If you have lots of money stashed away, go your hardest. Vote 1 Greens. But don’t expect to get richer under Green policies. Your kids won’t enjoy the same cashed-up lifestyle as you either. And as for the poor, they simply cannot afford to vote Green.
Who votes for the Greens matters because Green votes in the Senate will determine policies in a Shorten government. The Greens are beholden to a voting base that is, historically, far more demographically and ideologically defined than the earlier balance-of-power party, the Australian Democrats, or today’s minor parties, be it Pauline Hanson’s One Nation or Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party.
Roy Morgan’s latest State of the Nation report for Saturday’s election details the depth of self-indulgence behind the Greens’ voting base.
The Greens attract voters from the highest socio-economic quintiles: 31 per cent of people in the AB quintile and 24 per cent in the C quintile, meaning people with the fattest incomes, the best jobs and the highest level of education.
Forget the baloney about the Liberals representing the top end of town.
Fully one-third of Australians in the cushiest socio-economic groups vote Greens. These smartypants voters with university educations imagine they are helping the poor by voting Greens. But their paternalism is not simply empty virtue-signalling. Worse than parading their faux morality, those who vote Greens are wrecking the chances of the poor to get rich. So, strike out every mention of “aspirational”, “a decent life,” “economic injustice”, “being a good economic manager”, “a fairer society” from the Greens’ campaign statements. These claims are monumental frauds.
The poor, those who do not vote for the Greens, know something many rich people do not. Those with less education understand that the Greens’ plan to ban thermal coal by 2030 and phase out coking coal too is economic suicide. In 2018, coal was our highest export earner, $66 billion last financial year, and $35.7bn coming from Queensland. Where will the Greens find an additional $66bn each year to provide education, health and support to the neediest Australians? Their policy of a “super profits” tax on mining companies won’t raise money when exports are shut down and company profits dry up. You don’t need an arts degree or even a PhD to work out that equation.
With pretensions to government, the Greens have not come up with an alternative to the coking coal needed to make steel, along with iron ore. And yet apparently highly educated Australians will vote for the economic nonsense of a green ban on coal on Saturday. The Adani coalmine, a creator of jobs in far north Queensland but bitterly opposed by inner-city Greens voters with nice jobs, is the defining parable about the fraud of voting Greens.
Poorer Australians understand that higher taxes, even on the rich, will not help the poor get rich. That’s why a fraction of the bottom quintile of Australian voters vote Greens, their group the only one not to rise on 2010 numbers.
And, in a sign perhaps those well-heeled doctors’ wives are on the march, women are more easily duped by promises of nirvana than men; the Greens attract 59 per cent of their support from women, up from 54 per cent since the 2010 election.
Support from men has dropped off, according to Roy Morgan polling, down to 41 per cent from 46 per cent when the Greens joined with Julia Gillard’s Labor minority government.
The disconnect of Greens voters has grown worse in the past eight years. Seventy-two per cent of Greens supporters, up from 65 per cent in 2010, live in capital cities where they will rarely face the reality of sprawling immigration, unemployment in the regions or missing infrastructure links. The Greens are not just reckless economy wreckers. They have their sights on killing our culture too. In video of a speech delivered in Melbourne in March, Greens leader Richard Di Natale said he wants new laws that make it a crime to engage in hate speech, taking specific aim at those who analyse Greens policies the most.
“We’re going to make sure that we’ve got laws that regulate our media so that people like Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones and Chris Kenny … if they want to use hate speech to divide the community then they’re going to be held to account,” Di Natale said.
Di Natale’s plan will kill a free and independent media in Australia. Hate speech will become the new thoughtcrimes of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, a highly subjective, legal weapon to be aimed at those who say things you hate.
And don’t imagine he won’t find support from the party that comes to power with Greens preferences. The Gillard Labor government tried to regulate the free press in Australia in 2013, bolstered by then Greens leader Christine Milne who wanted a “fit and proper” test giving government more power to control the media. Stephen Conroy wanted the package pushed through before the 2013 election.
While the policy was ditched that year, the entrenchment of “hate speech” as an acceptable limit on freedom means the task of fighting for freedom of expression will be harder today than it was six years ago.
Don’t take my word for it. Last week, Di Natale was interviewed on the ABC on two occasions, first by Sabra Lane on AM, the ABC’s premier radio analysis program. Di Natale repeated his radical plan to regulate the media in his quest to “hold to account” journalists at News Corp. Lane’s uninterested response was: “You’ve made the point. We need to move on.”
Move on? What, nothing to see here? Leigh Sales had interviewed Di Natale the previous night on 7.30 and failed to question Di Natale about his radical policy to alter our liberal freedoms.
When the ABC’s premier political analysts don’t bother to analyse a policy that would control media output, it’s worth asking why. Critiquing Di Natale’s plan is not about defending News Corp. It is about defending freedom of the press, a core value in a liberal democracy.
The ABC does that a lot when unloading on US President Donald Trump for his attacks on the media. Why is the public broadcaster silent about a far more radical policy on the home front to shut down voices in the Australian media? Could it be that the ABC hosts are more likely to vote Greens? They certainly fit the demographic pattern of Greens voters, namely rich and well-educated city slickers.
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