The Greens and Democrats - the untold story

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.