Left wing will always eat its own

The one certainty of left-wing politics and those who practise it is the capacity it has to eat its own. On paper, Drew Hutton should be a towering figure for the Greens. He railed against the restrictions of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland before co-founding the federal Greens party with Bob Brown. He led the charge against the spread of the coal-seam gas industry, which became a defining – if misguided – issue for the party through Lock the Gate. Mr Hutton’s ideals, he argues, were rooted in the right to disagree and a care for the environment.

But at 78 years of age, Mr Hutton has been tossed out of Greens party membership like dirty laundry for not toeing the line on the primacy of transgender concerns. Call it the wisdom of age; Mr Hutton has finally realised “the Greens are rapidly becoming an authoritarian, doctrinaire, unlikeable party, and people are waking up to this more and more”. Dr Brown and former Greens leader Christine Milne spoke up for Mr Hutton and the right of members to hold a view different from Greens policy.

Mr Hutton’s response has been to turn the spotlight on the real concerns about where his former party is heading and who is to blame. Mr Hutton told ABC radio the Greens had been taken over by “a transgender cult or queer cult”.

“Who are these people who have taken over the party, and what’s their real agenda?” he said. We could not have put things better ourselves. The response of Queensland Greens convener Gemma Burden was that Mr Hutton deserved to be thrown out of the party he co-founded because he had “prioritised his perceived right to free speech over the safety of others”.

This is a cheap trick that misrepresents the issue at hand. We may not agree with Mr Hutton on many of the issues he has championed – if any – but we can see the danger in the way he has been treated. Unsurprisingly, it is the sort of behaviour more fitting of a university social club than an organisation that has ambitions to be a mainstream political party.

Schadenfreude aside, the issue goes beyond gender and is something that newly elected Greens leader Larissa Waters must sort out. A diversion away from the issues that most people thought the Greens were really all about – environmental concerns – is a large part of the reason Adam Bandt lost his seat at the federal election and Senator Waters holds the position she now does.

We have long warned that the swerve into support for hardcore anti-Semitism and towards the fringes of socialist economic quackery is a socially destructive dead end for the party and the nation.

Senator Waters has an opportunity to demonstrate her authority and show the sort of leadership the party needs. If she fails, Mr Hutton’s observation that the Greens have become an authoritarian, doctrinaire, unlikeable party will only become more obvious.