>Luckily, no one like that exists around here, although there are some odd
>folks who think that putting the words "Green" on the ballot will suddenly
>make electoral action a magical short-cut to policy change.
I don't recall anyone saying that, perhaps you imagined it? Anyhow, it wouldn't hurt you to try thinking outside the box a bit. Here, read this.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2002/08/09/1028158015209.htm
Political desert needs Green oasis
Date: August 10 2002
By Hugh Mackay
Everywhere you look, you see Green. The Democrats, flailing wildly in their disarray, are advised to ponder a merger with the Greens. The Greens post a record vote in the Tasmanian election. The Greens perform so strongly in the New Zealand election that Prime Minister Helen Clark is forced to explore the possibility of a coalition with them in order to form a government.
The Greens have been riding high in Europe for years. They found their political voice in Australia in the late 1980s, when the environment stormed on to the national agenda (triggered, I seem to recall, by some unseasonable wet weather that spooked many Australians into believing they were seeing the evidence of global warming right there on their soggy lawns).
But why the current surge in their fortunes? Have we developed a new sensitivity to the health of the planet? Has the message about the disastrous levels of rural soil salinity finally got through? Are we about to abandon our profligate use of cars and fossil fuels and switch, en masse, to the bicycle and the solar-powered home?
I doubt it. Most of us are more worried about traffic congestion than the impact of our cars on the quality of our air. Although there are many committed environmentalists in our midst ("dark greens", in the jargon of the trade), most of us are "light greens" - supportive, but not passionate.
In any case, I suspect the recent growth in support for the Greens is only partly driven by a concern for the state of our environment: my guess is that the Greens have achieved a new level of political respectability - and even a certain allure - because they clearly believe in something.
This is the era of political opportunism and unabashed pragmatism. It is ironic that at a time when many Australians have felt confused by the swirl of events, and have been hoping for a moral dimension to emerge in our political leadership, we're being told that ideology is dead, and practical economics is everything (though it's hard to escape the feeling that some of the economics on offer is very ideological indeed).
When we feel as if we've lost our emotional and intellectual bearings, our natural reaction is to search for a moral compass: we'd like someone to offer us a guiding story that would help us make sense of what's happening to us (and perhaps even help us see where we are heading: that's what is meant by the deeply unfashionable notion of "vision").
The crowds who recently flocked to hear the Dalai Lama were symptomatic of this yearning for moral leadership. When General Peter Cosgrove offers apparently impartial assessments of politico-military issues - such as his recent remarks about the Vietnam War - the community welcomes an authoritative voice that seems to speak from a position of principle rather than from a purely political platform.
And that's an important part of the appeal of the Greens. By using the health of the environment - of the planet itself - as the foundation of their political philosophy, the Greens look as if they are on the side of the angels.
(By the way, this makes them peculiarly vulnerable to any hint of tawdriness or opportunism. Senator Brown raised more than a few eyebrows when he offered to support the sale of Telstra on condition that the proceeds were applied to the care of the environment rather than the retirement of government debt. His party organisation, sensing trouble, quickly pulled him into line.)
The Greens represent the new world religion - a modern version of pantheism - whose fundamentalist church is Greenpeace. Their political strength springs from the perception that they are being true to values that, deep down, most of us feel inclined to accept.
Who is going to argue with the idea that survival of the species depends on putting the environment first? Who dares say that in a head-to-head contest between the economy and the ecology, the economy should win? We might once have said that, but not now.
The Greens are the closest thing we have to a political party that proceeds from a clear sense of its own meaning and purpose. Such words are as unfashionable as "vision", but they tap into the community's hunger for moral guidance at a time when its traditional source - religion - is in decline.
We're not about to elect a Green government, but we like to have a finely balanced
Senate and, come the next election, voters may well decide to place the Greens at its fulcrum. In rather the same way as non-churchgoers have traditionally been reassured by the presence of the church in society, so a growing number of Australians are pleased to know the Greens are there, standing for something.
Social researcher Hugh Mackay is author of the Mackay reports.