Watermelons

From Jamie Walker in today?s Weekend Australian Inquirer

Discussion about the ideological orientation of the Greens tends to revolve around the watermelon thesis that what’s green on the outside is actually red beneath. Does it matter in this day and age? Well, yes, especially if the Greens are trying to pull the shade cloth over our eyes.

And they are! Bob Carr, one of the most astute Premiers in Australia claimed that;

.. many Greens were unreconstructed Trots, closet members of the SWP. The whole Labor Party knew this, Carr said, and voters should, too.

I agree, the voters should be told often that a vote for the Greens is a vote against all that Australia stands for. Every now and then Brown, with sympathetic TV cameras in tow, hugs a tree and all the Greenies squirm with righteous pleasure but for the rest of the time he beats a different drum, and its funereal beat offers no hope for a better world. Hazy summer days at campus creates great breeding grounds for the Greens. Uni students, all in that phase of life that questions society are all conned by cute pictures of Koalas in threatened forests…remember No Tree – No Me. Truly a gallant cause but the innocent Koala is a front for anti-capitalist, anti US, anti globalisation and all the other Trotsky/Marxist failed bullshit ‘antis’ of the previous years. After Uni, most students go on to read newspapers other than the left-wing uni rags and their opinions mature. They realize in a complicated world the Greens have few real-world answers and what policy they do have will never be put to the test. They will never occupy the treasury benches but will be able to force disastrous results on legislature that can literally harm the nation. All green, no sense, stop industry, bugger the jobs. Policy in a sentence. Jamie puts a negative spin on the Greens years but I’m still concerned.

So here we are, sitting in Brown’s gloomy office in Parliament House, looking to what he insists is a bright future. Leaving aside events in Queensland, the year hasn’t ended as well as he would have hoped. The Greens’ vote, according to Newspoll, has slipped to 5 per cent, down three percentage points from the October high. Other published opinion polls show a similar dip. Brown and Nettle’s juvenile antics during the joint sitting of parliament addressed by US President George W. Bush appear to have been coolly received by the electorate. Senior adviser Ben Oquist insists, though, that the polls reflect no more than the bounce Labor received from the leadership change to Mark Latham. You’d hardly think that was a comfort.

Their juvenile antics will have put the electorate off but those who’s opinion and choice of newspapers never matured will again swing away from Labour and head to the Greens for socialist Trotsky solace. When Latham forces the issue at the forthcoming Labour conference all the left wing luvvies will be dismayed at the centre and right wing ascendancy in the party. They will vote Green and the 5% will head to double figures. Poor fellow, my country.