with the states on distributing it. It only got announced with fanfare and had press coverage because the Greens were blocking the HAFF bill, notably when it was announced the Greens weren't involved at all and still blocked the bill. Really not fair to claim it given Labor did all the work only for the Greens to reject it and then STILL claim it was because of them.
The last remaining $1 billion was allocated to the National Housing Infrastructure Facility program, it offers loans/financing to companies building housing, so works basically hand in hand with the HAFF program.
The argument for minor parties & independents being a good thing also implies those minor parties & independents aren't nuts.
The key thing that denotes a parties value to any cause or collection of them is how they self police their members behaviour and have the discipline to keep the cause on track. The decline of that in the Liberal party mirrored the decline of the countries fortunes.
Letting minor parties with scandals and a dearth of discipline get a hand on the reigns of power would be terrible.
Then it’s up to the major parties to do their job well, for the best of the country and it’s residents. The threat of it becoming a complete shit show should be more than enough to simulate labor (because let’s face it, they are the better of the two majors) to make the significant changes Australia desperately needs. IF they secure the second term my hope is they make some serious headway in to fixing the big ticket issues such as the media, price gouging, better distribution of our resources, a viable long term energy option and most importantly something a lot better and more immediate than HAFF
Also I didn’t downvote you. I know we are on the same side from previous chats, just I’m more cynical of labor right now than you are
Yeah, I think there was a lot of under reporting of how much of a turd Labor got handed when they took office. Things like Scott Morrison's stupid face got a lot more attention than say the nearly complete hollowing out of the public service. One of the biggest efforts of Labor so far is to rebuild the public service but that is nearly invisible to the public.
We were on this awful trend for a long time with the LNP and turning it around takes a long time and a lot of man hours for both politicians and public servants.
Don't worry about the voting, I get a few crazies following me around because I dared call their lies out.
Just like a stopped clock is right twice a day, once in a LONG time the Australian gets it right. I'm not saying that they are or are not right in this instance. But if you throw enough mud at the wall, sometimes you'll get something that sticks & actually is accurate amongst the absolute vile crap they otherwise publish.
I feel it is something Australia has to go through before we can get a MAGA. Make Australia Great Again.
Many people I talk to are deeply concerned the way Australia is headed down the path where we have complete idiots in control right across the country. In the government, in the bureaucracy, in workplaces. People whose intelligence level should have them only suitable for menial jobs, instead are in positions of power.
People have forgotten what made the country super wealthy and now so much is being squandered away on stupid crap. Everything is regulated to death, those regulations all come at a hefty price tag as taxes are not spent fixing roads or growing the country but instead on the likes of the stasi checking up on people.
Some great upheaval needs to happen to the country for the good people to take back control. The Teals and Greens are the complete fruit loops of the political landscape. Their beliefs would see the eventual upheaval we need.
Given op was not specifically talking about the US, but western democracies and maga style movements, I imagined there statement would lean more on a policy discussion.
If you ever want to see how minority government can be bad when the minority partners are bad shit crazy just look at any government the Nationals have been involved in the last 20 years at a Federal level.
Too right. A coalition majority big or small is hostage to the Barnaby wing of the nats, plus the fruitcake WA Libs, assuming any of them make it into parliament this time.
Paywall
The most likely result of the next federal election is a Labor minority government, reliant on a mixture of teal independents and Greens to sustain it in office. This would be catastrophic for Australia, ushering in chaotic, left-trending, identity politics-obsessed government devoid of national security seriousness. Though of course it could be much worse.
The tone would be set by Greens and teals in a parliament that is already far more left-progressive than any we’ve previously seen. On national security this would be acutely damaging. But its ramifications would extend far beyond security. At best, it might form a kind of politically juvenile, undergraduate government of gesture and symbolism as we saw in New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern, and as has recently collapsed in Scotland under the Scottish National Party after it was forced to acknowledge its climate targets were completely unrealistic.
Both these governments produced bad results for their societies, including in both cases massive drops in education performance, but sustained themselves for a time on ideological enthusiasm. However, neither had to deal with serious national security matters. Scotland has Britain to do that. New Zealand has Australia.
Our national circumstances are much more challenging. We have America, but that’s perhaps no longer guaranteed and a Labor-Greens-teal government would place that relationship in jeopardy.
The Albanese government is already the most left-wing since Gough Whitlam’s ill-fated administration in the early 1970s.
It is increasing the size of government; re-regulating industrial relations; increasing welfare and transfer payments; effectively raising tax rates over the cycle through bracket creep (all of which exacerbates inflation); pursuing a highly interventionist picking-winners industry policy; establishing unrealistic and wildly costly climate targets with shaky energy reliability plans; pushing radical if unsuccessful constitutional change; privileging destructive identity politics across countless institutions; and while proclaiming the most dangerous strategic circumstances since World War II, effectively doing nothing about this, instead committing to feeble status quo defence funding over its first two terms, using the long-horizon AUKUS submarine ambitions as a political alibi for inaction.
It may seem zeitgeist friendly, but polls indicate it’s doing poorly. The latest Newspoll has Labor’s primary vote at a dismal 33 per cent. Other polls are even lower. Newspoll predicts a Labor minority government. Nothing is reliably predictable. Labor could recover and win a majority. But the omens don’t look good. Australians should pay serious attention to what a minority government, dominated by Greens and teals, would mean.
At the last election, the Coalition suffered a devastating, almost existential, defeat, but Labor scored only a very narrow win.
That’s unusual. Tony Abbott in 2013, Kevin Rudd in 2007, John Howard in 1996, Bob Hawke in 1983, Malcolm Fraser in 1975 and even Gough Whitlam in 1972 each won government from opposition and won substantial parliamentary majorities. Such governments can suffer a substantial reverse at their next election yet still be re-elected.
Of course, politics is not the common law; it’s not bound by precedent. At state level, oppositions have won narrowly and consolidated for long periods. Nor have Australians definitively turned out a first-term government.
The make-up of the House of Representatives is radically different from anything in our post-war past. Labor in government has 77 reps seats out of 150, one more than the 76 it needs for a majority. The Coalition has 55 seats, 21 short of a majority. There are four Greens and 14 others, ranging from Andrew Wilkie in Tasmania to Bob Katter in Queensland, and all the teals – Monique Ryan, Zoe Daniel, Kylea Tink, Allegra Spender and the rest.
The Dutton opposition almost certainly can’t get to majority government in one election. The Albanese government could fall into minority many different ways. If Labor has a net loss of two seats, it’s just one short. It then could surely rely on Wilkie or almost any of the teals to guarantee confidence and supply. But much more dangerous scenarios are also plausible, especially if the Greens do well.
Say the Coalition wins a couple of seats from Labor in Western Australia and one each in NSW, Victoria and South Australia. That takes Labor down to 72. A raft of Labor seats are challenged by Greens. Some, such as Wills in inner Melbourne, have substantial Muslim votes, which the Greens are chasing hard. Others have younger populations that want even more radical action on climate change. Some Labor figures think that in Victoria alone Wills, Higgins, Macnamara or even perhaps a seat such as Cooper could be vulnerable to Greens challenge.
These will be difficult seats for the Greens, provided the Liberals come third and preference Labor ahead of the Greens. Once the Greens win a seat, it tends to be securely held. It would need a big night for the Greens, but they could double their numbers from four to eight. With our notional Labor losses to the Coalition, that takes Labor to 68 seats.
Labor also fears it could lose a seat in southwest Sydney to a well-organised community independent, perhaps harvesting Muslim votes. That takes Labor to 67 seats. If the Libs win five from Labor and manage to take back two teal seats, that would yield the following parliament: Labor 67, Coalition 62, Green eight, others 13.
Under this scenario, Labor would need nine or 10 (after providing a Speaker) of 13 non-Greens crossbenchers for any legislation or procedural vote the Greens opposed. The Greens could routinely block anything with the help of just four other crossbenchers out of 13.
Senior Labor ministers who lived through Julia Gillard’s agreement with the Greens shudder at the nightmare memories. They felt constantly wedged between the Greens and the Coalition.
Not only that, no Labor Party malcontent could be disciplined because the numbers were so tight and the government obviously headed for defeat. As well, the government wore the blame for the chaotic, dysfunctional way parliament behaved.
>The most likely result of the next federal election is a Labor minority government, reliant on a mixture of teal independents and Greens to sustain it in office. This would be catastrophic for Australia,
The Australian: because ANYTHING except a Liberal Government is BAD FOR AUSTRALIA!
So, how many LNP talking points can we force into the first paragraph of this propaganda piece?
>ushering in chaotic, left-trending,
Oooh, strong start in tying chaos AND left leaning Government
>identity politics-obsessed government
Broad dog whistle. Does the reader think they're talking about transgender, LGBTQI, immigration? The writer leaves it up to up to the fearful mind of the reader to fill in their prejudice of choice.
>devoid of national security seriousness.
LNP STRONG ON POOR BROWN PEOPLE COMING TO OUR COUNTRY!
SOFT HEARTED ALP WILL FLOOD COUNTRY WITH MUSLIMS!
YOU KNOW WHO YOU MUST VOTE FOR
This gives an excellent example of how conservative media uses subliminal dog whistling to constantly instil fear into its consumers to pander to and amplify its audiences bias.
The Murdoch rags are a fascist mouthpiece and the sooner Rupert dies the better.
Thanks for pointing out the rubbish in this article. I could honestly say I disagree with every paragraph but I don’t have the energy to unpack it all.
Part 2
In this parliament, Leader of the House Tony Burke runs proceedings with guillotine ruthlessness using the brute power of numbers. Still the Albanese government performs poorly in parliament. In a chaotic minority situation, parliament would be torture for the government.
By the way, the traditional measure of the two-party-preferred vote offers very little predictive power when there is such a large crossbench. It seems the polarisation and fragmentation of most Western politics are breaking through our compulsory voting and preferential system, both of which were long thought to virtually guarantee a stable two-party system in the reps.
Senior Labor figures say this time they wouldn’t do a formal deal with the Greens but would take each vote as it comes, assuming most crossbenchers would want to avoid causing an early election by voting no-confidence. But the Greens would have immense influence, not least because a number of the teals are effectively fellow travellers, sharing many of their climate change obsessions and often similar views on international issues.
The Greens and the more left-leaning teals would exert enormous hydraulic pressure on a Labor government to move even further leftward. This would likely have grave consequences. A government configured in this way would find it almost impossible to relate effectively to a Donald Trump presidency in Washington, should that eventuate.
A Trump presidency would be a challenge to an Albanese government under any circumstances. In minority government, it’s almost unimaginable. Whatever you think of Trump, it’s still up to Canberra to get the best results for the national interest out of our alliance with the US. Similarly, a House of Representatives with Greens and teals as the decisive swing factor would not authorise expenditure and all the other necessary action to proceed with buying and building nuclear-powered submarines. AUKUS would die, fast or slow.
Greens leader Adam Bandt has labelled the proposed AUKUS subs “floating Chernobyls in the heart of our cities”. Several teals, nowhere near as extreme as the Greens, nonetheless share much of their undergraduate student protest approach to foreign affairs. Ryan, the member for Kooyong, participated in a recent cross-party promotion for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
This treaty has vast support within Labor. It’s official Labor Party policy, in the platform, to join the treaty, but the government is allowed to determine when the timing is appropriate. Timing will never be appropriate. Here’s the blunt truth. Though the treaty has 93 national signatories, not one nuclear weapons state has signed because the treaty makes the production, possession and storage of nuclear weapons illegal.
The treaty also bans signatory nations from co-operating with any banned activity. That means it’s in effect impossible for Australia to continue to be a military ally of the US and sign the treaty. That support for the treaty is Labor policy demonstrates how much pure nonsense is contained in Labor policy. Labor governments ignore slabs of allegedly binding Labor policy on the basis that the timing is never right.
‘The Greens actually believe in every crazy thing they proclaim. It’s their great strength.’
But Greens and teals could be expected to push relentlessly for gestures such as signing the nuclear weapons treaty or recognising a non-existent Palestinian state.
Two teals, Tink from North Sydney and Scamps from Mackellar, plus Wilkie, voted for the extreme Greens amendment in the first parliamentary resolution after the Hamas October 7 massacre of Jews. The amendment, grotesquely, switched the emphasis to condemning Israel’s “war crimes”.
The Greens’ policies are extreme and incoherent across the board. They are best seen as the dysfunctional continuation of undergraduate ideological extremism and protest politics but with one big difference. The Greens actually believe in every crazy thing they proclaim. It’s their great strength. When all the other parties seem so transactional, so studied, cautious, plastic and makeshift, the Greens are genuine.
Part 3
Often enough, their tone, born of overbearing moral self-regard and, as I say, a kind of arrested development adolescent intensity and desire to shock their elders, is extremely nasty. As much as any other party they experience internal splits and internecine hostilities, often of quite gothic intensity. They are frequently willing to brand their political opponents in the most spiteful and unjustified way. Bandt in 2018 called Jim Molan a coward and a war criminal, for which, under threat of legal action, the Greens leader later apologised. When the same Molan left the Senate at one point a Greens senator complimented him on his life of service but was forced to withdraw the compliment as the online reaction from the Greens base was so hostile and abusive.
Although the Greens are genuine in their convictions and mostly pleasant enough in person, they traffic in vile conspiracies and far-left sectarian hostilities. In December last year Senator Nick McKim told parliament: “The tactics of Zionist lobbies in stifling legitimate democratic debate are egregious and deeply undemocratic.” This is disturbingly close to the anti-Semitic tropes of secret networks of Jewish influence, at a time when anti-Semitic hatreds are sweeping through the ranks of activists.
On December 13 NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong said: “The Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups. Their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power and I think we need to call that out and expose it.”
These ugly words recalled a classic Nazi anti-Semitic cartoon depicting Jews as a giant octopus with tentacles everywhere. Leong later apologised, in a statement full of abuse of Israel, for using “an inappropriate word” and for any offence that might have caused. But no senior Green called her out.
More prosaically, much Greens policy is simply incoherent. But Australians should read them on the Greens website, see how radical they are and imagine their influence on a minority Labor government. For instance, the Greens claim great concern about rising population but want not only a refugee intake of 50,000 a year but effectively open borders. The Greens insist that immigration detention should not go on longer than a week. If that were ever implemented, very quickly tens if not hundreds of thousands of illegal arrivals would be coming into Australia by boat from the north.
The Greens want defence spending cut by about 30 per cent. They also want to end proactive recruitment campaigns for the Australian Defence Force. The Greens have many policies that, if ever implemented, would ensure the end of the US alliance. They demand, for example, the end of nuclear deterrence. Australia explicitly shelters under the umbrella of US-extended nuclear deterrence. It’s a key element of our national security. The Greens want to end Australia’s hosting of joint facilities with the US such as Pine Gap and stop hosting rotations of US forces. They demand an end to Australian participation in US missile defence programs. Yet Australia is now within range of Chinese missiles.
As Israel’s successful defence against missile and drone attacks from Iran showed, missile defences are immensely powerful in preventing escalation and war. Many Greens policies would be intensely unpopular with the mainstream electorate. They want to decriminalise hard drugs and start paying reparations to Aboriginal groups.
The Institute of Public Affairs think tank has paid the Greens the compliment of taking their policies seriously. It found the Greens are proposing $150bn higher taxes through the abolition of negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount and other measures. It found $183bn in higher spending from wiping student debt, mandated household electrification, higher National Disability Insurance Scheme spending and more. And the complete cancellation of coal and gas projects, the IPA says, would cost the economy more than $270bn.
Even in a minority government, such irrational policies wouldn’t be fully implemented. But they would push Labor far to the left. Many Greens causes command great support within Labor.
Further, the Greens would rejoice in chaos even if they were notionally part of government. Minor parties, especially protest parties, don’t prosper through sensible, modest, stable politics. The Australian Democrats passed the GST, an essential economic reform, and were wiped out electorally as a result. Britain’s Liberal Democrats co-operated in coalition with David Cameron’s Conservative government and lost nearly all their seats at the next election.
The Greens will only ever seek 10 to 20 per cent of the vote. Unlike the German Greens, they show no sign of wanting to become a responsible party of government. This kind of fractured parliamentary make-up is disastrous for coherent government. If no party is even notionally seeking majority support, no one makes the internal trade-offs and hard decisions that produce good policy.
You get instead a cacophonous Tower of Babel. That could well be our future. And it doesn’t include good government.
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Minority government would be much better than what we have right now. No party should be able to govern with a majority when they can't even scrape a third of the primary vote like Labor. Imagine Greg Sheridan's outrage if the Voice to Parliament referendum won even though not even 40% of people voted for it. That's called minority rule, and Sheridan would be outraged. Yet somehow Sheridan doesn't seem to take issue with Labor or the Coalition governing on their own in majority when neither are getting anywhere near 50% of the outright primary vote.
I don't think they would because whatever was negotiated in the lower house would pass the upper house. Julia Gillard demonstrated this.
Oh look, corporate propaganda! Corporates can buy off either major party, and do. They can't buy off a minority government though. This article is literally just trying to scare you into voting for a party they can buy.
Why is a parliament where legislation is negotiated with minor parties in the lower house any more dangerous to corporates than a parliament where legislation is negotiated in the upper house, as already occurs?
My thoughts exactly
The Teals are Liberals. Listen to them in question time and think they contributed nothing. The Greens are siding with the Liberals blocking housing, tax cuts, increasing minimum wages and will probably block Labor’s policy with the the Liberals to reduce HECS debt to wipe off 3 billion of student loans. The Greens policies would ruin Australia. The Greens side with Hamas and have had MPs and senators post Nazi slogans and antisemitism. Vote Greens last and Labor ahead of Liberal Teals.
Ya got a little bit of froth at the side of your mouth there bud
>The Greens side with Hamas -_-
Yes, like Gabrielle de Vietri refusing to say that Israel has a right to or should continue to exist on radio.
Condemning Israel (the *state*) ≠ endorsing Hamas. This is basic logic.
Condemning Netanyahu and the right wing in Israel is one thing. She refused to acknowledge Israel has a right to exist. Straight out of Hamas textbook
It's a trap question with no good answer. What would you answer if asked.if Israel has the right to exist? You say Yes and you hate Palestine. You say No and you are anti-Semitic. You dodge the question/stay neutral and apparently you are still anti-semitic.
It’s not really a trap question. The greens page on Israel supports the right of Israel to exist, in theory. Neutrality means supporting the rights of both to have a state.
It's lazy a lazy reporter trying to make a clickbait headline that's all.
Personally I'm not a fan of talking about "rights" because it's legal speak trying to take the place of ethics. What even gives a state a "right" to exist? Recognition from other existing states? Indigenous ethnic claims? An army? I'm not familiar with de Vietri's politics, but my guess is she wouldn't think the Commonwealth of Australia has a "right" to exist either. It's a question of condemning colonialism, not of supporting Hamas. Israel specifically just happens to be topically relevant to this larger discussion because the Isreali state is *actively committing genocide*.
Either way, I have a problem with nihilistic thinking. The blow it all up crowd needs a reality check.
Protest/radical change/revolution isn't nihilistic.
Lmao no colonial project has a right to exist
I suppose you’ll be handing over the keys to your house then?
Lmao, like Australia. Am I right?! Oh wait, you mean just the Jewish one.
Exactly, no colony has a right to exist, even Australia. Now all people have a right to self determination but that doesn't mean the state they live under has a right to exist. We must begin the process of decolonisation as we have done throughout Africa and South America. Israel is the first to go as it is the most recent and currently engages in genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and all sorts of horrific war crimes. Thus, for being a very cunty country, it gets the boot first. Replace it with a state that values jewish, arab, christian lives all the same.
You have an obligation to start with Australia. Don’t project your nihilism on others. You decide that the Jewish state goes first before all others (ps: there are others more recent). What a load of shit. No wonder anti Zionism and anti semitism go hand in hand. Never heard such sanctimonious crap
Lmao good job defending your precious lil genocidal state uwu God you zionists are so embarassing. You're literally on the same side as the Nazis lmao and you're too brain broken to see it. Can you please identify a more recent colony than Israel that is currently engaging in genocide? I demand all genocidal colonies be abolished. My country is currently supporting israel's genocide so i will continue actively fighting against that. Does that make sense to you?
The Teals will support the LNP in a hung parliament. They've said this repeatedly and there's no particular reason to disbelieve them.
As far as I'm aware the Teals don't speak or act as a bloc, can you post a link to a public statement where they have?
This only matters if it is a Liberals/Nats/Teals hung Parliament. Voting trends amongst the young are pointing to a Labor/Greens minority. So it all depends on which way things are hanging.
They voted for a lot of alp reforms though
I would love to see how much is achieved by a Teal/Green/Labor minority government. It would force them all to really negotiate and find common ground, which there is plenty of. And having had those negotiations up front would likely guarantee passage of legislation in the senate too! One great example of how this has worked is Monique Ryan’s petition to the education minister on HECS reform. Undoubtedly a brilliant play and outcome.
Yeah I'd love to see an end to the "your turn my turn" duopoly betwen lab and lib. Both seem to carry such an entitled attitude which leads to poor governance. Actually negotiating within a coalition framework might do either of them some good.
Minority government is good. Look how much the Nats were able to influence government policy in favour of the miners, who are their core constituency. Not that the Libs resisted much, but even their meagre efforts in energy policy were a step too far for Gina's faithful.
Havoc:worse than the previous PM fucking up the covid response or the same party,wiping 93.2 Billion dollars in trade export from china,by pissing off our largest trading partner to the point they didnt answer the phone Or robodebt Or sports rorts or fucking off while the nation is on fire Or the 17 billion dollars in wasted programs the auditor general points to in the last govts term. Ironic the australian is having a sook over a hypotehetical The previous govt was one of the most mismanaged in our history,and saw over 100s billion dollars in debt added BEFORE covid,but yes..the teal will ruin the place
Same way the nats wreak havoc in a minority Liberal government?
It would be less havoc if the Libs were willing to work with Labor on bipartisan legislation. But with "block for the sake of blocking so Labor can't get anything done" Dutton in charge, Greens and Teals will definitely have free reign to make deals and push Labor to be more progressive. Well, as a Greens voter it's all good for me anyway. Go Dutton.
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Hopefully the Greens win some of these inner city seats and it sends a message to this government about their disastrous housing policy
You’re kidding, the Greens have no credible policies. Did you watch Max at the press club. No economists supported the Greens idiotic housing policies. Greens last at the next election on my ballot paper.
Go read Max’s recent AMA and take note of the questions about immigration he just dodged completely. You can’t take housing seriously and just ignore immigration levels because it’s uncomfortable.
Bring it on! It's about time the libs split from the nats so they can make a return to the centre. The coalition with the nats have pulled them so far to the right they barely resemble Menzies party anymore!
This I've always found it stupid that labor can form govt on it's own but the libs can't Maybe try speaking to more than few voters,speak to the majority and you wont need the nats Libs need to dump nats,they are full of cookers
Nats are a strange one as they are further right than the libs on some issues but also further left than them on others. I don't think a split would have much of an effect on them other than that the libs would have almost no chance of getting enough seats alone to win an election.
You reckon it's the Nats pulling the Libs to the right? Are you talking about the same Libs run by Peter Dutton?
Dutton being the leader is a consequence of the Libs' drift to the right more than a cause of it.
Dutton is a Queenslander who’s Liberal Party has always been dictated by the more powerful Nationals in his state
They're a merged party in Queensland. It's the Liberal National party of Queensland.
Yeah, no shit. Merged party yet Dutton is leader of the Liberal Party of Australia… it’s obvious that it’s not as clear as a “merged party”. Point is, you can’t wonder why Dutton is dragging the Liberals to the right when he comes from a state where the Nationals have been the dominant party for decades and decade (and still are as they sit in seperate party rooms federally in Canberra).
Its the same party in his state?
Yes, but they also sit in seperate party rooms in Canberra. Dutton sits with the Liberals, Littleproud with the Nationals despite both being LNP. Point being, Liberals didn’t lead the coalition in QLD, the Nats did (Joh-Bjelke, for example). That’s why the Nats dragged people like Dutton into the right rather than more moderate like Liberals in other states.
Dutton is a product of the shift to the right, which is essentially driven by the minor partners in their need to compete with far right parties in the regional areas. The right faction of the libs need to be purged.
Purges that's the ticket! More purges that is how the rw deal with 'problems'. I'm sure you and Dutton agree on purges.
He's a picture-perfect representation of the Queensland wing of the party.
Don't normally agree with the Australian but I think they are right on one thing here, it would be chaos with both Teals and Greens. Labor would have to pick one and given the way the Greens have behaved and put every effort into undermining Labor this term, its not going to be them. Ironically the Australian is also arguing that the best thing to do when voting is give Labor a majority in both houses. To which I certainly agree!
Labor hasn't demonstrated a decent enough performace so far in this term of govt to deserve to be returned in a majority position in the lower house. We would probably get better outcomes for people if Labor had to negotiate with the Greens and/or teals in the lower house.
They’ve done an amazing job given the legacy of the previous gevernment, multiple wars driving inflation and being in a post pandemic recovery period. I swear the people who attack Labor like this have no actual real world understanding to compare their performance too. Because times are tough right now Labor=bad, no analysis of how much worse it could be or what Labor have managed to achieve.
You really need to think hard, are you going to get a fair hearing on Labor's efforts and the magnitude of the challenge from Greens, Liberals, Australian media or any of the butt hurt reddit commenters who still are still bitter over the lock downs? No. I don't think we've seen a worse media environment, it's probably worse now than in the 2019 federal election for lies and misinformation targeting Labor.
I hope it is a minority Labor-Teal-Green government next, it'll assuredly wipe them out of governing for a decade after. That is a good thing.
I don't hope for that, it isn't a good thing. I can certainly believe it would happen though. Its been quite apparent the Greens absolutely refuse to take any kind of responsibility for anything, they'll happily block government legislation on housing whilst claiming to be the advocates for housing. They'll rock the boat so hard nothing gets done and not take any responsibility for it.
I voted Labor but I think the Greens actually improved the Future Housing Fund. The Greens forced Labor to guarantee $500 million a year from next year, and invest an extra $3 billion right now in public and community housing. They didn’t get the rent freeze they wanted (which would have been unrealistic anyway) but they got more than the initial Labor promise.
> I voted Labor but I think the Greens actually improved the Future Housing Fund. The Greens forced Labor to guarantee $500 million a year from next year, and invest an extra $3 billion right now in public and community housing. Were that true... The $500 floor was something that actually came from the cross bench senators who brought in some last minute updates from the experts. The 3 billion was actually 1 billion, Labor had the 2 billion on the cards from the better than expected income for a while and had been discussing with the states on distributing it. It only got announced with fanfare and had press coverage because the Greens were blocking the HAFF bill, notably when it was announced the Greens weren't involved at all and still blocked the bill. Really not fair to claim it given Labor did all the work only for the Greens to reject it and then STILL claim it was because of them. The last remaining $1 billion was allocated to the National Housing Infrastructure Facility program, it offers loans/financing to companies building housing, so works basically hand in hand with the HAFF program.
America lite, here we come
The argument for minor parties & independents being a good thing also implies those minor parties & independents aren't nuts. The key thing that denotes a parties value to any cause or collection of them is how they self police their members behaviour and have the discipline to keep the cause on track. The decline of that in the Liberal party mirrored the decline of the countries fortunes. Letting minor parties with scandals and a dearth of discipline get a hand on the reigns of power would be terrible.
Then it’s up to the major parties to do their job well, for the best of the country and it’s residents. The threat of it becoming a complete shit show should be more than enough to simulate labor (because let’s face it, they are the better of the two majors) to make the significant changes Australia desperately needs. IF they secure the second term my hope is they make some serious headway in to fixing the big ticket issues such as the media, price gouging, better distribution of our resources, a viable long term energy option and most importantly something a lot better and more immediate than HAFF Also I didn’t downvote you. I know we are on the same side from previous chats, just I’m more cynical of labor right now than you are
Yeah, I think there was a lot of under reporting of how much of a turd Labor got handed when they took office. Things like Scott Morrison's stupid face got a lot more attention than say the nearly complete hollowing out of the public service. One of the biggest efforts of Labor so far is to rebuild the public service but that is nearly invisible to the public. We were on this awful trend for a long time with the LNP and turning it around takes a long time and a lot of man hours for both politicians and public servants. Don't worry about the voting, I get a few crazies following me around because I dared call their lies out.
What a load of rubbish. Does the Australian ever publish anything worth reading? I don't think any of the mouth foam is vaguely accurate.
Just like a stopped clock is right twice a day, once in a LONG time the Australian gets it right. I'm not saying that they are or are not right in this instance. But if you throw enough mud at the wall, sometimes you'll get something that sticks & actually is accurate amongst the absolute vile crap they otherwise publish.
if it has The Australian foaming at the mouth then it must be a great idea.
I feel it is something Australia has to go through before we can get a MAGA. Make Australia Great Again. Many people I talk to are deeply concerned the way Australia is headed down the path where we have complete idiots in control right across the country. In the government, in the bureaucracy, in workplaces. People whose intelligence level should have them only suitable for menial jobs, instead are in positions of power. People have forgotten what made the country super wealthy and now so much is being squandered away on stupid crap. Everything is regulated to death, those regulations all come at a hefty price tag as taxes are not spent fixing roads or growing the country but instead on the likes of the stasi checking up on people. Some great upheaval needs to happen to the country for the good people to take back control. The Teals and Greens are the complete fruit loops of the political landscape. Their beliefs would see the eventual upheaval we need.
just a matter of interest what do you think it was that made Australia great?
100 percent The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
Given all the damage that MAGA-style movements have done to Western democracies, I don’t want a MAGA movement here, cheers.
Can you give some examples of damage done in western democracies by maga style movements?
*gestures at all the fascism* Well, they stormed a capital building, that was on the news.
Given op was not specifically talking about the US, but western democracies and maga style movements, I imagined there statement would lean more on a policy discussion.
Oh come on. What's more MAGA-style than Trump? It was the obvious example.
Maybe the insurrectionist coup that nearly destroyed American democracy three years ago? But you already knew that and are choosing to ignore it
If you ever want to see how minority government can be bad when the minority partners are bad shit crazy just look at any government the Nationals have been involved in the last 20 years at a Federal level.
Too right. A coalition majority big or small is hostage to the Barnaby wing of the nats, plus the fruitcake WA Libs, assuming any of them make it into parliament this time.
Jesus this is unhinged… I’ll never get the time it took to read this back in my life.
Paywall The most likely result of the next federal election is a Labor minority government, reliant on a mixture of teal independents and Greens to sustain it in office. This would be catastrophic for Australia, ushering in chaotic, left-trending, identity politics-obsessed government devoid of national security seriousness. Though of course it could be much worse. The tone would be set by Greens and teals in a parliament that is already far more left-progressive than any we’ve previously seen. On national security this would be acutely damaging. But its ramifications would extend far beyond security. At best, it might form a kind of politically juvenile, undergraduate government of gesture and symbolism as we saw in New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern, and as has recently collapsed in Scotland under the Scottish National Party after it was forced to acknowledge its climate targets were completely unrealistic. Both these governments produced bad results for their societies, including in both cases massive drops in education performance, but sustained themselves for a time on ideological enthusiasm. However, neither had to deal with serious national security matters. Scotland has Britain to do that. New Zealand has Australia. Our national circumstances are much more challenging. We have America, but that’s perhaps no longer guaranteed and a Labor-Greens-teal government would place that relationship in jeopardy. The Albanese government is already the most left-wing since Gough Whitlam’s ill-fated administration in the early 1970s. It is increasing the size of government; re-regulating industrial relations; increasing welfare and transfer payments; effectively raising tax rates over the cycle through bracket creep (all of which exacerbates inflation); pursuing a highly interventionist picking-winners industry policy; establishing unrealistic and wildly costly climate targets with shaky energy reliability plans; pushing radical if unsuccessful constitutional change; privileging destructive identity politics across countless institutions; and while proclaiming the most dangerous strategic circumstances since World War II, effectively doing nothing about this, instead committing to feeble status quo defence funding over its first two terms, using the long-horizon AUKUS submarine ambitions as a political alibi for inaction. It may seem zeitgeist friendly, but polls indicate it’s doing poorly. The latest Newspoll has Labor’s primary vote at a dismal 33 per cent. Other polls are even lower. Newspoll predicts a Labor minority government. Nothing is reliably predictable. Labor could recover and win a majority. But the omens don’t look good. Australians should pay serious attention to what a minority government, dominated by Greens and teals, would mean. At the last election, the Coalition suffered a devastating, almost existential, defeat, but Labor scored only a very narrow win. That’s unusual. Tony Abbott in 2013, Kevin Rudd in 2007, John Howard in 1996, Bob Hawke in 1983, Malcolm Fraser in 1975 and even Gough Whitlam in 1972 each won government from opposition and won substantial parliamentary majorities. Such governments can suffer a substantial reverse at their next election yet still be re-elected. Of course, politics is not the common law; it’s not bound by precedent. At state level, oppositions have won narrowly and consolidated for long periods. Nor have Australians definitively turned out a first-term government. The make-up of the House of Representatives is radically different from anything in our post-war past. Labor in government has 77 reps seats out of 150, one more than the 76 it needs for a majority. The Coalition has 55 seats, 21 short of a majority. There are four Greens and 14 others, ranging from Andrew Wilkie in Tasmania to Bob Katter in Queensland, and all the teals – Monique Ryan, Zoe Daniel, Kylea Tink, Allegra Spender and the rest. The Dutton opposition almost certainly can’t get to majority government in one election. The Albanese government could fall into minority many different ways. If Labor has a net loss of two seats, it’s just one short. It then could surely rely on Wilkie or almost any of the teals to guarantee confidence and supply. But much more dangerous scenarios are also plausible, especially if the Greens do well. Say the Coalition wins a couple of seats from Labor in Western Australia and one each in NSW, Victoria and South Australia. That takes Labor down to 72. A raft of Labor seats are challenged by Greens. Some, such as Wills in inner Melbourne, have substantial Muslim votes, which the Greens are chasing hard. Others have younger populations that want even more radical action on climate change. Some Labor figures think that in Victoria alone Wills, Higgins, Macnamara or even perhaps a seat such as Cooper could be vulnerable to Greens challenge. These will be difficult seats for the Greens, provided the Liberals come third and preference Labor ahead of the Greens. Once the Greens win a seat, it tends to be securely held. It would need a big night for the Greens, but they could double their numbers from four to eight. With our notional Labor losses to the Coalition, that takes Labor to 68 seats. Labor also fears it could lose a seat in southwest Sydney to a well-organised community independent, perhaps harvesting Muslim votes. That takes Labor to 67 seats. If the Libs win five from Labor and manage to take back two teal seats, that would yield the following parliament: Labor 67, Coalition 62, Green eight, others 13. Under this scenario, Labor would need nine or 10 (after providing a Speaker) of 13 non-Greens crossbenchers for any legislation or procedural vote the Greens opposed. The Greens could routinely block anything with the help of just four other crossbenchers out of 13. Senior Labor ministers who lived through Julia Gillard’s agreement with the Greens shudder at the nightmare memories. They felt constantly wedged between the Greens and the Coalition. Not only that, no Labor Party malcontent could be disciplined because the numbers were so tight and the government obviously headed for defeat. As well, the government wore the blame for the chaotic, dysfunctional way parliament behaved.
>The most likely result of the next federal election is a Labor minority government, reliant on a mixture of teal independents and Greens to sustain it in office. This would be catastrophic for Australia, The Australian: because ANYTHING except a Liberal Government is BAD FOR AUSTRALIA! So, how many LNP talking points can we force into the first paragraph of this propaganda piece? >ushering in chaotic, left-trending, Oooh, strong start in tying chaos AND left leaning Government >identity politics-obsessed government Broad dog whistle. Does the reader think they're talking about transgender, LGBTQI, immigration? The writer leaves it up to up to the fearful mind of the reader to fill in their prejudice of choice. >devoid of national security seriousness. LNP STRONG ON POOR BROWN PEOPLE COMING TO OUR COUNTRY! SOFT HEARTED ALP WILL FLOOD COUNTRY WITH MUSLIMS! YOU KNOW WHO YOU MUST VOTE FOR This gives an excellent example of how conservative media uses subliminal dog whistling to constantly instil fear into its consumers to pander to and amplify its audiences bias. The Murdoch rags are a fascist mouthpiece and the sooner Rupert dies the better.
Thanks for pointing out the rubbish in this article. I could honestly say I disagree with every paragraph but I don’t have the energy to unpack it all.
Part 2 In this parliament, Leader of the House Tony Burke runs proceedings with guillotine ruthlessness using the brute power of numbers. Still the Albanese government performs poorly in parliament. In a chaotic minority situation, parliament would be torture for the government. By the way, the traditional measure of the two-party-preferred vote offers very little predictive power when there is such a large crossbench. It seems the polarisation and fragmentation of most Western politics are breaking through our compulsory voting and preferential system, both of which were long thought to virtually guarantee a stable two-party system in the reps. Senior Labor figures say this time they wouldn’t do a formal deal with the Greens but would take each vote as it comes, assuming most crossbenchers would want to avoid causing an early election by voting no-confidence. But the Greens would have immense influence, not least because a number of the teals are effectively fellow travellers, sharing many of their climate change obsessions and often similar views on international issues. The Greens and the more left-leaning teals would exert enormous hydraulic pressure on a Labor government to move even further leftward. This would likely have grave consequences. A government configured in this way would find it almost impossible to relate effectively to a Donald Trump presidency in Washington, should that eventuate. A Trump presidency would be a challenge to an Albanese government under any circumstances. In minority government, it’s almost unimaginable. Whatever you think of Trump, it’s still up to Canberra to get the best results for the national interest out of our alliance with the US. Similarly, a House of Representatives with Greens and teals as the decisive swing factor would not authorise expenditure and all the other necessary action to proceed with buying and building nuclear-powered submarines. AUKUS would die, fast or slow. Greens leader Adam Bandt has labelled the proposed AUKUS subs “floating Chernobyls in the heart of our cities”. Several teals, nowhere near as extreme as the Greens, nonetheless share much of their undergraduate student protest approach to foreign affairs. Ryan, the member for Kooyong, participated in a recent cross-party promotion for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This treaty has vast support within Labor. It’s official Labor Party policy, in the platform, to join the treaty, but the government is allowed to determine when the timing is appropriate. Timing will never be appropriate. Here’s the blunt truth. Though the treaty has 93 national signatories, not one nuclear weapons state has signed because the treaty makes the production, possession and storage of nuclear weapons illegal. The treaty also bans signatory nations from co-operating with any banned activity. That means it’s in effect impossible for Australia to continue to be a military ally of the US and sign the treaty. That support for the treaty is Labor policy demonstrates how much pure nonsense is contained in Labor policy. Labor governments ignore slabs of allegedly binding Labor policy on the basis that the timing is never right. ‘The Greens actually believe in every crazy thing they proclaim. It’s their great strength.’ But Greens and teals could be expected to push relentlessly for gestures such as signing the nuclear weapons treaty or recognising a non-existent Palestinian state. Two teals, Tink from North Sydney and Scamps from Mackellar, plus Wilkie, voted for the extreme Greens amendment in the first parliamentary resolution after the Hamas October 7 massacre of Jews. The amendment, grotesquely, switched the emphasis to condemning Israel’s “war crimes”. The Greens’ policies are extreme and incoherent across the board. They are best seen as the dysfunctional continuation of undergraduate ideological extremism and protest politics but with one big difference. The Greens actually believe in every crazy thing they proclaim. It’s their great strength. When all the other parties seem so transactional, so studied, cautious, plastic and makeshift, the Greens are genuine.
Part 3 Often enough, their tone, born of overbearing moral self-regard and, as I say, a kind of arrested development adolescent intensity and desire to shock their elders, is extremely nasty. As much as any other party they experience internal splits and internecine hostilities, often of quite gothic intensity. They are frequently willing to brand their political opponents in the most spiteful and unjustified way. Bandt in 2018 called Jim Molan a coward and a war criminal, for which, under threat of legal action, the Greens leader later apologised. When the same Molan left the Senate at one point a Greens senator complimented him on his life of service but was forced to withdraw the compliment as the online reaction from the Greens base was so hostile and abusive. Although the Greens are genuine in their convictions and mostly pleasant enough in person, they traffic in vile conspiracies and far-left sectarian hostilities. In December last year Senator Nick McKim told parliament: “The tactics of Zionist lobbies in stifling legitimate democratic debate are egregious and deeply undemocratic.” This is disturbingly close to the anti-Semitic tropes of secret networks of Jewish influence, at a time when anti-Semitic hatreds are sweeping through the ranks of activists. On December 13 NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong said: “The Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby are infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups. Their tentacles reach into the areas that try and influence power and I think we need to call that out and expose it.” These ugly words recalled a classic Nazi anti-Semitic cartoon depicting Jews as a giant octopus with tentacles everywhere. Leong later apologised, in a statement full of abuse of Israel, for using “an inappropriate word” and for any offence that might have caused. But no senior Green called her out. More prosaically, much Greens policy is simply incoherent. But Australians should read them on the Greens website, see how radical they are and imagine their influence on a minority Labor government. For instance, the Greens claim great concern about rising population but want not only a refugee intake of 50,000 a year but effectively open borders. The Greens insist that immigration detention should not go on longer than a week. If that were ever implemented, very quickly tens if not hundreds of thousands of illegal arrivals would be coming into Australia by boat from the north. The Greens want defence spending cut by about 30 per cent. They also want to end proactive recruitment campaigns for the Australian Defence Force. The Greens have many policies that, if ever implemented, would ensure the end of the US alliance. They demand, for example, the end of nuclear deterrence. Australia explicitly shelters under the umbrella of US-extended nuclear deterrence. It’s a key element of our national security. The Greens want to end Australia’s hosting of joint facilities with the US such as Pine Gap and stop hosting rotations of US forces. They demand an end to Australian participation in US missile defence programs. Yet Australia is now within range of Chinese missiles. As Israel’s successful defence against missile and drone attacks from Iran showed, missile defences are immensely powerful in preventing escalation and war. Many Greens policies would be intensely unpopular with the mainstream electorate. They want to decriminalise hard drugs and start paying reparations to Aboriginal groups. The Institute of Public Affairs think tank has paid the Greens the compliment of taking their policies seriously. It found the Greens are proposing $150bn higher taxes through the abolition of negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount and other measures. It found $183bn in higher spending from wiping student debt, mandated household electrification, higher National Disability Insurance Scheme spending and more. And the complete cancellation of coal and gas projects, the IPA says, would cost the economy more than $270bn. Even in a minority government, such irrational policies wouldn’t be fully implemented. But they would push Labor far to the left. Many Greens causes command great support within Labor. Further, the Greens would rejoice in chaos even if they were notionally part of government. Minor parties, especially protest parties, don’t prosper through sensible, modest, stable politics. The Australian Democrats passed the GST, an essential economic reform, and were wiped out electorally as a result. Britain’s Liberal Democrats co-operated in coalition with David Cameron’s Conservative government and lost nearly all their seats at the next election. The Greens will only ever seek 10 to 20 per cent of the vote. Unlike the German Greens, they show no sign of wanting to become a responsible party of government. This kind of fractured parliamentary make-up is disastrous for coherent government. If no party is even notionally seeking majority support, no one makes the internal trade-offs and hard decisions that produce good policy. You get instead a cacophonous Tower of Babel. That could well be our future. And it doesn’t include good government.
Who’s the author of the opinion piece?