Joe Hildebrand opinion: A global goodbye to our goofy Greenies as the brand drops seats worldwide

While Labor has retaken three of the four seats the Greens held, the party’s outgoing leader is pointing the finger at a non-existent Labor deal with the Liberals, making the Greens the updated version of Lenin’s “useful idiots”, writes Joe Hildebrand.

At the 2010 election Greens leader Adam Bandt was elected to the seat of Melbourne thanks to Liberal preferences. I can’t recall him thanking Tony Abbott at the time.

But now, 15 years after accepting the Liberals preferencing him into power, he is publicly blaming the Liberals for preferencing him out of it.

Apparently Bandt’s loss is all the fault of Labor — who preferenced him — doing a non-existent deal with the Liberals, who did not.

In fact the only reason they won their record four seats in the last parliament was because of Liberal and Labor preferences.

Labor has now retaken three of those four seats, and the final result in the Brisbane seat of Ryan depends upon whether Labor can pull ahead of the Greens on first preferences.

If so, the ALP candidate will definitely defeat the LNP. If not, the Libs will almost certainly defeat the Greens candidate.

In this case, as in so many others, the better the Greens do the more they help the Coalition. They are Lenin’s “useful idiots” updated.

Greens leader Adam Bandt holds a press conference to concede he has lost the Federal seat of Melbourne. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

And yet they continue to construct an alternate reality that bears no relation to fact — no doubt to gaslight their young and naïve supporters.

Impressively, this alternative reality somehow transcends national boundaries. Just as our own Greens leader was departing, so too was a UK Greens leader stepping down.

I say “a” UK Greens leader because in keeping with the party’s dourly collectivist bent, Carla Denyer — no relation to our Logie winner — was merely a “co-leader” of the Greens.

A trainwreck interview on London radio that was gleefully reported by a columnist in that city’s Daily Telegraph — again, no relation — perhaps gives an insight into why Denyer felt she was not quite leadership material.

Asked “does living like a woman make you a woman?” Denyer offered the response: “I trust people to be an expert in their gender.”

Green Party co-leaders, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay pose for a photo at the local election campaign launch, on April 04, 2024 in Bristol, England. Picture: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

So if someone was living like a woman but not very good at it they wouldn’t be one?

This kind of undergraduate gobbledy-gook means nothing, it’s just an abstract form of words looking for a reality to belong to. Still, such esoteric trans issues are currently tearing the Victorian Greens apart so clearly there is some benefit to them.

Let us instead turn to the two parties’ brands of economic illiteracy, which are also uncannily alike. It is remarkable enough that grown adults could be so woefully ignorant about the basic functions of both human nature and mathematics, but to be so fundamentally wrong in exactly the same way almost qualifies as a skill.

The centrepiece of the Australian Greens’ economic policy is its “Big Corporations Tax” — yes, that’s its name — which would supposedly raise $514 billion over ten years.

Except this too is an abstract fantasy. The lion’s share of this money comes from a 40 per cent “excessive profits” tax that was costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office to potentially raise $296 billion over ten years — overwhelmingly in the distant future.

But as the PBO itself warned: “There is a high degree of uncertainty associated with this costing and caution should be taken when interpreting the results.”

For one thing, no one has the foggiest idea what economic conditions will be like in a decade’s time, and for another companies are likely to change their structures in order to minimise tax burdens.

Another of the Greens’ magic puddings is a ten per cent tax on Australian billionaires’ net wealth, something that was also put to the PBO when the proposal was six per cent and would raise up to $50 billion over four years.

And, you guessed it: “There is significant uncertainty about the extent to which individuals would comply with this proposal …”

But here our friends in the UK come to the rescue, thanks to a proposed wealth tax there that is being championed by the Greens and others and which the UK government hinted could be on the cards.

Denyer said in 2024: “The claim that wealth taxes would lead to large numbers of people leaving the UK isn’t credible.”

But as the UK Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey noted: “In fact the UK lost 10,800 millionaires to overseas countries in 2024, more than double the number in 2023.”

Yes, even the whiff of a wealth tax sparked an exodus of capital from the country. The Greens’ entire understanding of economics is based on stuff that is simply not real.

But don’t take my word for it, take theirs. Go to the Australian Greens election web page. It tells would-be voters and supporters: “There will be a minority government this election.”

This is plainly stated as fact when it was always fantasy. And it is the same false reality they still live in today.