Campbell: Greens tactics against Labor a textbook attack on our democracy
The Greens targeting Labor MPs is a textbook attack on our democracy and should be called out for what it is, writes James Campbell.
Opinion
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Adam Bandt cracked the sads last week, ordering his lawyers to write to Mark Dreyfus and warn the Attorney-General there may be legal consequences for his remarks suggesting the Greens leader and his party are up to their necks at what has been going down at the pro-Palestinian protests that have been taking place at Labor MPs offices around the country.
During the week Dreyfus told the ABC: “I think that the Greens political party, and particularly the leader of the Greens political party, have got something to answer for here in the way that they have been encouraging criminal damage of MPs’ electorate offices, encouraging really riotous behaviour, sometimes violent behaviour, that has been occurring outside electorate offices”.
If you’re lucky enough to live outside inner-city Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, you can be forgiven if you don’t know what the hell Dreyfus was talking about.
But if you live in those parts of Australia where the political fight is Labor versus Green rather than Labor versus Liberal – especially in Melbourne – it has been hard to escape the rising political tensions caused by the war between Israel and Hamas that began last October.
Is Dreyfus’s charge against Bandt and the Greens fair? Well, certainly in Victoria there has been criminal damage of the offices of Peter Khalil, Bill Shorten, Andrew Giles, Ged Kearney, Daniel Mulino and the Victorian state MP Kat Theophanous.
Victorian Labor staffers also believe there have been attempts to physically intimidate them as they go about their work in their bosses’ offices. In April, at an event in her electorate attended by Chris Bowen, two of Kearney’s staff were injured and one called a bitch after protesters stormed the Thornbury theatre as it was wrapping up. The question is how much of this can be put down to the Greens.
What is not in dispute is the Greens MPs and activists have for months now been calling for protests outside Labor MPs offices. They also took part in the protest at last month’s ALP state conference in Victoria that ended in an attempt to storm the conference floor.
In the case of the Thornbury incident that saw her staffers hurt, Kearney later complained to Bandt that the protest had been promoted by Greens and had been addressed by a former Greens Party candidate.
In other words, Greens Party members themselves might not have been involved when things got out of hand but, like Deidre Chambers from Muriel’s Wedding, they just happened to be around.
But even if we accept that it’s just a massive coincidence the Greens’ lines on Gaza are interchangeable with the people who are engaged in intimidating Labor MPs and electorate officers, let’s step back for a minute and think about what they are happy to admit they are doing.
For years the Greens have worked hard to convince us they are a respectable political outfit. But the fact is, what the Greens are doing is not acceptable in a liberal democracy. Because it’s one thing to protest on an industrial picket line or even to try and stop a dam or a wind farm being built somewhere. Not my cup of tea, but whatever.
It’s another thing altogether for one political party to start using street tactics to disrupt their political opponents who are engaged in normal political business. MPs don’t picket another MP’s office or seek to disrupt their opponents’ party conferences. Please forgive the comparison but, if that becomes the norm, we are back in Weimar Republic Germany.
If you listen to Labor people, they will tell you they are convinced the constant protests over Gaza are not really about making a point about the situation there.
What they are is an attempt by the Greens – an attempt that is close to succeeding – to make it impossible for Labor MPs in the seats the Greens are targeting to interact with the voters and communities.
You can guess this from the fact that even though the Liberals are far worse from a pro-Israel point of view, they have been spared the intimidation. It’s a textbook attack on our democracy and should be called out for what it is. That the electorate office of the Prime Minister of Australia has been closed since January is a disgrace. That Greens Party members should have played a part in bringing this about is enough to remind us that, though they pretend otherwise, they’re still not house trained.
And, if we let them get away with it, then we are in real trouble. As I said earlier, if you live in the Rest of Australia this is a problem you could be forgiven for not being across.
But, in some parts of the country, it’s getting spicy out there – and it needs to stop.
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