Chance to staunch Greens poison

If the mainstream parties are to join forces to rid Australian politics of the high-tax, anti-development, anti-business, anti-Israel and anti-gas policies of the Greens, important lessons should be learned from the party’s loss of the Victorian state seat of Prahran in Melbourne’s inner south in last Saturday’s by-election. The Greens lost the seat, which they had held since 2014, because former Labor member Tony Lupton, who won 12.8 per cent of the vote standing as an independent, took a principled stand in directing his preferences to the Liberals’ Rachel Westaway.

For the good of the nation, Labor and the Coalition should do the same in every seat the Greens contest in every state in the coming federal election. Doing so is the surest way to avoid the Greens’ high-taxing, exorbitant spending policies leeching the prosperity of wealth-creating industries, investors and households, and eroding job security under any power-sharing arrangement with a minority Labor government. The protest party’s new push to slug about 150 billionaires with a 10 per cent “billionaires tax” on their net wealth shows the Greens’ abysmal grasp of wealth generation and job creation. Their world view is unaffordable for the nation. So are many of the party’s policies such as free tertiary education, wiping all student debt, $800 “back to school” handouts to parents for each child attending a public school, 50c public transport fares nationally, capping profits banks can make on mortgages, free GP visits, long-term rent caps and including dental services in Medicare.

Party leader Adam Bandt says the election will produce a minority government that will let the Greens “keep Peter Dutton out and get Labor to act”. In the national interest, the major parties must deny the Greens preferences to scuttle them.