Fwiw, I wish the two parties were more cooperative, but it takes two to tango. Greens aren’t obliged to blindly pass every bill that Labor proposes, the burden is also on Labor to negotiate their proposals to gain majority support.
they aren’t obligated to block critical funding for housing either, they made their decision and ive made mine
the real pain for me is that when i went to vote there was like 5 nutter parties all of them right wing, the libs and then just labor and the greens on the left, limited choices for anyone left wing :(
They didn’t block critical funding. They stalled a long-term project by a few weeks, and in the process improved that project both in the long term and forced it to include some benefit in the shorter term.
They stalled a long-term project by a few weeks
It was stuck in the Senate for half a year?? Labor nearly called a double dissolution over it? Need I remind you we’re trying to build houses in a housing crisis?
Even Jonny Sri admitted:
www.jonathansri.com/greensmustblock/
The Greens MPs and their staffers had concluded that a growing proportion of their own support base wanted them to stop blocking.
No shit but he doesn’t comprehend why:
If the Greens don’t block Labor, nothing will change
You can block labor, on things that need to be blocked on, if labor wants to build a coal power plant, go for your life, block the shit out of it
If labor is trying to build some renewables in a very heated/debated area and you demand they build even more, stop it, you’re making it worse
If the greens block Labor too hard they are seen as doing nothing, if they are seen as doing nothing guess who gets in? The liberal party and what are the liberal party offering?
The Coalition has promised to repeal the fund if elected.
No mention of the Greens blocking it for some reason, just straight up, if we get in its gone.
So its more like:
If the Greens block Labor, nothing will change, people will get unhappy, and the libs will get in and then we’ll be stuck yelling from the sidelines like we did for the 10 years prior to labor getting in again
It’s interesting he mentions that as well:
Australia’s fossil fuel emissions … are still rising.
No they’re not, our emissions peaked in 2019
but wouldn’t it have been nice if labor had been in power building out renewables for 10 years instead of Morrison bringing a lump of coal into parliament talking about how great it is? it just shows you haven’t learned a thing since your last screw up
We are a conservative country, the Greens are currently polling within 3% of One Fucking Nation, they have to work better on things that they can really hammer home to people, not in fighting over policies that are aligned with what greens voters actually want
ok last reply on this, i’m just wasting time
It was stuck in the Senate for half a year?
Sort of. If you look at the timing of its actual passage you can see that even though it was first introduced to the Senate in March, Labor didn’t actually even schedule it to be debated until May. So That 6 months is down to 4 right off the bat.
After that, things get more complicated. Without a doubt, some of the delay was indeed caused by the Greens. But some was still caused by Labor, too. I forget the precise timeline, but circa June or July, Labor agreed to some compromises with the Greens. The Greens continued blocking the bill and arguing for more compromise out of Labor.
At the time, I was actually upset with the Greens and thought they should have accepted the initial compromise. But after talking with someone from my local Greens MP’s office, I found the trick…despite agreeing on a compromise with the Greens, what Labor actually presented was the original, un-amended plan. It took weeks more before Labor finally actually presented in Parliament a Bill that they had negotiated to get Greens support on.
We are a conservative country, the Greens are currently polling within 3% of One Fucking Nation
Just looking at the latest polling, Labor + Greens poll at 47.5%, while LNP + One Nation + Trumpet of Patriots at just 43.5%. Labor are ahead of the LNP. Greens are ahead of One Nation + Trump. And if you look at the last actual election results, the Greens outperformed One Nation by more than a factor of 2.
So yeah, we’re a country with a lot of conservatives. But we have a lot of progressives too. And the Greens’ job is to represent the views of the people who voted for them in Parliament. That means pushing, hard, to get Labor to do more than just fiddle around the edges, as they are so often wont to do. In the case of the HAFF, it meant pushing Labor to increase the amount invested in total, and also to make sure it wasn’t only a long-term project that might eventually pay off…if the LNP doesn’t dismantle it first, but that it is also able to start doing good work immediately, by requiring a minimum spend instead of Labor’s planned maximum spend.
Thanks for linking that article from Sriranganathan. I hadn’t read it before. I found that interview he showed a video clip of particularly galling. That is precisely why I support the Greens and I have become more and more upset at Labor over the last 3 years.
There’s outright socialist parties ont the ballot as well, and you could argue some of the single issue parties (legalise cannabis party, animal justice party, …) are left wing too even if they don’t have an explicit economic programme. There’s options, and you can preference accordingly so your vote doesn’t trickle to the right wing parties.
Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Yeah I thought that was the whole point of a parliamentary system.