Mr Garrett, down in Melbourne to campaign against
The question that people have to ask themselves when they cast their vote and if they're thinking of voting for the Greens is do you want in effect to have your preferences run to a Liberal Government which is hostile on environment issues?
Oh, Peter. What has the ALP done to you?
Obviously anyone voting Green can easily preference the ALP ahead of the Liberals, even in those few seats in which the Greens are not entirely preferencing the ALP and are instead running the wilfully-misunderstood "split tickets".
The "split tickets" are simply "How To Vote" cards with "if you want to vote Green and preference Labor, please preference this way" on one side and "if you want to vote Green and preference the Liberals, please preference this way" on the other. It's entirely up to the individual voter which other party they preference. Most will preference Labor (spiteful ALP idiocy notwithstanding, I certainly will).
So it's not like any Green voters are going to accidentally find their votes going to the Liberals.
(Notably unlike when ALP voters who voted above the line in the 2004 Senate election found their preferences electing Stephen Fielding of the ultra-conservative lunatics Fundamentalists First. Remember, Pete?)
I wonder if Peter Garrett recalls the days when he actually stood up for progressive politics in this country - or whether they now count as his forgotten years.
How can he sleep while the beds are burning?
Presumably Garrett thought "If I sell my soul to the ALP, maybe they'll start standing up for the things I believe in!" But has anyone seen much evidence that he's influenced their shakers and movers much at all? I suspect they're just profiteering from his support. I'm afraid he's been used and abused.
Meanwhile, Bob Brown has a rather good point:
If Labor really thinks that the Liberals are the opposition [Peter Garrett] may have gone off to defend a few Labor balance of power seats which the Liberals are eyeing off. No, he has parachuted into a seat, what is a Green winnable seat, and I would say to Peter, "Hey support the Greens getting the balance of power, that's going to help the environment".
And a very good question. Obviously the ALP, as a centrist party, has a much better shot of taking/holding Liberal/ALP marginals than the progressive Greens. So why aren't they out there fighting THAT fight? Why are they so paranoid about a few Greens MPs?
It's almost as if the ALP would rather stop the Greens from winning seats than the Liberals.
For progressive voters, which party to vote for should be obvious. The Greens are the only consistently progressive candidates out there. If you think the ALP is way too close to the Liberals for comfort, but not as bad as them, then vote 1 Greens and 2 Labor. It's not particularly complicated. You get the best of both worlds - a vote for a genuine progressive party, and the security of knowing that you've helped ensure the defeat of the Liberals.
But if you vote 1 Labor then you're giving the ALP Right the go-ahead to completely ignore you for another three or four years. They reckon they can do whatever they like between elections and then win left-wing voters back by flying down a Peter Garrett.
You could buy the ALP's cynical use of the remaining goodwill for Garrett - or you could stand up for the principles he once sang about and vote 1 for the Greens. Maybe that way we'll awaken the ALP's dead heart. It's the only way they'll finally get that somebody's trying to tell them something.
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PS The Hun version of the story was amusing, in that - as usual - they only quote the Greens' critics, and not the Greens' response. They must really be scared of the Greens if they're so utterly set against giving them any chance at all to put their case.
But I wonder how many people are really judging the Greens by the Hun's unbelievably biased coverage against them? My guess: any progressive voters tempted by the Greens have long ago learned to take pretty much every claim the Hun and major parties make against them with a very large grain of metaphorical salt. I think the Hun and major parties have pushed the anti-Green spin a few steps too far, and now progressive voters are sufficiently aware of the cynical dishonesty behind the attacks that they just ignore them.
