Joe Hildebrand analysis: Insider reveals Labor’s red-hot hate for Greens
For those still in doubt about the genuine contempt Labor has for the Greens, here’s what one insider sent to Joe Hildebrand. The ALP member declares “the Greens can’t create anything, but they sure can kill things”. Read it here.
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
For those still in doubt about the genuine contempt Labor has for the Greens, I received a message from a veteran ALP figure after my weekend column excoriating the minor party.
He loved the column so much, he said, that he had previously written it himself. Furious about the Greens sabotage of the Rudd government in 2010 and Bill Shorten’s election campaign in 2019, the senior insider penned an epic rant, but it ended up unsent on his computer.
That is until now. Please enjoy this insight into what those at the centre of Labor truly think about the Greens …
Can we please get one thing straight about the 2019 federal election? The so-called “Adani Convoy” was not an inadvertent “own goal”. It didn’t embarrass its architects by accidentally getting the Morrison government re-elected by irate Queenslanders.
It was planned and organised by cynical political operatives and achieved precisely the result its strategists intended.
That result was not to stop development of a mine in Queensland. How could it do that? A slow procession of mainly ageing hipsters in (fossil fuelled) cars parading their moral superiority to dozens of Queensland communities doing it tough?
That can change nothing. All it can do is harden attitudes from irritation to deep, resentful anger.
Bob Brown led the convoy. Bob is many things: intelligent in a certain sense, articulate, specious and cuddly while still a medical school clever clogs. He is not stupid.
The whole cavalcade of conspicuous condescension served only to rub the faces of people in regional Queensland in their own industrial and economic desolation, so as to garner publicity, high fives and a few extra-smug, well-off white people’s votes in inner city Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
Credit where it’s due. Bob fought off the communists who sought disguise and refuge there after the horrors of the Soviet Union became plain to every sensible person in the world.
Bob really cared about trees and was moderately freaked out that communists tried to take over his tree party. But here’s what else Bob did.
He built a political operation that gave him and his successors a handful of seats in parliament by convincing a sizeable fraction of voters that voting for a colour was better than voting for a political party.
But a party it is, with this singular attribute. The only thing the Greens have ever achieved is to buff the red leather of the Senate benches with a handful of bums belonging to preachy, sanctimonious scolds with two surnames each.
It’s hard to imagine how any of them could ever have otherwise scored a job paying above $230K with free travel and half the year off.
Yet that’s what they’ve engineered for themselves in six-year blocks by pretending not to be a party, making up “policies” they would definitely implement if they ever won government – with 10 per cent of the primary vote.
It’s mostly a list of free stuff. Vote for free stuff. If you tried this on in Year 8 student elections you’d be laughed off the stage.
They can, however, be decidedly destructive with this little wedge of Senate seat-warmers. When a matter before the Senate is poised almost evenly, the Greens are powerful for 10 minutes. They can’t create anything. But they sure can kill things.
Bob pontificated for years about the urgent necessity of legislating a national mechanism to price carbon dioxide emissions in our economy.
The politics became so fraught that it seemed an impossible dream – which suited him perfectly because if it ever came true, what would he have to campaign on?
So when a Labor government was elected in 2007 with enough political capital to implement a carbon price and offered it to Bob on a silver platter (or, perhaps, in a nice salad bowl) with a well-developed and effective bill to create one, what did he do?
Grab this generational – maybe unique – opportunity to install an efficient market mechanism in perpetuity, thereby driving down CO2 emissions dramatically?
Not on your nelly. The Greens accurately perceived it immediately as an existential threat to the number of those bums shining that red leather. If we allow an effective countermeasure to what we say is an extreme, urgent threat to humanity and it works, what do we have left to attract votes?
Bob was having none of it. He killed it stone dead using his puny Senate gaggle of otherwise unemployable high school politicians. Crisis averted.
The fact is that a decade and a half on from these events, what we know is that by now Australia could have had an operational carbon market running for 15 years.
Instead, we have Bob World. It’s a world of perpetual campaigning by the Greens, wailing about how little has been done to reduce emissions.
The Greens party really should change its name. Looking at a group photo, perhaps Well Off Whites or WOW for short. What a T-shirt?
Do you have a story for The Daily Telegraph? Message 0481 056 618 or email tips@dailytelegraph.com.au
More Coverage
Originally published as Joe Hildebrand analysis: Insider reveals Labor’s red-hot hate for Greens
‘Unprecedented’: Israel’s massive alert
The Israeli military has issued an evacuation order for residents of Gaza’s second-largest city, warning of an “unprecedented attack” in the area.
Fears for Aussie workers as tariffs hit hard
A major Australian employer has paused operations, leaving hundreds of workers in limbo, as President Trump’s tariffs wreak havoc.