The Greens snuggle up to Labor

In face of both major parties' engagement with war, attacks on civil rights, privatisation and corporate welfare, the Greens seemed to represent a distinct electoral alternative. They expanded their environmental vision to talk of public education, health and migrants' and workers' rights.

That is changing. The Greens are avoiding the “hard” issues. Bob Brown now supports the war in Afghanistan, has weakened his Party's support for the Palestinians and moved towards Labor on drug policy. He earlier toyed with support for the Telstra privatisation in exchange for some concession to his beloved Tasmanian forests, until disciplined by his party.

Yet, until the Rudd circus, the Green vote was expanding. This has sharpened the electoral focus of the party and its engagement with the discipline of the corporate media. To sanitise their image they are avoiding controversy and snuggling up to Labor.

It is ominous that we are seeing slogans such as "Labor can't do it alone" and "Keep Rudd honest”. That last slogan mirrors the Australian Democrats slogan “keep the bastards honest”.

The Democrats, an electorally successful split from the Liberal Party in the late 1970s, had their peak in the 1980s, when they were seen as an independent force. Illusions over their prospects were evident when their most popular leader, the late Senator Janine Haines, ran unsuccessfully for the lower house.

For quite a while the Democrats held the balance of power in the Senate. But when they gave up their independent voice, to collaborate with Howard on industrial relations, privatisations and the GST, their support rapidly collapsed.

The Greens have now had a taste of being close to lower house seats. However their electoral rise is heavily constrained. The corporate media will not lend them a radical platform, and Labor now views them as competitors, rather than a source of preferences. The best they can hope for, federally, is a Senate platform to raise an independent voice.

Yet their retreat from a “radical” voice is not likely be rewarded by either the corporate media or its heavily manipulated consumers. In “playing it safe” the Greens may lose both their independent voice and their electoral support.

This dilemma, in the longer term, is largely the Greens own fault. They have not developed alternative media networks which could sustain independent public debate. Independent debate cannot be created from within the Parliamentary system nor from inside the grip of the corporate media.

The Greens want respectability. Unfortunately, this could cause a return to a solitary Bob Brown in the Senate, waging his fight for the Tasmanian forests.

How much better if the Greens cared less about what the gatekeepers of public debate thought of them, reclaimed their independent voice and loudly opposed global war, campaigned for shared institutions, for civil rights and against corporate welfare.