Precautions for and against change

If the Greens parliamentary caucus does not understand this in their bones soon, we may all learn it again before the decade is through. Parliament makes the laws by which a nation of millions must abide, but it's a blunt instrument. It does not make anyone want to change. To be effective, lawmakers must realize this limit on their trade.

The Greens' founding leader is a political star: Integrity's personification, or evil's avatar, depending on your postcode. The closer to the CBD, the greener the territory gets. But out beyond the inner city and its satellite enclaves, the natives get increasingly hostile.

The economy is shaky and the coal industry is vital to whatever health it enjoys, while News Ltd continues to run its well-waged war. These are all good reasons why the ALP will almost certainly seek to annihilate the Greens as soon as they can. This young party, grounded in a slender demographic, faces a precarious situation. Yet, their leader's hubris belies a total lack of awareness of this.

Now that they are, in effect, part of the government they are confronted with its limitations, its meagre options for effective action. To survive, the Greens must transform themselves into a respectable presence in the Australian Parliament. Their policies are the wish list of naive idealists, but are politically impossible.

Technological innovation has seldom, if ever, been created by laws proclaiming it should be. No one has ever managed to get every single person to agree on a single issue, much less to a wholesale lifestyle transformation. The Greens' plans are grounded in overly optimistic assumptions, inconsiderate of the very real obstructions to their success, the first being human behaviour.

The Greens need to change. Change is hard, but the Greens must change or die, if they expect, as they do, the entire world to change. And if they aspire, as they do, to lead this change, they must first do it themselves. It's the least one expects.