Category: Lee Rhiannon

19 Nov

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Gaza: How did taking the side of the oppressed get so hard?

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The Australian Greens are deeply worried about the civilian death toll in Israel and Palestine, and urge both sides of the conflict to put down their weapons and respect a ceasefire.

“The human suffering is too great and the continued recourse to violence has done nothing for peace,” Australian Greens Leader, Senator Christine Milne, said.

“We support a two-state solution and urge the Government to support Palestine’s bid for a UN non-member statehood status.

“Now that we have a seat at the UN Security Council, Australia needs to step up to this role and take a more considered and independent position. Calling for ‘de-escalation’ is not enough – a ceasefire is what is needed.”

—Australian Greens media release, 16 November

The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for 40 years.

—Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, 17 November

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

—Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, in the Jerusalem Post, 18 November

In case you thought that Australian politics was all about interminable partisan sledging between the Right (a.k.a. Tony Abbott) and the Left (a.k.a. Julia Gillard and her Greens allies), along comes Israel’s attack on Gaza to unsettle things. Not because it has reproduced the same Right-Left divide, but because it reveals the near-unanimity of our political class in refusing to condemn Israeli aggression.

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Filed Under: Egypt, Featured, Islamism, Julia Gillard, Lee Rhiannon, Left strategy, Palestine

10 Feb

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Is this what democracy looks like? The NSW Greens & the campaign against the BDS

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The latest issue of The Monthly and my response in The Drum on Monday (here, reposted at Left Flank here) have stirred public interest in the sharpened political debates about the future of the Greens. On Thursday, The Australian ran a curiously subdued feature on the party by Christian Kerr that also pulled a lengthy quote the Drum essay.

One area that deserves more analysis is the blow-up over the NSW Greens’ now-rescinded support for a Boycotts, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. With the kind permission of the author and Graham Young’s Online Opinion site, we are reprinting Hamish Ford’s 28 April 2011 exploration of the BDS controversy just after the Marrickville Greens councillors split, thereby overturning Council policy. Hamish was then a Greens member and is a lecturer in Film, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Newcastle.

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Filed Under: Bob Brown, Featured, Greens, Lee Rhiannon, Palestine

06 Feb

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The Greens at the crossroads: ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ matter more than you’d think

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‘Factional rifts, personal animosities and turf wars’

My latest article on ABC’s The Drum, looking at the politics and ideology behind the growing tensions in the Australian Greens, and why these debates matter.

In the last decade there has been a dramatic reconfiguration on the Left of Australian politics. The ALP’s support has dropped to levels not witnessed since the dark years of the Great Depression. Labor has also experienced an excruciating crisis of identity in full public view. In the meantime, the Australian Greens have grown from strength to strength, culminating in winning the balance of power in a hung Parliament in 2010. The party is currently enjoying its peak — so far — of popularity and influence, and this has led The Monthly to commission a lengthy feature by Sally Neighbour, focusing almost exclusively on tensions between Bob Brown and his supporters in NSW on the one hand, and the rest of the NSW Greens on the other.

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Filed Under: Bob Brown, Greens, Lee Rhiannon

15 Sep

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Australia’s ‘Left’ in government. Part 2: Greens trapped in a prison of their own making

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Since when did building a climate movement mean cheerleading neoliberal government policies?

In the last post I argued that the deep crisis of the Gillard government is also a crisis of the Greens and the Left more generally. By effectively entering a “Left” government the Greens have replicated the disastrous strategy of Italy’s main party of the Left, Rifondazione Comunista, in joining a centre-Left coalition in the late 2000s.

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Filed Under: ALP, Bob Brown, climate change, Greens, Lee Rhiannon, Left strategy, refugees, Tony Abbott

04 Mar

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Drugs! Drugs! Drugs!

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As the state election skulks closer, it seems clear the NSW Greens will not be actively campaigning on their Drugs and Harm Minimisation policy in the community or the media. Their silence makes obvious that they have determined to stay mum on the question, despite the policy being one democratically endorsed by the membership after prolonged and lively debates.

This is pretty detrimental at a time when significant public interest questions are being raised about failed “zero tolerance” approaches to drug harm. While this silence is likely out of fear of Daily Telegraph front pages, which have in the past run shock horror claims that “The Greens want heroin sold to children in playgrounds by murderers”, this doesn’t mean it’s either a politically or ethically sensible approach. While gone are the days when pragmatic members would suggest candidates in more conservative electorates hide the party’s position in support of issues like same-s*x marriage and adoption, attempts to similarly conceal what are thought of as controversial parts of the party platform appear here to say.

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Filed Under: Bob Brown, drugs, Greens, health, Lee Rhiannon

28 Aug

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Politically paid-off? Donations, influence and power in Australia

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Lest people thought that the pre-election red-baiting of the Greens would stop now that the party’s vote had risen to 11.5 percent and they had gained four new Senators as well as a lower house MP, it has not taken long for a new round of attacks to start. While the media have joined the major parties in courting the three conservative Independent MPs, in particular sanitizing the noxious politics of Bob Katter, already we have been regaled with warnings of Greens extremism and confected shock at Adam Bandt’s history as a socialist in the student network Left Alliance in the 1990s.

But one of the most vexing criticisms has been the donation of a large sum of money (believed to be $325,000) to the Greens campaign by the Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union. A significant portion of this ended up with Adam’s campaign. Beyond any right-wing outrage, such as that practiced by the Murdoch press, progressive Sydney Morning Herald columnist Lisa Pryor has also weighed into the debate, broadening it to the question of political donations more generally.

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Filed Under: democracy, Greens, Lee Rhiannon, state, trade unions

14 Aug

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Worse than the cure? The hollowness of Australia’s preventative health agenda

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For too long the system has focused on treating people after they become unwell, and this has resulted in vast social and economic costs associated with chronic disease.

—Commonwealth Government response to the Report of the National Preventative Health Taskforce, May 2010

“Prevention” has become the health reform buzzword du jour, accepted at all points of the political spectrum. The spiralling costs of acute and chronic treatment have led to a search for more efficient and beneficent approaches to health and illness than merely cleaning up the burden of illness at the pointy end. Yet the logic of the current focus on prevention says more about the narrow ideological assumptions of mainstream discourse than a genuine attempt to prevent illness.

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Filed Under: ALP, class, Greens, health, Lee Rhiannon, neoliberalism, social inclusion

08 Aug

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Gratuitous advice: Inviting the Greens into the mainstream

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I wonder how you see the Greens party.  I mean is it an ecological party or is it maybe Australia’s only left wing party?

—Laurie Oakes to Bob Brown, 11 July 2010

The persistence of polling showing the Greens at 11-13 percent has meant that for the first time in a federal election the party has been taken seriously by the MSM. Apart from some unsavoury red-baiting directed at Lee Rhiannon, the usual scare stories about crystal meth being available to kids on street corners have been few and far between. Instead we have seen significant media time, positive coverage of the party’s most important lower house campaign, reports on relatively minor preselections, and detailed discussions of party policies, especially those on economics.

Filed Under: Bob Brown, Greens, Lee Rhiannon, Liberal Party