The Greens and Democrats - the untold story

If the Greens gain the balance of power in the Senate solely on their credentials as a pro-environment party, then expect the party to introduce higher taxes, reintroduce higher tariffs while squirming under the thumb of militant left-wing unions such as the CMFEU.

And I like the Greens.

I have worked as both an ALP and Democrat media officer but regarding the latter, I was more a technocrat. Although I was proud of the way Democrat leader Lyn Allison led the RU486 debate and the fact that she extracted $3 billion out of Howard to fund new mental health programs.

I worry about the Greens because they are riding high on the global currency of two issues: nuclear power and global warming. Never before has the brand “Green” had such cache.

In short, that's all they've got but that will probably be enough to get them two more Senators at the next election. They're riding the tide of the zeitgeist and good luck to them. It appears, at least according to the May Morgan Senate poll, they will control the balance of power in the Senate.

I suggest though that the problem for many voting Australians - those who are not easily swayed by popularism - is that the Greens have not faced the level of scrutiny by the Canberra press gallery that the Democrats or any of the major parties have. Indeed, in the case of the Democrats they've been News Limited's punching bag and victim of media “group think” since 2001-02. 

There's no doubt that without Democrat Senators Andrew Murray and Natasha Stott Despoja, the Democrats will be fighting for their political lives. Plus the Democrats need to face some unsavory facts and that is that the Greens now effectively 'own' environmental issues.  Yet will the Greens simply slide on in and take their seats? The problem is - and you wouldn't know this from reading any of the senior political reporters copy in Canberra - the Greens don't have any social policy runs on the board.

They've relied heavily on Senator Kerry Nettle to turn the party around from a single interest collective of state-based parties, to one that proposes a consistent social justice policy minus the Trotskyist rhetoric. Whenever the Federal Greens defer a decision to their local branches, you know it's an internal “hot potato”.

Their unofficial think tank, The Australia Institute, has done an excellent job in providing them with a range of qualitative critiques - but neither Nettle or The Australia Institute has provided any costed solutions.

One telling problem with the Greens is that none of the church groups and none of the major charities have endorsed the party. Whatever one may think of the Democrats and their ridiculous internal clashes six years ago, they still had the NGOs on side.

Let’s compare that with the track record of Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett who has carried on a tireless and successful campaign to highlight the plight of refugees in detention. He was also the first Queensland Senator to say that unless we control population growth in South East Queensland, there won't be enough water for domestic consumption. He said that six years ago and guess what? There's a water crisis. He has got a better than 50-50 chance of holding his seat.

Senator Lyn Allison's campaigns against the tobacco industry, childhood obesity and for the biofuels industry hardly rated a mention in 2005. Suddenly now everyone's talking about biofuels and legislating against junk food commercials in kids prime time TV - but does she get any credit? No.

Senator Allison took on Tony Abbott, the pentacostals and the anti-abortion lobby and with cross party help from Senators Moore, Nash and Treoth, got the RU486 bill through. And the media recently called Senator Allison a librarian - seems like a fairly tough librarian to me.

Let’s talk about Cheryl Kernot. I used to work for Kernot and she was a hard task master. The affair with Gareth Evans was big news. Yet as leader of the Democrats she was instrumental in introducing compulsory superannuation for women. Small news - unless you're a working woman today. We forget those details.

Will Senator Stott Despoja will be known simply as an attractive young woman who wore Doc Martins in parliament? The media really has to lift its game. It's this kind of unbalanced and ridiculous reporting that trivialises the major contributions that Stott Despoja, Allison and others have made to Australian parliamentary democracy.

The Canberra press gallery relies heavily on conflict stories and that's understandable. That's what editors want. Yet far as I know only The Age's Tim Colebatch is looking at factors such as our burgeoning current account deficits and George Meglogenis in The Australian is writing some of the best social and political analysis produced by that paper. Thank God for ABC radio and the Australian Associated Press too.

So today political reporting is not history or about writing stories with balance (where's Graham Perkin - former editor of The Age and a stickler for balanced reporting and accuracy - when you need him?) it's about conflict. And back in 2001 and 2002 there was plenty of conflict in the Democrats. It made good copy.

So should this. The Greens absolutely loath the fact that Australia is now a low taxing, low tariff economy. The Keating-Hawke reforms of the mid 1980s, of floating the dollar and letting foreign investment in, are anathema to the Greens.

I like the Greens grass roots approach. I like the local and vocal slogans. Yet what worries me is that when the Greens say they want to “rescue the Senate” does it follow that they will block economically responsible legislation and hold a gun to the government's head and say, “This is the way it's going to be ...” 

Bob Brown needs to come out and state categorically that his party will not block the supply bills, even if it means not getting 100 per cent of their way on Tasmania's forests. I'd like to hear the Greens say the word “compromise” just once. I'm an old fashioned liberal democrat. I remember 1975.

Here's another issue worth pondering. Ninety per cent of the Greens’ success has been founded on the intelligence and charisma of Bob Brown. But any one who has walked the corridors of power in Canberra knows that Bob is tired. He has been carrying the can for the Greens for more than 20 years. Who could blame him if he retired next year and wanted to spend time on his farm in Tasmania?

What is the Greens Party without Bob Brown at the helm? There's a news story. A Brown-less Greens. And why isn't the Greens key strategist and party progenitor, Ben Oquist, a Senator by now? If you've read his writings you'll know that here is a sharp mind at work. One that could fathom complex budget matters rather than just say “I'll vote against it”.

The Greens have 12 media officers and the Democrats have three. That's one reason why the Greens get more media “bang for their buck”. The Greens also have approximately $6 million is campaign donations while the Democrats have less that $300,000. So we can expect to see some pretty expensive (and frequent) TV commercials by the Greens during the election.

The Greens did something silly in Victoria recently. They overthrew Senate candidate David Risstrom for Dr Richard Di Natale to run against Senator Allison. Why? Natale is a nice chap but Risstrom had done all the hard leg work and Senator Allison now has a good chance of holding the seat. Her rural and female vote is strong.

One fact worth mentioning is that the CMFEU are helping fund the Greens’ campaign. That's weird on a whole range of levels as their Tasmanian members are also loggers. Their prime intent is to ensure that WorkChoices is rolled back in the Senate. Fair enough.

Yet Bob Brown recently said the “Greens could no longer offer a straight preference swap with Labor because its policies were too close to the Prime Minister's and a national preference deal sought previously by the Greens would now have to involve more discussions at branch level.” (The Australian, July 25, 2007).

Shouldn't the Federal Greens Party say where the preferences will be allocated? Sure, there's merit in localism but it can also be interpreted that the Greens are simply a collective of state-based factions.

They get wobbly when the hydra of clashing internal ideologies and parochialism raises its head(s).

In the recent New South Wales election the Tweed on the north coast of NSW, the Greens withheld their preferences and allowed the National Party to sweep out the sitting ALP member. Maybe they want to flex their muscle locally and not take the “big hits” federally. One trusts that the CMFEU knows what it's doing.

The problem is with accepting campaign donations from special interest groups such as heavy hitters (both literally and figuratively) like the CMFEU, is that once the favour is paid, they come back again and say “we also want you to fix X, Y and Z”. You're in their pockets.

That's not good for democracy, it's not good for the party and it betrays the faith of the people who voted for them.

I like the Greens but before they get my vote, I’d like the Canberra press gallery to ask them some hard questions - the type of questions you’d put to a party that may hold the balance of power in the Senate next year.