Labor v Greens

Australian Labor has had a ferocious campaign against their technical ally the Greens in the last week or so.

The Australian reports:

IF you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas, the saying goes. It appears this past week there has been an outburst of violent itching within Labor ranks, attributed to the notion that lying down with Greens will result in a similar infestation.

The SMH reports:

LABOR’S recent declaration of war against the Australian Greens is a very public concession that the minor party has moved from political fringe dweller to a credible electoral threat.

The Daily Telegraph:

 OH dear, the marriage of Labor and the Greens is heading for the rocks.

A close friend of the couple, the NSW ALP secretary Sam Dastyari, wants the split formalised this weekend with a motion to the party’s state conference proposing that Labor no longer provide the Greens with “automatic preferential treatment in any future preference negotiations”.

Things are so bad, that in some seats Labor preferences Family First ahead of the Greens.

“Because I believe they are an extremist party and I do believe they have some very loony policies and what I think they are very effective at is portraying themselves as a kind of peace, love and mung beans party, that all cares about wombats and the trees and the grass and the environment, without exposing themselves to any critique of some of their very wacky policies.

Someone should look hard at some of the Green policies here.

The quote above is from Paul Howes the national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, a member of Labor’s ruling council.

But if you want an example of a loony Green policy in Australia, Mr Howes provides it:

If the Greens had their way, I doubt NSW would ever win the State of Origin.

There probably wouldn’t even be a State of Origin – we’d just sit around with Queenslanders and play pass the parcel. After all, the Greens in NSW have a policy of promoting “non-competitive sports” such as yoga, dance, trampolining and tai chi over the traditional sports that Australian children enjoy playing.

As their policy explains, the Greens “believe too much emphasis is placed on full body contact sports often causing unnecessary physical damage and confining opportunities for participation to the athletic elite.”

Sorry kids – no more rugby, no more Aussie rules, no more hockey or netball. Let’s all go meditate instead.

I’m not sure if the Greens who wrote this ridiculous policy have kids, or ever were children themselves, but expecting children not be competitive is just bizarre.

As far as I know the NZ Greens don’t have a policy against contact sport – but they do want to kill 1 in five cows to save the planet. Howes continues:

Labor has an obligation to stop extremists who threaten our democracy. We’ve done it before and we need to do it again.

Because make no mistake; the Greens pose as much of a threat to working people as Tony Abbott. They just hide it better.

Ouch.