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Environment

 

Greens recognise that the ecology supports humanity, and so we must nurture nature for the long term rather than diminish for our short term gain. The fundamental principle is that humanity must have the humility to recognise its place in the scheme of things.

Economics

Flowing on from that principle, Greens generally hold that the naked pursuit of profit runs counter to the first principle. It follows that there must be some moral compass to temper the demands of the economic imperative. This applies to governments in their interpretation of economic indicators and companies in their quest for profit.

Morals

The Greens moral compass is founded in the liberal humanist tradition of freedom, fairness and equality. The environmental imperative expands the definition of humanism to include future generations and non-human constituents. The Greens moral compass is scientific and therefore rational rather than faith based. That means that the movement’s assumptions are built on evidence and so the movement welcomes the questioning of those assumptions.

Four pillars

These principles are globally expressed in the four pillars of The Greens: Environment, Social Justice, Grassroots democracy, Non-violence.

The history of the four pillars and the variations on how it is expressed in different countries only serves to underline the fundamental nature of these principles. The Swedish Greens Three Pillars, for example, are expressed in terms of solidarity with the Environment, World’s People and Future Generations.

I have deliberately structured this essay around the Environment, the Economy and Morality to address specific concerns with Green policies expressed by key constituencies. The examination of these concerns is the first step in the frank and fearless analysis that a transformation requires. Before commencing that examination, I want to clearly restate the principles at stake.

Actions speak clearly

Greens (and the non-Greens voters who hold these principles) generally agree on the actions required to implement those principles.

To protect the environment we need to

• reduce waste,
• use renewable energy,
• replace conspicuous consumption with a more frugal lifestyle and
• curb destructive and extractive industries

The major damage that we seek to prevent includes:

• deforestation,
• the collapse of marine ecosystems,
• the climate chaos caused by global warming and
• the squandering of non-renewable resources.

To manage the economy in a fair and responsible way, thus ensuring ongoing and stable (read sustainable) governance, we need to ensure that

• economic growth takes place within the parameters set by the environment,
• wealth is fairly distributed and
• innovation replaces population growth and extraction as the driver of growth

The application of these principles again leads to some obvious and fairly uncontroversial actions. We must:

• Temper conspicuous consumption with frugality
• Limit the globalisation of the economy by the needs of community and sustainability
• Empower governments to hold corporations accountable
• Switch subsidies to innovation of sustainable rather than extractive practices

The morality of Greens is well summed up by the opening lines of the atheist’s creed.

If you are hungry I will offer food

If you are thirsty, I will offer water

If you are cold, I will offer warmth

If you are in need, ask and I will offer help

If you are depressed, ask and I will comfort you

These first five statements of that creed are universal. They represent the close alignment of Green principles with rural and regional electors and with the morally driven middle class.

I do not do these things out of hopes of being rewarded, or out of fear of being punished.

I do these things because I know them to be right.

The assertion of a moral imperative as opposed to being driven by reward and punishment is common to all who believe in individual good rather than individual sin – libertarians as opposed to authoritarians. That statement is also the basis of individualist as opposed to collective codes of government. Separating these two threads is a critical component of the analysis of Green messages to the electorate.

(The rest of the atheist creed is considered under red herrings, below.)

Implementing that code to govern morally implies that the end does not justify the means. The practical attributes of a Green government required to uphold these principles include:

• Humane social and foreign policy
• A secular state that limits religious intolerance
• Balance needs of the community and ecology with the needs of the economy

The real-politic of principle

Greens struggle to understand why such an obvious and wonderful set of principles do not translate immediately into votes. Realistic Greens recognise that high-minded principles need to be backed up with real policies, but the Greens policies are largely ignored by the media, discarded in the overwhelming objections to the Greens as a credible political alternative.

Taking apart that blanket rejection is exactly the frank and fearless analysis that sets The Greens on the transformative path from donkey to dragon. It has two quite distinct components.

1. Conservative voters loathe the Greens
2. Mainstream voters do not trust us

The next two sections of this essay deal analyse these attitudes in the light of the Queensland 2012 state election. A detailed accounting of the numbers is provided in the sidebar Greenslanders? Not!

This is part of a longer article  Green gold | Redneck Rage | Rusted on Reds | Clear directions | Sidebar – Red herrings | Greenslanders? Not!

 

 

I’m greener’n you are

The Greens claim to the environmental high ground is objectionable to many conservative voters. Coming from a long relationship with the land and with marshalling limited resources many conservatives see the Greens as coopting and perverting their own core values.

There are a number of separate aspects to this and each requires its own adjustment to the presentation and implementation of Green policy.

Farmers resist being told what to do with their land. Greenies often cast the farmer as the bad guy, destroying the land in the name of profit. Farmers, in fact, have a long term view and generally attempt to “pass the land on” better than they inherited it.

To work with farmers Greens are going to have to learn some humility and listen to the stories the wisdom held by those who touch the land every day.

Wilderness is not a land use. Once you strip away the name calling and the miscommunication over terminology and timeframes, there are two fundamental differences between the redneck and the green views of the environment. One is the notion of fragility.

The protection of wilderness is almost an affront to many people’s sensibilities, especially where that wilderness is, in fact, a landscape modified and shaped by human activity. Locking up any but the most pristine landscape causes unpredictable and feral outcomes. Almost all land management scientists agree that the landscape has to be managed somehow. As long term land managers, farmers understand this implicitly.

The argument then comes down to which management approaches will work best and in whose interests are we managing it.

If Greens are going to work in regional communities to create a sustainable ecology we have to accept the importance of land management and get on with finding practical solutions.

This is hardly impossible, there are lots of great environmental outcomes put together by landcare groups modifying productive land use for better environmental outcomes that enhance the sustainability of both farm production and ecological health.

Production is not extraction. While farmers have a healthy respect for nature, they absolutely resist the notion that human activity is detrimental to it. Their very soul is imbued with the notion that we shepherd and husband nature and they loathe the accusation that their actions are harmful.

Further, we live on the food they produce. The famous counter to criticisms of rural water use, for example, is “Give a city dweller a litre of water and they’ll turn it into shit, give a farmer a litre of water and they’ll turn it into food.”

Farmers value productivity over biodiversity for good reason.

If Greens and farmers want to work together to change the nature of the government, Greens have to acknowledge and recognise that farmers are the last human agent in the food chain. We must farm to eat and so need to apply the principles of Fair Trade to our local food producers, as we willingly do for third world peasants.

I carry the economy

The notion that that nation rides on the sheep’s back is not new. The Roman Senate governed on the basis that wheat prices had to be low enough to prevent civil unrest and high enough to keep the farmers on the land. The main task of the Roman navy was to protect the wheat trade.

As the first human element in the food chain the farmer is squeezed by everyone upstream. This results in a strong cynicism regarding economic policy.

Agribusiness looks after me There is strong division in rural communities about the benefits of a global economy. The removal of tarrif and quarantine barriers in the name of free trade opens them to international competition. The deregulation of water, land purchases and financial institutions has favoured large companies over small players.

Despite this farmers are more likely to identify with an agribusiness conference than an ecological one. The global agribusiness companies have gone out of their way to make the farmer feel good about them, even when they are busy wiping out the traditional farm community and lifestyle. Efficient farming practice is often interpreted to mean industrial farming and so the farmer takes the side of the industrialist.

Farmers who are working hard to develop sustainable land practice, water management and pest management based on bio-diversity get almost no help or public support from Green and environmental groups.

To work with farmers, Greens have to take up the cause of sustainable land-use and back the farmers trying to build a sustainable future.

Rural communities are dying One relentless aspect of economic rationalism has been the elimination of the family farm and the “enthusiastic rustic” with an emotional connection to the land. As industrial practices become the norm, farm size has grown and rural communities have shrunk. This process becomes self perpetuating; as communities fail, more people leave.

A small number of farmers are actively working to keep farms smaller, so that communities can prosper, increasing the prospect that young people will wish to inherit the family farm.

The Greens economic plan must incorporate a rural strategy that builds community, restores local food processing and breaks the stranglehold of major corporations over the production, distribution and retailing of food.

Farmers distrust government. Governments are run from the cities in the interests of the bulk of the population – city dwellers. It was ever thus. Agriculture was created by kings to feed standing armies and has been driven by the needs of the State ever since.

Australian governments forced farmers to irrigate, by charging them for the infrastructure whether they used it or not. Now farmers feel they are being held responsible for the damage that irrigation has done to the environment.

For farmers to trust Greens, a long term program of cooperative and supportive policy development and grass-roots support has to be put in place now.

Sharp shocks and good manners

Pink Floyd juxtaposed Gilbert and Sullivan’s short, sharp shocks with good manners, as a coda for rugged, conservative, individualist morality. The raw nature of rural life tends to breed a tougher type of human than the effete, decadent city and the tension across that spectrum is apparent in cultural artefacts since history has been recorded.

To build bridges with rural communities the Greens have to deal with this divide.

I can stand on my own (two feet). The rugged individualism of the farmer is also the basis of communal strength. Rural communities do not wait for the police or ambulance to attend the scene of an accident, they look after it as best as they can themselves. They have to.

Local swimming pools are built by cake raffles rather than government grants and a good measure of hard work on the part of the locals themselves.

Rural communities see this individualism as the opposite of the ‘nanny state’ rules being proposed by Greens. In fact, on many levels it is closer to the principle of individual action at a community level that applies to most Greens grass roots activism and individual response to global issues such as climate chaos.

To inspire and lead rural communities Greens need to separate the need for an authorising moral framework, from the precepts of individual responsibility that sit naturally on the shoulders of rural communities.

Farmers are socially conservative and do not want a bunch of tree hugging poofs who care more about wilderness than farm income determining their economic future.

Despite the similarity between the basic principles of rural hospitality and the universal principles espoused by all good greens, this innate tension is real and palpable.

Given the challenges of dealing with the socially progressive agenda of the Greens, the two parties are going to have to simply put aside the social agenda and concentrate on promoting the values of responsibility, hospitality and a fair go.

Animal welfare issues came to a screaming head recently with the emotional discovery of cruelty in the live cattle trade. No-one endorses cruelty to animals but the live cattle trade has transformed Australia’s north economically improving the lot of many Aboriginal communities as well as farmers.

To resolve competing priorities between fundamental issues (such as animal welfare and economic well being) Greens need to develop big picture economic solutions that provide alternatives to stark choices between one approach or the other.

Reaching out

The largely negative media reaction to Christine Milne’s plan to reach out to rural and regional voters is understandable given the analysis above.

It is not that surprising, though. Three of the Greenest seats in the country are outside the major metropolitan areas. Franklin in Tasmania, Fairfax in Qld and Richmond in NSW are all rural seats that poll around 20% for the Greens.

In those seats, the work has begun. The National Party and The Greens have had a number of conversations at a variety of levels about different ways to work together to break the stranglehold of the financial sector over agricultural policy.

These discussions have generally found common ground on economic and land management issues as well as on basic moral approaches to governance. The recent battle over coal seam gas has only brought the two constituencies closer together.

On the other hand, the two groups have little in common on social policy. Greens invited to address party conferences of Nationals members have faced people walking out “refusing to sup with the devil”. Greens conferences have laughed “the idea that we would ever talk with those people” off the agenda.

There is even more loathing among the voters than the active membership. While the numbers do not identify the causes, the hate emails doing the rounds during the election campaigns spell it out simply enough.

This does not make it a bad idea. Both constituencies have strongholds where they can win seats in their own rights. Nationally the Greens have more voters, but the Nationals vote is more concentrated and they have more seats. In Queensland the Nationals outnumber the Greens, in NSW and Victoria, the opposite is true.

Taking the national vote from roughly ten percent to roughly twenty percent to gain a shaky alliance, though, would be political madness if it did not impact on the mainstream voter.

The real advantage of such an alliance is the message it sends to the broader community. To understand the dynamics of that message it is important to look at the make up of the swinging voter, as opposed to Katter’s 11 percent.

 

 This is part of a longer article  Green gold | Redneck Rage | Rusted on Reds | Clear directions | Sidebar – Red herrings | Greenslanders? Not!

 

A further 25% are made up of more passionate voters who will adopt or accept extreme positions on the basis of principle (about 10% each to Greens or the extreme conservative flavour of the month) or who will avoid major party politics by voting for a fringe party or informally (about 5%). These voters may change sides, but their behaviour is less predicable and is already captured by The Greens.

 

The moderate 25% swing vote is far more politically attractive to The Greens than the ten percent represented nationally by the rural vote.

• It larger,
• it is already swinging and
• it carries far less loathing for the Green brand.

The fundamental reason for the failure of the Greens to capture any of this vote is a perceived failure to present an economic vision that the voter cannot only believe in but is prepared to fight (or change sides) for.

Greening the greenback

According to our detractors, Greens are anti-business, anti-progress and will take us straight back to a pre-industrial dark age. As much as the Greens might complain that the misrepresentation of these policies is the work of a media owned and operated by vested interests, the real-politic is that the public believes them.

Greens are anti-business. Support for control on carbon-emissions, higher corporate taxes, stronger environmental laws and opposition to coal-mining have been successfully portrayed as anti-business positions. In fact, they are all reasonably moderate, well thought out policies in accordance with most international think-tanks advising national governments as well as global institutions such as the United Nations.

To carry the mainstream toward a Green economy, individual positions have to be put in the context of a broader economic plan. The broader plan has to be popular, simply described and achievable.

Greens oppose economic growth. The simple and fundamental principle that economic growth must be limited to that which does not harm the environment is easily presented as an anti-growth position. In a world where the movement of share prices can cause governments to fall and occupies a similar hold on the public attention as sporting contests it is easy to see why. Any opposition to economic growth as the primary measure of success and well being is dangerously heretic.

To avoid the charge of economic heresy The Greens must articulate a high level economics that discredits the ‘growth at all costs’ mantra that currently dominates and also present a simple an achievable economic plan for the near term.

Greens have no economic policy/oppose everything. I have dealt with these two different criticisms together because they have the same source and, hence, solution. While the rest of the world is focused on building wealth, the Greens primary focus on protecting the environment firmly faces it in the opposite direction to mainstream society. In an election campaign dominated by state bankruptcy and the management of a two speed economy, The Greens limited focus on opposing both Coal Seam Gas and expansion of the Coal industry put it in a very poor position to win mainstream votes. Without criticising or retreating from either of those policy positions it is absolutely critical to provide a broader economic context in which they make sense.

To gain the attention and respect of mainstream voters The Greens must understand the priorities of the voter and articulate the Green response to those concerns.

Is mainstream Green an oxymoron?

A critical question for both the voter and the party is whether this focus on the mainstream has any place in Greens politics. It is valid to ask whether a focus on mainstream concerns distracts and detracts from the party’s ability to deal with the critical environmental issues.

The Greens is a party of principle. Most activists and many thinkers argue that it is much better to put the effort into greening existing politicians and policy than to go through the compromised and compromising process of building a new party.

Those of us who continue to engage in Green politics, though, see that it is not only possible to subordinate the economy to ecological limits but to take the public with us as willing participants in a project to turn the economy round. More importantly, the only way to prevent an ecological disaster of epic proportion is to take control of the reins of government as possible to avert disaster.

The Greens have to resolve in favour of this fundamental question or allow the public to continue to assume that our role is simply to protest on behalf of future generations and non-human constituents.

The economy is not the problem. Many people come to The Greens with a view that fixing the economy is not really such a big deal for The Greens. Some believe that innovation will provide a technological fix, others that we can solve these global crises through consumer awareness campaigns that will drive the market to develop and deliver greener solutions.

On careful analysis, these are precisely the reasons that the Greens cannot get political traction with the mainstream. The mainstream view is that there is no real crisis; that small modifications of our behaviour can successfully allow the progress of civilisation to continue in some revised equilibrium with the environment.

To successfully activate mainstream concern for the future Greens have to connect pain caused by the human induced collapse in planetary systems with human activity, at the same time as offering alternative, sustainable activities. Inevitably, voters will have to feel some pain (even if vicariously) to respond to these messages.

This is part of a longer article  Green gold | Redneck Rage | Rusted on Reds | Clear directions | Sidebar – Red herrings | Greenslanders? Not!

It is imperative that the Greens attempt to avert the global trainwreck by taking over the engine, not by gathering a few more numbers in the caboose to sing KumBayah. The party has to grapple with the mainstream or disappear.

 

Those who believe that it is too hard or too late might turn to the Lifeboats scenario in Richard Heinberg’s PowerDown. In that scenario, the environmentally aware attempt to salvage as much of civilisation as they can while the selfish, unresponsive mainstream head inevitably over the cliff like lemmings.

However realistic that scenario might be, it is not the role of political parties to save the few but to engineer a solution for the whole of society.

What is required is nothing less than proposing and implementing realistic global, national and regional economic plans.

Given the mess that has been made of the plans to reduce carbon emissions, despite the huge amount of science and political will that went into those plans, we are going to have to learn a great deal from the past and tackle these plans much more effectively in the future.

Difficult as this may seem, until there is a simple and believable economic plan, the middle ground, swinging voter is simply not going to budge. Building an alliance with rural voters might be a good way to lend credibility to such a project. It might also consume valuable time that we can ill afford.

Real world experience

Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet, was fond of saying, “The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.”

He had very early experience of the networked computer with a graphical user interface that is now transforming human communication and the political landscape in the way that it has already transformed manufacturing, commerce and finance. He had an early glimpse into that future because he invented the Ethernet at the Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC). PARC is also where the mouse and the point-and-click interface were invented.

The Green governments already in place provide us with a glimpse into the future outlined in this article. Two examples include the German state Burden-Wurttemberg and the Byron Shire Council in NSW.  As one would expect, the experience has involved a lot of learning and development along the way.

It is beyond of the scope of this already long essay to explore the history or experience of these two very different constituencies, what is important is to understand how they achieved power, and what they did with it.

The Burden-Wurttemberg Green-SPD government is less than a year old and follows decades of building an economically responsible and far-sighted Green party which has survived difficult alliances with mainstream parties.

The Byron Shire Council has had a Green Mayor and the largest block of councillors (four of nine) for over five years. This was built on grass roots activism in opposition to a rampantly pro-development council that threatened to damage the lifestyle choices of the majority of voters.

Vision leads action

The real world political experience is that without a clear vision that matters to the electorate there is no political future.

In Burden-Wurttemberg it was renewable energy, public transport and opposition to foreign policy that compromised voters sense of morality and self preservation.

The key building block of German Green thinking has been the creation of a world leading renewable energy industry. With comparatively little sunlight, Germany legislated long term subsidies for solar power and became the world leader in a technology that now contributes billions to the German economy. It has also cornered the market in bio-digesters that convert waste to energy and has planted huge crops of jojoba and Jatropha across North Africa.

In Byron Shire it was deforestation and coastal development that cut through community values and united a farming community and hippies against property developers.

The supporting of local business as opposed to corporations and of “green” business where-ever possible has created a unique, atypical environment that remains an international tourist destination and mecca for high nett worth individuals holding “green” values.

The art of compromise

Every Green party that has gained power as a minor coalition member or in the case of Byron and Burden’berg as a major player, confronts the reality of having to trade one principle against another, or principles against reality.

Environmentally sensitive development may be preferable to no-development at all, either because it meets community demands for housing, or because the alternative is unsustainable commercially or politically. To encourage economically aware industry, one may need to balance the needs of the local community, the existing ecology and the commercial well being of the broader community. Arguments about the use of toxins and machinery in weed control or low cost accommodation versus planning controls are fraught with competing interests that may all be well intentioned.

These are the real world decisions that politicians face every day. For the idealists and activists in the party with a passion about a particular issue, each of these issues can be portrayed as the betrayal of principle in the interest of power.

In reality, wise governments make pragmatic decisions based on common sense and humanity informed by number of core moral principles. The experience of both the party and the electorate with the benign and positive outcomes of Green governance will gradually convince the electorate that The Greens are not out to destroy society.

To accelerate this process, The Greens need to actively promote and build on past experience at every opportunity.

Repeatable messages

Simple, repeatable messages hammered out in the crucible of politics become the enduring legacy of political success. The mantra of localism is:

• Grow it, bake it, make it
• Fix it don’t replace it
• Share generously

The first two support the principle of a more frugal, less materialistic lifestyle. The second takes that a step further and spreads the word, binding the community together through the economic imperative of giving.

Implicit in the sense of community is a subtext that by putting a price on everything and considering every transaction a commercial one, we have lost part of the benefit of gifting as the glue that binds community.

Every voter an advocate

The other characteristic of all successful political movements which develops as the party shifts from idealism to power is that the ideas shift from being intellectually exciting and challenging, through inspiring and adoptable, to obvious and passionately defended.

One of the principles of environmental activism is that there are so many causes to fight that each one of us should take one cause and make it our own. We can support each other as we see fit, but if we each own and lead on cause, we can make the greatest difference.

This sense of personal responsibility is powerful on a number of levels. It is also enhanced by networked communication technology. Through supporting and enhancing that infrastructure to support the individual activists that make up the green movement, The Greens, have a powerful grass roots movement supporting the political movement.

In principle

Taking the fundamental principles, the electorate’s suspicions and the urgent demands of a resource constrained world, The Greens need to move immediately to take leadership in the community. The principles required for that action are clear.

A Green future is a better future.

A Green economy creates growth through innovation not exploitation.

A Green economy improves the well being of the people and the land not the profits of the financial sector.

Green agriculture builds community, pays the producer fairly, protects the ecology and provides healthy food and fabric.

Green industry uses renewable energy, minimises resource construction and builds for the longest term possible.

Green buildings create livable, sociable spaces that are productive, robust and minimise resource consumption.

Green transport emphasises shipping and rail to minimise energy consumption and transport costs.

Green trade policy minimises the transport of resources and goods, while maximising the opportunity to use resources (human and natural) where they exist.

Green governments control corporate behaviour to ensure these policy outcomes are achieved.

Green activists work to rebuild and protect the ecology and human community.

Green activists work to support the members of the community who have been disadvantaged by industrial economics.

Green businesses work to provide an economic framework to support those activists

Green politicians work to provide a structural framework to support those activists

Green voters live their lives by Green principles sharing the bounty and benefit of the Green community to spread the positive message of Green life choices.

Green voters support Green activists, businesses and politicians with their labour, money and votes.

All Greens support the movement by standing up for it in discussions that raise the red-herrings that undermine the green message.

All Greens support the movement by presenting the clear advantages of a Green approach to government and the very real dangers of worshipping money, coveting and hoarding stuff and dismissing the needs and feelings of those without a voice or who are powerless.

This is the way that Greens will help steer society onto a reasonable and sane course that helps avoid the disasters our selfishness have already set in motion from getting worse.

In practice

All very well for the analysis and the rhetoric, what about a practical vision of a Green Australia?

Try this.

As an energy exporter Australia is in an excellent position to promote clean green energy. Stationary solar can replace other heat sources quickly and effectively. Hydrogen is a reasonable storage medium and allows us to export renewable energy to a hungry global market. We need to treat coal as a transition fuel, getting much smarter about how we process it so that we build energy infrastructure that can use replacement fuels as we phase coal out.

A national transport network based on rail and shipping needs to span the continent, linking Cairns and Normanton to Broome and Alice Springs. This provides ready access to our export markets and the new growth areas for both resources and agriculture. It can be built with local expertise and resources, expanding the economy, manufacturing infrastructure and rebuilding our resource-processing infrastructure that we have allowed to drift off-shore.

Infrastructure requires concrete and steel. Concrete and steel are carbon nightmares. Consequently, infrastructure needs to be built for the long term, measured in centuries not years. It also needs to be built using renewable energy as much as possible and minimising transport. That requires development of these technologies as part of developing the north and west. A Green government will guard environmental values and reduce global energy consumption by developing a sustainable steel industry close to the iron mines and producing less carbon intensive steel while building the Australian economy.

Population growth is the greatest threat to the environment. The only positive solution is the education and empowerment of women to reduce birth rates below death rates. The alternative is starvation, pestilence and plague. Australia has to do its part to help balance global poverty and suffering by welcoming climate. political and population refugees. One effective means to achieve this is to build new, robust, zero waste and zero emission cities in the north and west, built by Australia’s under employed and those newcomers seeking refuge.

Economic expansion naturally follows innovation, population growth and resource development. While Greens vigorously oppose growth for its own sake, the building of Green cities in Australia’s north and west resolves the huge geopolitical and socioeconomic imbalance of an empty continent on the doorstep of overcrowded South East Asia, establishes a centre of innovation for global low energy development and establishes a new benchmark for Australian economic standards. We move from being an extractive economy (a quarry) to a centre of innovation.

Ecological management of the vast areas of Australia outside the Brisbane line is required to address the millennia of firestick farming and centuries of mechanical deforestation. Funded by the economic expansion of the north and west, Australia’s vast spaces and varied landscape can become a permanent ark for thousands of species that are heading rapidly for expansion.

As a wealthy democracy, Australia has a unique opportunity to provide leadership in all these areas. The Greens are the political party best positioned to deliver this. A modern political party, free of the taint of corporate bribes and with a networked grass roots, The Greens can show real leadership.

Naturally, taking positive action will challenge some holy cows, but the proposal outlined above is in complete keeping with Green principles and is the fundamental requirement for a stable and robust future.

I look forward to walking with you on that journey.

This is part of a longer article  Green gold | Redneck Rage | Rusted on Reds | Clear directions | Sidebar – Red herrings | Greenslanders? Not!

 

The watermelon curse. By dubbing The Greens as watermelons – “Green on the outside but red on the inside” – Warren T Brookes effectively created an enduring link between The Greens and socialism that resonates with the electorate. Because of the greens fundamental commitment to restrict global economic activity that is harmful to the environment, the target is an easy one.

Socialism is an industrial solution to a capital constrained world and is a twentieth century tool to negotiate the competing interests of labour and capital. There are no negotiated solutions for the environment. If we damage the ecology we die. That’s it.

The similarity between the Greens organisation of the economy and the socialists is limited to the fact that markets must be managed. The founding fathers in the US designed a constitution to prevent economic monopolies on the basis that allowing the market to determine the outcome leads to profit seeking behaviour rather than good management. That is as far down the road to socialism that any Green platform needs to go to ensure economic management.

Conversely, there is little advantage in the Greens confusing the Greens economic message with the socialist messages of the past. It is obvious from first principles that governments must control the worst excesses of markets. It is also obvious that global economic interests are often at odds to the interests of the Australian people and the environment that supports us. Neither of those necessarily has any relationship to socialism and any such assertion in the interest of political advantage should be swiftly set aside.

What about innovation?

It is completely obvious that economic growth and the improvement of the conditions for living has relied on innovation. In fact the only way that a given set of economic circumstances can improve is by raiding the neighbours, increasing the rate of extraction (raiding the future), increasing population or innovation. Of those four, only innovation is sustainable or, in this world, even tenable.

Given that, any Green economic solution needs to be based on the assumption that innovation will play an enormous part in continuing to benefit humanity. This basic observation is very different from suggesting that innovation is somehow going to allow us to feed the global economy by consuming at ever increasing rates.

Yes we need innovation, and yes it is the key to creating technical solutions required to govern wisely while marshalling our resources for future generations and for the ecology as a whole rather than for our short term dreams of wealth. It is not, however, an alternative to implementing governance based on those principles.

Anarchist, atheist destroyers

The Green movement is often depicted as a bunch of destructive, unprincipled, non-believers out to tear down society. While this sort of criticism is always directed at progressive political movements as they move toward real power, it is worth understanding the basis of this specific example so it may be readily countered.

In the main text I referred to an Anarchist creed that embodies many Green moral principles. That creed concludes:

I set my own standards and I alone enforce them.

I am an atheist.

These last two lines could just as well apply to an anarchist as an atheist creed. I would suggest that Greens are probably somewhat divided as to whether Green morals are purely logical or are externally dictated by a quasi-spiritual force of nature.

The division is irrelevant.

Whether Greens are driven by a fundamental belief that the planetary ecological systems are important in their own right, or by scientific evidence that destroying those systems will destroy civilisation, the outcome remains that we must govern to prevent the continuation of that destruction.

The next red herring might be dubbed cynical activists.

There is a publicly stated loss of faith in the political process. It shows in surveys about faith in politicians, but is not directly reflected in voting patterns.

While it has always been true that only a small segment of society (usually estimated at about 25%) cares passionately about politics at all, the vast majority have usually been accurately characterised as a silent majority who do not care, so long as their basic needs are met.

The disengagement of some percentage of the progressive component of those who care is concerning but at a philosophical rather than a political level. It is a pity to lose the genuinely compassionate input from those people, and they can hurl wounding barbs at the worst possible moments, but their numbers are small and they provide an extreme alternative to the more structured and constructive Greens.

The third red herring to be eliminated is the notion of an inner-city elite. If for no other reason, this tired and untrue taunt is worth the effort of building bridges between The Greens and rural communities.

Three of the ten federal electorates with the highest Green vote are outside the major metropolitan areas: Denison and Pedder in Tasmania and Richmond in NSW.  There are environmental hot spots wherever there is a population attracted by environmental values. Other areas are driven by high value and intense organic food production. Some areas include: The original forest battlefields of Northern NSW and Tasmania, the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine and Gold Coast, the tropical north, south west Western Australia, the central gold towns of Victoria, areas of East Gippsland and Orange in NSW.

The Greens need to do more to promote these rural heroes and use them to break down the stereotypes much beloved by the redneck shock jocks.

This is part of a longer article  Green gold | Redneck Rage | Rusted on Reds | Clear directions | Sidebar – Red herrings | Greenslanders? Not!

 

Loss of faith

I spent the Queensland election day on a booth, handing out how to vote cards, chatting to the other booth workers and talking to voters.

Most voters are there under sufferance. Most voters believe that the fundamental problem with politics is the stupidity of politicians. If they would simply get on with managing the day to day affairs of state there would be no mess for us to get out of.

The ALP fundamentally understood this after the heady Whitlam years, moved the economy to the core of its management policy and has thus successfully shared government with the conservatives for the last 25 years.

The medium term impact was to make Australia internationally competitive and a global trader of more significance than its population size would indicate.

The long term impact has been the de-unionising and hence casualisation of the workforce. The very cosy relationship with the top end of town has shifted large volumes of wealth from the public to the private sector. Most alarmingly, this includes the demutualisation of our insurance and superannuation sectors.

Wayne Swan’s very public, but incredibly narrow, attack on the mega-rich was a callous and calculated attempt to publicly bite the hand that deals out the dog food.

Over the last six years Queensland Labor has lost 350,000 voters. The LNP has gained 360,000 and Katter’s Australian has gained 250,000. There are 200,000 new voters in Queensland now compared to 2006. The swing of 19% in this election campaign is more extreme than the 16% seen in NSW in 2011 or the 6% swing seen in Victoria in 2010 – both of which saw a change in government. The variations in the Greens and independent vote account for the difference.

We might estimate, then, that the anger at Labor is such that about 10% of the electorate who would not normally swing at the end of an electoral cycle is rejecting them as a government. This is consistent with the 230,000 additional people who changed sides compared with the 150,000 who changed sides between 2006 and 2009. Not only are these people angry, the fact that 280,000 went to Katter rather than the LNP shows that those people are not angry with Labor, they are angry with the status quo in politics. It is their story that must dominate any analysis of the political landscape in Queensland.

Deep divisions

One phenomenon raised around the world by commentators in many different fields is the increasing degree of separation between the progressive and conservative elements of society. Social mobility and increased choice in communication and consumption of information means that we can live in suburbs, visit doctors, employ tradespeople, watch television stations and engage in public entertainment with people who largely reflect our attitudes.

The simplification of politics to slogans, the hostility with which people deride “the other” are an outcrop of this phenomenon and it is accelerated by the militarisation of Hollywood and the political end-game around oil.

While that is a global phenomenon and requires philosophical analysis to be fully understood its impact can be seen on the ground in Queensland.

Bob Katter’s Australian Party is the redneck donk, the 182cubic inch Holden red motor, under the bonnet of the Liberal National Party. These are the voters who respond to the three word slogans of Stop the Boats, No New Tax etc.

For the second time in recent history, they have their own party which will influence the government on those issues where it can afford to be flexible. Where it cannot, such as when it comes to Coal Seam Gas, the government will desert its rural cousins as it has always done, “in the greater interest”.

One quarter of a million people – 11.5% of Queensland voters – put Katter’s Australian Party first on their ballot.

That is a far better indicator of the nature of the frustration in the electorate.

This is lower than the roughly 400,000 Nationals vote in 2006, the last Qld election in which it was a party in its own right. The Nationals then fielded almost as many votes as the Liberals – more precisely, 392,000 to 442,000.

Katter’s vote does not include many of the Family First vote which was 40,000 in 2006, 20,000 in 2009 and 32,000 in 2012. It does include most of the 10,000 One Nation voters from 2006 of whom only 2,000 remain.

This means that 240,000 Katter voters have presumably peeled off the flanks of the 1 million strong rural Nationals. Even without the many frustrated rural Laborites this 240,000 is much less dramatic than the Democratic Labor Party split in 1955 or the creation of the Country Party by old-man Page in 1920. It is more reminiscent of the creation of the Democrats, the Australia Party or One Nation.

The passion they bring to the electoral process and the response of the electorate to a seriously underfunded grass-roots campaign is the stuff of Green Dreams.

Limp Greens?

Given the ubiquity of Green philosophy in political slogans, magazine articles, corporate vision statements and so on, it seems counter-intuitive that The Greens have not been able to convert large numbers of voters to their cause.

The numbers in the previous three Queensland elections tell the story.

In 2006 the Green vote across Queensland was 180,000, around eight percent, in 2009 that climbed to 200,000 topping nine percent, this most recent election it is back to 180,000 which is now a little under the eight percent of six years ago.

A seat by seat analysis confirms that the trend is general. In Mount Cootha where the party thought it had the best chance and put large numbers of people on the ground to run an effective, modern political campaign, the result was …

All the commentators, looking at these figures, conclude that the Green march forward is in abeyance. The Greens seem to have hit the traditional plateau of the third party in Australian politics. The expectation is that they will stay there until they unravel or are kicked out by the next big thing.

If the Greens are to, as they have done in Germany, northern NSW and the inner-city suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, reach the magic one quarter of the vote and lead a progressive partnership with the Labour movement, they have to break through this nexus, cleanly and soon.

The Queensland results show how hungry the electorate is for something different to believe in. The Greens need to fire up the little Green donkey and unleash the inner Green dragon. St Bob’s resignation creates an ideal opportunity for this.

The intense hatred felt toward the present Greens by Katter’s adherents is an important part of this analysis, that will be dealt with next.

Angry Anarchists

The Anarchists rode by Queensland election booths early on Saturday 24^th March, bombing the placards of all the parties with equal disdain. In addition to the Don’t Vote, Fuck Voting and the circled A scrawled in felt pen across those placards, posters depicting toilet bowls as ballot boxes and similar were hung beside them.

Ourtraged booth workers tut tutted at the nihilism of the effort. In contrast, many of the suburban grumps dragged away from their regular Saturday activities under the threat of fines for not exercising their democratic “right” had more sympathy with the Anarchist sentiment than they felt for any of the booth workers shoving how to vote cards in their faces.

Cynicism about politics is a significant danger in that the absence of any real power built on trust, money alone will rule and those who do not worship at its altar will be cast aside.

Some indication of voter anger may be taken from the number of informal votes.

49,278 people or 2 per cent of the voters, voted informal. This is slightly up on the 2009 Queensland election which had 1.9% but well below the result for the 2010 Federal election in which a stunning 5.7% of Queensland voters voted informal. This was higher than the informal vote in that election in other states except NSW. In the 2007 federal election with “our Kev” running for PM the informal vote in Queensland still ran at 3.6%. This indicates a dislike of the Federal Government which is common in other states (NSW 2011 State – 3.4%, NSW 2010 Federal – 6.8%)

On that number you would have to say that Queenslanders were angrier at the Labor government than they are at the notion of government or the political process.

Of course, the informal vote may not accurately reflect voter cynicism. A better indicator would be the number of voters prepared to pay a fine rather than vote. There is a blurred line between apathy and cynicism, too, which makes it hard to isolate those numbers.

Even taking all this into account, the size of the informal vote, and the far left vote does not support the notion that a large number of Queenslanders are opting out of the electoral system, or voting for candidates that are outside the normal political process.

This is part of a longer article  Green gold | Redneck Rage | Rusted on Reds | Clear directions | Sidebar – Red herrings | Greenslanders? Not!