The Greens have great potential to initiate major reforms.

The Greens favour strengthening local government, a positive position, but there is no realisation that this needs to be assessed in the context of strained and increasingly dysfunctional, costly federal-state relations. Local government is the Cinderella of the current constitutional system, an appendix of the ever-weakening state governments.

The replacement of the federation by a system of superior decentralisation, e.g. including ROC type mezzanine regions, requires an approach that reaches outside the square. It has obvious environmental advantages, amongst many others. Re-writing the Constitution is part of the answer here.

Issues that are somewhat understated in Green policies would be workplace democracy and employee share ownership. The adversarial industrial relations culture, reflected in the workplace by employer and management interests versus that of workers and unions, continues to be an unresolved issue.

Legislation for employee share ownership and participation by employees in decision-making, in the hope of bridging this divide, has been slow to develop in Australia. The positive effects of such legislation elsewhere in the world, post WWII, are well established.

In Australia there have been some excellent voluntary examples, including the Fletcher Jones and Staff and Lend Lease. In both cases, staff fully participated in the development, ownership and decision-making of the business, resulting in excellent outcomes.

Research at ACIRRT(Sydney University) and more recently, Melbourne University Law School,highlights that workplace democracy and employee share ownership have beneficial results for a business and should be encouraged by government action.

Nevertheless, major barriers exist in Australia, for instance tax complexity, management and union attitudes, to promote this growth. The Greens could make a significant contribution here as well.

How far could the Greens move on such issues before the next election? Very far, as they have an excellent team of educated, committed politicians, coupled with competent staffers. Draft legislation could be introduced in the Senate. At the very least major public inquiries could be started - of short duration, making full use of existing reports and recommendations, but very often not acted on.

Publicity would certainly be generated in the process. The public at large, through the media, should become involved in a reform debate. The era of major party stagnation and wasteful adversarial debate could come to its long overdue end.