The Green Loons as exposed below now pull the strings on the recently elected minority Labor / Green / Independent Socialist Coalition Federal Government led by Madame Gillard.
“What is at stake in the Greens’ “revolution” is the heart and soul of Western civilisation, built on the Judeo-Christian/Enlightenment synthesis that upholds the individual—with obligations and responsibilities to others, but ultimately judged on his or her own conscience and actions—as the possessor of an inherent dignity and inalienable rights. What is also at stake is the economic system that has resulted in the creation of wealth and prosperity for the most people in human history.”
POLITICS
The Greens' Agenda, in Their Own Words
Kevin Andrews
Quadrant
For many years, the Greens have been treated as a political curiosity. They could win a spot or two in the Senate, but they were absent from the real place of political power, the House of Representatives. That has now changed. Not only will they have more senators from next July, they also have a seat in the House. More significantly, they are in formal alliance with minority Labor governments nationally and in Tasmania.
Despite the emphasis on the environment, “the Greens are not a single issue party”.
[1] Their objective is clear: “to transform politics and bring about Green government.”
[2] The Australian Greens are part of a worldwide movement that is actively engaged in the political process.
[3] As their writings state, this objective involves a radical transformation of the culture that underpins Western civilisation. As a political party, they should be treated like any other political party and subjected to the same scrutiny.
In order to fully comprehend the Greens’ political ideology, it is necessary to understand the historical roots and foundations of both our own Western, liberal democratic culture—and that of the Greens. I propose to explain the Greens’ agenda, as set out in their own documents and writings.
[4]
Leader of the Australian Greens Bob Brown (l) and “partner” Paul Thomas (r)
Western civilisation
While shared to some extent by all liberal democracies, Australia’s values have been adapted to our unique setting, moulded and modernised through waves of settlement by people from all over the world. These values and principles reflect strong influences on Australia’s history and culture. They include our Judeo-Christian religious and ethical heritage, a British parliamentary democracy embracing an earlier Roman understanding of the importance of the law, and the spirit of the European Enlightenment, including a reliance on the empirical and the scientific.
It was Christianity in particular, building on both the Greek and Jewish traditions, that insisted on the dignity of all humans.
[5] Humans should not be used as a means. Based on the belief that men and women are created in the image and likeness of God, the idea of intrinsic human dignity gradually shaped European civilisation. The idea of human dignity was also propounded by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant. In his
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant argued:
Everything has either a price
or a dignity
. Whatever has a price can be replaced by something else as its equivalent; on the other hand, whatever is above all price, and therefore admits of no equivalent, has a dignity. But that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself does not have mere relative worth, i.e., price, but an intrinsic worth, i.e., a dignity.[6]
Kant’s famous imperative upheld human dignity: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.”
[7] As Michael Novak observes, Kant’s formulation is “a repetition in non-biblical language of the humanistic half of the essential teaching of Judaism and Christianity: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’”
[8]
The centrality of human dignity is reflected in many national and international proclamations. The primary truth, according to the American founders, and held to be self-evident, is the equality of all men and women, derived from biblical belief: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
[9]
One hundred and seventy years later, in the wake of the massive assault on human dignity during two world wars, many in the international community voiced their demand for the protection of human rights. In her narrative history of the drafting of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Mary Ann Glendon describes how, under the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, Charles Malik and Rene Cassin, the international instrument based on the rights of individuals and their inherent dignity was created.
[10] Cassin, a French jurist, conceived the Universal Declaration as a portico—a gateway to a better world—built on the foundations of dignity, liberty, equality and brotherhood.
[11] The first words in the preamble of the document reflect the primacy of human dignity: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
[12]
The more recent Declaration of the European Union, celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome
which brought the union into existence, is explicit: “For us, the individual is paramount. His dignity is inviolable. His rights are inalienable.”
[13] Other national and international proclamations of rights are also founded on the integrity and dignity of the individual.
[14]
This emphasis on the inherent dignity of the individual reflects not only the Judeo-Christian foundation of the West, but also the classic liberal philosophy that underpinned its subsequent development. The notion was also reflected in the development of the common law.
[15]
The inherent dignity of the individual, as opposed to a postmodern notion of moral egalitarianism, is at the foundation of human freedom. If individual liberty is not predicated on inherent human dignity, then what is its foundation? Anything else is ultimately arbitrary.
[16] Once dignity is undermined, freedom is in danger. The consequence is George Orwell’s description in
Animal Farm of the loss of freedom: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
[17]
In their 1996 manifesto,
The Greens, Bob Brown and Peter Singer identify the origins of the Australian greens movement in two strands. The first, well-known strand has its origins in the United Tasmania Group,
[18] later morphing into the Tasmanian Wilderness Society,
[19] and the election of Norm Sanders, Gerry Bates and Bob Brown to the state parliament.
[20] By 1989, the Greens had secured five seats in the Tasmanian parliament, and held the balance of power. In a forerunner to more recent events in Tasmania, both major political parties had said before the election that they would not deal with the Greens.
[21] Subsequently, the Labor leader, Michael Field, did so, agreeing to “a raft of social, democratic and environmental reforms in return for the guarantee of office”.
[22] Field later regretted the decision, but not before the Greens had set out on a radical agenda.
[23] The subsequent advance of the Greens in state and national Parliaments is well-known.
The modern Greens party however had an earlier origin in the green bans applied by the Builders Labourers Federation in the 1970s in New South Wales.
[24] Indeed the visit to Australia by the German activist Petra Kelly in 1977 was influential in the foundation of the German Greens.
[25] The then leader of the BLF, Jack Mundey, was subsequently invited to conferences in Europe and North America. Mundey, a Communist Party official and candidate, who led the militant New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation, described himself as “an ecological Marxist”.
[26] Speaking years after the Communist Party folded, and a New Left party failed to gain support beyond Trotskyist and anarchist groupings, Mundey prophesied that “in the future there is a possibility of … what I’d call a Green Red future of socialism”.
[27] In addition to Marx and Engels, Mundey was influenced by the overpopulation jeremiad of Paul Ehrlich.
[28]
These two strands of the Greens are evident today. What then is the Greens’ agenda?
The Greens are ideologically driven
The Greens operate out of a set of ideological principles and beliefs that extend beyond the warm, cuddly environmentalism they wrap themselves in.
[29] While “environmentalism” lies at the core of the Greens’ ideology, their policies, if ever enacted, would radically change the economic and social culture of Australia.
This has been true from the outset. In the 1970s, Jack Mundey’s BLF campaigned for a range of radical issues beyond the immediate industrial interests of the union. He appealed beyond the blue-collar construction workers to the New Left alliance of what has become known as “doctors’ wives” and tertiary students and academics.
[30]
John Black has analysed Green voters over a series of elections. In a recent report, he categorises Green voters.
[31] First, those who vote Green as their primary vote:
This is the Don’s Party
group that used to be in the ALP in the sixties and seventies: young university students or graduates, frequently working or still studying in academia, no kids, often gay, arts and drama type degrees or architecture where they specialise is designing environmentally friendly suburbs, agnostic or atheist, often US or Canadian refugees from capitalism, but well paid in professional consulting or media jobs.[32]
These groups swung more heavily to the Greens in 2010:
They were led by arts, media or architectural graduate twenty-somethings, atheists and agnostics, Kiwis, the highly mobile university student groups, gays and the Green family group, which is a professional or admin consulting couple with one child attending expensive private schools.[33]
While the Greens appeal to an alliance of young, tertiary-educated students and professionals, the Party has increasingly been infiltrated at the parliamentary level by members of the hard Left. Let me take two examples. New South Wales senator-elect Lee Rhiannon is a former member of the Moscow-aligned Socialist Party of Australia. Her parents were prominent members of the Communist Party. The new Member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, was a radical student activist. He once attacked the Greens as a “bourgeois” party. Writing on a Marxist website in the 1990s, Mr Bandt attacked capitalism, arguing that ideological purity was paramount. It is clear from his 1995 comments— “Communists can’t fetishise alternative political parties, but should always make some kind of materially based assessment about the effectiveness of any given strategy come election time”—that Bandt views the Greens as a vehicle for his ideological pursuits.
Many descriptions could be applied to the Greens, but none seems more accurate than Jack Mundey’s own description of “ecological Marxism”, which sums up the two core beliefs of the Greens. First, the environment or the ecology is to be placed before all else. This is spelt out in the first principle in the
Greens Global Charter, to which the Australian Greens are subscribers: “We acknowledge that human beings are part of the natural world and we respect the specific values of all forms of life, including non-human species.”
[34]
Second, the Greens are Marxist in their philosophy, and display the same totalitarian tendencies of all previous forms of Marxism as a political movement. By totalitarian, I mean the subordination of the individual in the impulse to rid society of all elements that, in the eyes of the adherent, mar its perfection.
Let me expand. According to the Greens’ ideology, human dignity is neither inherent nor absolute, but relative.
[35] Humans are only one species amongst others. As Brown and Singer write: “We hold that the dominant ethic is indefensible because it focuses only on human beings and on human beings who are living now, leaving out the interests of others who are not of our species, or not of our generation.”
[36] Elsewhere, they equate humans with animals:
The revolutionary element in Green ethics is its challenge to us to see ourselves in universal terms ... I must take into account the interests of others, on the same footing as my own. This is true, whether these others are Victorians or Queenslanders, Australians or Rwandans, or even the nonhuman animals whose habitat is destroyed when a forest is destroyed.[37]
What is revolutionary about this statement is not that the interests of another should be considered in an ethical judgment. Judeo-Christian belief extols consideration of others, as does Kant’s Golden Rule. Burke wrote of society being a compact across generations. What is revolutionary is the equation of humans and animals.
Peter Singer expands these notions in his other works on animal liberation. He charges that humans are guilty of “speciesism”, that is, preferring their own species over all others. It leads him to argue in favour of infanticide and doctor-assisted suicide on one hand; and bestiality on the other, provided there is mutual consent!
[38]
Peter Singer’s influence is evident in the Greens’ ideology. The author of a series of books, including
Animal Liberation, Singer not only co-authored the Greens’ manifesto with Bob Brown, but stood as a candidate for the party in the Kooyong in 1994, and subsequently as a Senate candidate.
[39]
The Green movement projects the whole planet with a spiritual dimension. The British chemist James Lovelock described the Earth as a complex living organism, of which humans are merely parts. He named this planetary organism after the Greek goddess who personified the earth—Gaia—and described “Her” as “alive”.
[40]
Singer and Brown are correct to describe this as revolutionary. It involves the creation of a new pagan belief system, concerned not with the relationship between humans and a creator, but based on a deification of the environment.
For the Greens, a pristine global environment represents earthly perfection. It underpins their “ecological wisdom”
[41] and is at the core of the new ethic.
[42] It is to be protected and promoted at all costs. Hence, all old growth forests are to be locked up;
[43] logging is to be prohibited; wealth is to be scorned;
[44] economic growth is opposed;
[45] exclusive ownership of property is questioned;
[46] there should be a moratorium of fossil fuels exploration;
[47] dam construction should be discouraged;
[48] genetic engineering and agricultural monoculture is rejected;
[49] world trade should be reduced;
[50] and a barter economy encouraged.
[51]
It explains why the Greens believe the world’s population is excessive and should be reduced,
[52] and why human consumption should be cut.
[53]
The Greens also call for “the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be amended to include rights to a healthy natural environment and intergenerational rights to natural and cultural resources”.
[54] In turn, the Greens would be able to rely on international courts and
fora to press their agenda. It also explains their concept of “intergenerational rights”:
[55] a concept squarely aimed at the defence of their belief in “Gaia”, or the perfect pristine earthly environment.
It explains why the Greens support the “right of indigenous peoples to self-determination, land rights, and access to traditional hunting and fishing rights for their own subsistence”
[56] and reject measures such as the Northern Territory intervention and income management against the efforts of both major political parties.
For many Greens supporters, environmentalism is ultimately an article of faith and belief. This is no better illustrated that in the controversy surrounding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It has become increasingly clear that the process of “establishing” human-caused global warming has been manipulated by a small group of people, using mutual peer-review processes, and claiming to speak for many more scientists who had little input and no real opportunity to review the final documents. The closed-shop nature of the process is counter the scientific empiricism of the enlightenment, and marks another significant break with traditional Western culture.
To Greens believers, this is of little consequence. Ultimately, global warming is a matter of faith.
Similarly Al Gore’s
An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps one of the most dramatic scenes in the film is the depiction of an ice-wall collapsing. Viewers are led to believe that they are watching footage of an actual collapse. The truth, however, is that the scene was taken from the opening credits of a Hollywood movie,
The Day after Tomorrow.
[57]
Despite the fact that a British court found the film contained significant errors,
[58] many environmentalists continue to believe it is true. For these environmentalists, the errors are merely inconvenient mistakes that fail to negate the Armageddon the world faces unless drastic measures are taken. Again, this is an example of belief, rather than reason. For such believers, “evidence” can be manufactured, and scientific empiricism is a vehicle to be manipulated for a political cause. Worse still, the film is now being proposed for the National Curriculum in Australian schools.
The Greens’ belief in their environmental nirvana manifests itself in a new coercive utopianism.
Unless we understand the ideological foundations of the Greens, we will fail to effectively address the challenge of their revolution. We will be left debating instrumental outcomes, as if they are based on the same cultural and philosophical foundations that underpin Western civilisation. What the Greens present is the cutting edge of a clash within Western civilisation itself.
[59]
Greens policies
Let me turn to some of the Greens’ policies that flow from their worldview. In doing so, it should be noted that the Greens have substantially reduced the number of policies that they publish. In 2004, the Greens’ policy document was 180 pages long. In 2007, it was greatly reduced. Previous policies have been removed from their website without any clear explanation as to whether they remain policy or not. Much of the current policy material comprises anodyne motherhood statements.
The Greens’ “ecological wisdom” is the principle upon which all other policies are founded.
[60] It shapes their views about every aspect of public policy. It is the foundation of their new ethic.
[61]
The centrality of the environment is the foundation of the Greens’ economic policies: “Human societies exist within, and are dependent upon, natural systems; resource management is, therefore, central to good economic management.”
[62]For the Greens, “economic development must be compatible with,
and subservient to, ecological sustainability”.
[63] Consistent with this principle, the Greens advocate high levels of state ownership in the economy and an expanded role for the bureaucracy, including an extensive international regulatory bureaucracy. They advocate government ownership of natural monopolies, and government investment in strategic assets.
[64]
This is consistent with the directions set out by Brown and Singer, who questioned economic growth,
[65] advocated higher taxes,
[66] sought the introduction of death duties
[67] and resource taxes.
[68] Wealth is scorned: “Labor and Liberals share the same myopic vision of what they want to bring about for Australians: more and more individual wealth, measured in money alone.”
[69] The fact that wealth generation has resulted in economic prosperity for both individuals and the nation, and lifted many people out of poverty, is of less significance than the deification of the environment.
In 2004, the Greens proposed to replace the GST with environmental taxes.
[70]Although they softened this approach subsequently, their 2007 policies included a commitment to “implement a gradual and long-term shift in the tax system from work-based taxes to taxes on natural resources and pollution”.
[71]
The Greens’ current policies include abolishing the rebate on private health insurance, taxing family trusts like companies, increasing top marginal tax rates, introducing death taxes and increasing the company tax rate.
[72] The Greens are a high taxing party.
The Greens are deeply sceptical of international trade. Australia should remove itself from its bilateral trade agreements
[73] and only enter any more if it favours the developing country. Brown and Singer advocated a new protectionism with “an across-the-board tax on all imports”.
[74] The current policy encourages self-reliance and the prioritising of the sustainable production of goods and services from local sources.
[75] This anti-trade stance is reinforced in the
Greens Global Charter, which encourages “the reduction of the transport of goods around the world, in line with a preference for local production”.
[76] The World Trade Organisation should be abolished unless reformed to make sustainability its central goal, and it should be subject to a newly created World Environment Organisation with power to impose sanctions,
[77] presumably arising from actions under new “rights” inserted in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights to include “rights to a healthy natural environment and intergenerational rights to natural and cultural resources”.
[78] In their
Global Charter, the Greens commit to working “towards establishing an international court of justice specific for environmental destruction and the loss of biodiversity where cases can be heard against corporations, nation states and individuals”.
[79]
Nowhere is the Greens’ totalitarian impulse to impose global governance more evident.
The Greens are advocates of an enlarged welfare state. Brown and Singer proposed “a guaranteed adequate income for all” with no requirements that people look for work,
[80] and free childcare in the workplace.
[81] The Greens would increase the age pension
[82] and subsidies for public housing. They are opposed to income management. Their welfare measures would have to be paid for through higher taxes on a nation less reliant on international trade.
The rapid increase in the standard of living of humanity and the reduction of global poverty is largely due to the energy revolution of the past century. We only have to consider a world without the energy sources that fuel our transport, manufacturing, businesses, communications, agriculture and households, to appreciate how readily available energy has reshaped the world in one of the most significant ways in human history. The policies of the Greens would place much of this at risk.
The Greens support a moratorium on all new fossil fuel exploration and development.
[83] They are opposed to building any more coal-fired power stations,
[84] and would pressure existing ones by prohibiting any public funding of refurbishments.
[85] They would also prohibit the opening of new mines
or expansion of any existing mines,
[86] hence phasing out coal exports, ending one of Australia’s largest export industries, and forcing other nations to use dirtier sources of coal.
The Greens are also opposed to “any expansion of nuclear power” and where it exists, “will work to phase it out rapidly”.
[87] This means the ending of the exploration, mining and export of uranium from Australia.
[88] They would also close Lucas Heights, and prevent the import or export of all nuclear products.
[89]
The Greens would force up the price of electricity and other forms of energy significantly: “energy prices should reflect the environmental and social costs of production and use”.
[90] Their reliance on new “green” energy would be much more expensive for individuals and businesses.
The Greens want farmers to practice sustainable agriculture, but their policy documents are vague and general as to what this actually means.
[91] What is clear from the recent discussion of the Murray-Darling Basin however, is that greater central planning and less available water will be part of their outcome. Farmers will also face rising energy and fertiliser costs, and new and higher taxes.
The private ownership of property and resources, which have underpinned democratic capitalism, is questioned by the Greens. In their
Global Charter, they propose to “review the relationship between the exclusive ownership of property and exclusive use of its resources, with a view to curbing environmental abuse and extending access for basic livelihood to all, especially indigenous communities”.
[92] This smacks of collectivism under a different name.
The Greens would privilege unions, providing more extensive right-of-entry provisions, abolish secret ballots for union action, water down independent contractors’ legislation, abolish the Building and Construction Commission, and introduce a minimum of five weeks annual leave.
[93] They would allow secondary boycotts and industry-wide strikes.
[94] The Greens also support the privileged position of unions in New South Wales to be able to prosecute work and safety breaches and profit from the actions.
Despite the boast in 1996 that “we do not get money from big business or the big trade unions”,
[95] the Greens have been recipients of substantial donations from left-wing unions in recent years.
[96]
The Greens’ social policies are linked to their belief in the primacy of the environment. Hence Brown and Singer commence their Greens manifesto by reference to the alleged overpopulation of the world.
[97] “Little is being done to discuss slowing population growth,” they later complain.
[98]
The theme is taken up in the
Global Charter, where they advocate “eliminating the causes of population growth”.
[99] Elsewhere, they propose limiting the expansion of cities,
[100] opposing freeways, and imposing eco-taxes.
[101] In their policy documents, the Greens state that “population policy should not be driven by economic goals or to counter the effects of an ageing population”.
[102] This informs what the Greens mean when they insist on “a population policy directed towards ecological sustainability in the context of global social justice”.
[103]
Once again, Greens’ policy subjugates the
individual to the environment. It repeats the Malthusian fear of global overpopulation, contrary to the latest demographic evidence.
[104] Combined with a rejection of economic growth, the Greens’ ideal future is the civilisational death already under way in much of Europe.
[105]
These policies are evidence once again that the Greens place no intrinsic value in human life. To them, human life is merely instrumental, because intrinsic value lies in the environment itself.
This ideology is manifest in the Greens’ approach to life-and-death issues—infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia—where a person has a right to commit suicide, and be assisted if necessary. The Greens’ policies support euthanasia; Peter Singer has been an advocate of euthanasia and infanticide; and the euthanasia practitioner Dr Philip Nitschke has stood as a Greens candidate in the Northern Territory.
Equally, the Greens believe that human (and non-human) relations are based simply on consensual activity. Hence marriage can be between any two persons, regardless of gender.
In their Greens manifesto, Brown and Singer quote Phillip Adams’s comments that “we must scrap our drug laws”.
[106] “Eventually, Australia, like other countries, will have to make peace with illicit drugs,” they add.
[107] Following widespread criticism in 2004 of their policies to provide addicts with a regulated supply of heroin and ecstasy,
[108] the Greens now state that they “do not support the legalisation of currently illegal drugs”.
[109] However, they have recently stated their continued support for supervised injection rooms.
[110]
The Greens want to restrict non-government education. They argue for the reduction in “the total level of Commonwealth funding for private schools to 2003-04 levels”.
[111] This would immediately cut funding by $427 million per year to Catholic schools alone.
[112] They have also stated that they will place limits on the number of new private schools, and that anti-discrimination laws will be used to prevent Christian schools from giving priority to practising Christians when employing teachers. They would also move to stop private schools having control over their own enrolments,
[113] and end the schools chaplaincy program.
[114]
The Greens have many other social proposals including the decriminalisation of all prostitution.
[115] They also propose to dump the national flag.
[116]
Consistent with their belief that the world is overpopulated and the environment is in danger, the Greens want to reduce immigration. The reduction should be in the numbers of skilled immigrants, while numbers in the refugee and humanitarian categories should be increased.
[117] The Greens propose an open-door policy for asylum-seekers. They would increase the number of places, remove mandatory detention laws, abolish the rule against refugees gaining permanent protection if they had spent time in a third country, restore the migration zone to include places like Christmas Island and Ashmore Reef, provide immediate legal assistance to all claimants, and allow free movement around the nation with access to services.
[118]
In addition, the Greens propose that “Australia adopts a definition of environmental refugees in its assessment criteria and works in the UN system for inclusion of a definition in the United Nations Refugee Convention”.
[119]
The Greens’ anti-Americanism is well known. They would end the ANZUS treaty unless Australia’s membership can be revised in a manner which is consistent with Australia’s international and human rights obligations; close all existing foreign bases in Australian territory and end foreign troop deployment, training and hosting on Australian territory; and reduce Australia’s military expenditure.
[120]
The Greens’ documents speak of “participatory democracy” as one of their foundation principles,
[121] but they favour global and central decision-making: Hence the creation and expansion of international bodies, including the United Nations and new world environmental courts.
[122]
While the Greens leader, Bob Brown, is currently advocating “states’ rights” to repeal the Commonwealth legislation against euthanasia, and claiming that the decision of the Commonwealth Parliament pursuant to section 121 of the Constitution is undemocratic, he has been an active advocate of actions to override state laws on two occasions.
[123] In 1996, Brown wrote: “There are other, virtually untried, powers that the federal government could use to protect the environment. Among them is the power granted under the Constitution to the Commonwealth to regulate trading entities, including logging, mining and energy corporations.”
[124] Clearly the use of constitutional powers is good if it is to advance a Green cause, but bad if it leads to an outcome they reject.
Unlike the major parties, the Greens’ policies have not been subject to rigorous costing by Treasury or independent experts. The Victorian Treasury recently claimed that the Greens’ policies for the state election would cost $20 billion.
[125]
In 2007, the minimum cost of implementing the Greens’ federal policies was likely to be over $100 billion.
[126]
Conclusion
What is at stake in the Greens’ “revolution” is the heart and soul of Western civilisation, built on the Judeo-Christian/Enlightenment synthesis that upholds the individual—with obligations and responsibilities to others, but ultimately judged on his or her own conscience and actions—as the possessor of an inherent dignity and inalienable rights. What is also at stake is the economic system that has resulted in the creation of wealth and prosperity for the most people in human history.
The Hon. Kevin Andrews MHR is the shadow minister for Families, Housing and Human Services.
[1] Bob Brown and Peter Singer (1996)
The Greens [Text, Melbourne], [hereinafter
The Greens] 192
[2] The Greens, Preface
[3] The Charter of the Global Greens, Canberra, 2001 [hereinafter
Charter] 1
[4] I have used the documents that set out the Greens principles and beliefs, as well as their policy documents. There is other documentation that indicates the position of the Greens on a range of matters, such as their speeches and media releases.
[5] For example: “Insomuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me;” (
Matthew 25:40) and the commandment to “love your neighbour as yourself” (
Luke 10: 25. See also 1
Corinthians 13). Earlier Jewish tradition contained many similar ideas. (
Leviticus 19:18)
[6] Immanuel Kant (1785)
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Lewis White Beck [New York: Library of Liberal Arts, 1959], 53
[7] Ibid., 429
[8] Michael Novak, (2002) ‘Human dignity, personal liberty: Themes from Abraham Kuyper and Leo XIII’,
Journal of Markets & Morality, 5 (1) 59—85, 67, quoting
Leviticus 19:18
[9] United States Continental Congress (1776)
Declaration of Independence.
[10] Mary Ann Glendon (2001)
A world made new [Random House, New York]
[11] Ibid., 174
[12] United Nations (1948)
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Preamble.
[13] European Union (2007)
Declaration on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signature of the Treaties of Rome [Declared at Berlin, 2007] Article 1.
[14] For example: UNESCO (2003)
Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights [New York] Article 28; Russia,
Declaration on the Rights and Dignity of the Person (2006) [Russian People’s Council, Moscow] Article 2.
[15] See Sir Edward Coke,
Calvin’s Case (1608) 7 Coke Rep 12 (a); 77 Eng Rep 392; and Sir William Blackstone, “ Of the nature of laws in general” in
Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol 1 [Macmillan, London, 1979] 29-30
[16] See John Locke (1681)
Second Treatise of Government, Ch 11, Sec 135.
[17] George Orwell (1945)
Animal Farm
[18] The Greens, 69
[19] The Greens, 70
[20] The Greens, 71-72
[21] The Greens, 74
[22] The Greens, 74
[23] The Greens, 76
[24] Bob Brown and Peter Singer (1996)
The Greens [Text, Melbourne], 64 [hereinafter
The Greens] See also Sara Parkin “The origins and future of Green parties: The UK, Europe and beyond,” in Frank Zelko and Carolin Brinkmann (2006)
Green Parties: Reflections on the first three decades [Heinrich Boll Foundation, Washington DC], 31. Note: Although Brown and Singer state that
The Greens is “not a formal or official statement of Green policy”, they also say that it is “generally consistent with the policies of the Australian Greens.” (Page 2) As I am discussing the underlying philosophy and policies of the Greens, it is appropriate to refer to the writings of two of the founders and leaders of the Greens Party.
[25] The Greens, 65
[26] Interview with Jack Mundey (October 6, 2000) at:
http://australianbiography.gov.au/subjects/mundey/interview [hereinafter
Mundey interview]
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid
[29] See for example
The Charter of the Global Greens, Canberra, 2001 [hereinafter
Charter] The Charter is a set of “the core beliefs and ideals” that Green parties hold in common:
www.global.greens.org.au The Australian Greens are members of the Global Greens and were instrumental in the conference and charter. In 2008, the Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown, announced that Australian would establish and host a Global Greens Secretariat and Information Centre.
[30] Mundey interview
[31] John Black,
2010 election profile and some relevant documents, [Australian Development Strategies Pty Ltd, 2010] See also: John Black “Wealthy Greens the new DLP”
Online Opinion, June 11, 2010
[32] Ibid, 14
[33] Ibid., 16
[34] Charter, 3
[35] The Australian Greens do not refer to any inherent dignity of the human person. The Victorian Greens state that “every human being has inherent, inalienable human rights by virtue of birth” but it this is not the same ‘human dignity’ as understood in the western, Judeo-Christian tradition.
[36] The Greens, 44
[37] The Greens, 55
[38] Peter Singer (2001) “Heavy Petting”,
Nerve
[39] The Greens, 87
[40] James E Lovelock, (1989)
The ages of Gaia [Oxford University Press, Oxford] Many environmentalists subscribe to Lovelock’s theory, although many scientists question it.
[41] Charter, 3
[42] The Greens, 51 ff
[43] Greens website, Environmental principles
[44] The Greens, 49-51
[45] The Greens, 43
[46] Charter, 8
[47] Charter, 9
[48] Charter, 10
[49] Charter, 10
[50] Charter, 10—11
[51] The Greens, 149
[52] The Greens, 5, 42, 190;
Charter, 1
[53] Charter, 5
[54] Charter, 12
[55] Charter, 12
[56] Charter, 12
[57] Noel Sheppard, “Gore uses fictional video to illustrate ‘inconvenient truth’ “
Newsbusters, April 22, 2008, quoting script from the ABC TV (US) program
20/20.
[58] Dimmock v
Secretary of State for Education and Skills [2007] EWHC 2288
[59] On the idea of a clash within western civilization more generally, see James Kurth, (1994) ‘The real clash’,
The National Interest, 3—15. See also Robert P George (2001)
The clash of orthodoxies [ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware]
[60] Charter, 3
[61] The Greens, 51
[62] The Australian Greens: http//greens.org/policies hereinafter
Greens website. (Accessed November 7, 2010)
[63] Greens website (emphasis added)
[64] Greens website
[65] The Greens, 43, 131
[66] The Greens, 150, 161
[67] The Greens, 150
[68] The Greens, 151
[69] The Greens, 49
[70] In 2004, the Greens proposed more than 40 new taxes. See Jim Hoggett (2004)
The Australian Greens’ Election Policies [IPA, Melbourne, September 2004]
[71] Greens website (at August 2007)
[72] Greens website
[73] Greens website
[74] The Greens, 137-145
[75] Greens website
[76] Charter, 10
[77] Charter, 11
[78] Charter, 12
[79] Charter, 10
[80] The Greens, 169. See also
Greens website
[81] The Greens, 174
[82] Greens website
[83] Charter, 9
[84] Greens website
[85] Greens website
[86] Greens website (emphasis added)
And this from Janet Albrechtsen
Extreme secret agenda aims to change our society
Janet Albrechtsen
The Australian
November 17, 2010
THE Greens are anti-free trade, anti-capitalism, anti-wealth and anti-growth.
WE have seen this before. A third party taps into voter discontent with both sides of politics, rises to become a force in Australian politics, then fades into electoral oblivion. Remember the DLP? Remember One Nation? Remember the Australian Democrats?
At the 1990 federal election, the Democrats won 11.3 per cent of lower house votes and 12.6 per cent of Senate votes, picking up five upper house seats. Then they fizzed. By July 2008, the Democrats were a spent force.
Picking up 11.7 per cent of lower house votes and 13.1 per cent of votes in the Senate at the August election, will the Greens go the same way? Consider some more parallels. Riding a green wave of environmentalism, the Democrats looked like a long-term political force. The fairies at the bottom of the garden picked up seats at every Senate election between 1977 and 2001 by appealing to middle-class, inner-city, educated voters, especially younger voters.
Democrat support was, as analysts remarked at the time, more a case of a negative protest vote against the main parties than a positive voter support for Democrats policies. Ditto for many who now mark the Greens box.
Strong leadership helped the Democrats rise to political strength. Think Bob Brown and the Greens. Last week even Labor man Graham Richardson declared that Brown was "arguably the best politician in the country".
Success breeds excitement, and hubris. The Greens' website boasts their 2010 vote was larger than any previous third party in modern Australian political history and the first time a third party elected a senator in every state.
Remember when then Democrats senator Cheryl Kernot declared in 1997 that "after 20 years, we are entitled to say with confidence that we are here to stay and, after [the 1996 election], we can say with equal confidence that our best is yet to come"? She was wrong. The Democrats' best had been and gone. No wonder Kernot switched sides to join Labor.
Perhaps the rise of the Greens is just another third-party firecracker, an explosion of colour and light, then nothing. Just another party that for a time splinters votes away from one side, just as the DLP did to Labor and One Nation did to the Coalition.
Don't count on it. Voter cynicism is here to stay. For so long as voters are looking for a way to protest against their alienation, the Greens may snatch votes from both sides of politics.
And the reason the Greens should be taken more seriously than other minor parties is simple enough.
Behind the moderate face of a politically astute Brown and the clever green camouflage is a political force that wants to transform Australian society in a way most Australians would find abhorrent if these voters understood the policies behind their protest vote.
As former Democrats senator Andrew Murray warned before the August federal election, "don't expect the Greens to put on the mantle of a centrist party, a small-l liberal party. The essence of the Greens is a determination to change society: the way goods and services are produced, the way you are taxed and governed, the way energy is delivered. The Greens will be true to themselves."
Both sides of politics are busy with the politics of dealing with the Greens.
The decision on the weekend by the Victorian Liberal Party to reject any preference deal with the Greens at the November 27 state election is sensible politics. Voters aren't stupid. You won't defend your Liberal Party brand by giving preferences to a party you believe is a danger to the country.
The Labor Party is having enough problems defining itself given its new relationship with the Greens. Richardson and Australian Workers Union boss Paul Howes think the left-flank bleeding to the Greens will stop if the ALP would only reclaim its brand as the progressive party of compassion. Good luck with that political contortion.
Inadvertently Howes, the young, comfortably middle-class, inner-city dweller, sums up Labor's political wedge. His stated preference for putting out the "red carpet" for asylum-seekers is unlikely to find much support among blue-collar workers living in outer suburban seats where elections are decided. However, the Greens raise bigger problems than preference deals and branding.
Last week, Liberal frontbencher Kevin Andrews gave an address exposing the history and the philosophical roots behind the rise of the Greens.
Had someone such as Malcolm Turnbull given this speech, the media would have lauded it as a brilliant treatise demolishing the Greens as anything but a moderate force for good. Instead, the speech by a more conservative Liberal is buried. That's a shame.
Andrews traces the values that underpin our liberal democracy, ideas such as the intrinsic human dignity where the individual is paramount.
He juxtaposes our Judeo-Christian heritage and the ideas of the Enlightenment with the very different historical roots of the Greens, where the subordination of the individual has become the driving ideology to effect radical economic and social change.
"Unless we understand the ideological foundations of the Greens, we will fail to effectively address the challenge of their revolution . . . What the Greens present is the cutting edge of a clash within Western civilisation itself," Andrews said. By looking closely at Greens policies, he has uncovered what he calls the new coercive utopianism.
It becomes clear that behind every stated purpose - and an increasing number of anodyne motherhood statements - set out in Greens policies through the years is a secret agenda that, at its core, is anti-free trade, anti-capitalism, anti-wealth, anti-consumption and anti-growth.
The Greens' latest bill to stop banks raising interest rates beyond the Reserve Bank's official cash rate is just the latest example. It fits the Greens' agenda to reduce the flow of credit in an effort to reduce consumption. Drawing on the Greens de facto think tank, the Australia Institute, new Greens member Adam Bandt wants us to work less, too, presumably so we earn less money and consume less material goods.
For too long, Greens extremism has been hidden from the Australian public under a cuddly shroud of green goodwill.
As success brings more scrutiny, the Greens may well go the way of earlier "new forces" in Australian politics. But just as the Greens would be foolish to take their continuing success for granted, we would be unwise to treat their demise as a given.
janeta@bigpond.net.au
www.kevinandrews.com.au
