Dear Senator Waters,
My hearty congratulations on your elevation to the top job. So exciting! As you eloquently said in your first press conference as leader, it is time to “get shit done”.
I know politics can be a bit jading, and on that note it was fantastic to see a party leader with the enthusiasm and demeanour of a first-year undergraduate just elected to the student union. And nothing says sincerity and solidarity like colleagues sporting cheesy grins as they parade arm in arm for the cameras.
Speaking of sincerity, I must confess you were not my first preference for leader. I fervently hoped either Sarah Hanson-Young or Mehreen Faruqi would be the party mouthpiece.
But my preference was based entirely on selfish reasons, and I have every confidence you will meet the standard Adam Bandt has set.
I hasten to add though you are your own woman. You made that clear as soon as you assumed the leadership, saying you were “a different person to Adam” and that you would “take a different approach”.
In the same breath you denounced the “genocide” that was “occurring in Gaza”. Amazing, I thought to myself, Larissa is so different from Adam; her approach is so different from his.
You did a fantastic job of encapsulating the Greens’ attitude towards Jewish-Australians.
“I know a lot of wonderful Jewish voters who are backing the Greens because they don’t want genocide either,” you said last week.
In other words, some of your best friends are Jewish. This is so reassuring to hear.
Every Jewish-Australian has it in them to be wonderful in Larissa’s eyes, I tell people. All they need to do is publicly back the Greens unconditionally, whether the policy is ignoring Hamas’s mass murder of Israelis or denying Israel’s right to defend itself. Spread the word, Jewish friends!
But most unreasonably, not all Jewish-Australians want to follow your party’s example and become Gaza groupies. People like Jillian Segal, Australia’s special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, for example.
She puts the Greens’ electoral drubbing down to a case of Australians rejecting “extremism”, as she told ABC.
The behaviour and views of some Greens’ politicians were “very hurtful” to the Jewish and general community, she said. Your predecessor, she claimed, made comments that were “anti-Semitic”.
Poor innocent Adam! I take it this means Ms Segal is in that category of Jews that you regard as not so wonderful, Larissa? Or rather, not at all wonderful?
She is just one of many who unfairly malign your party. Sadly, it also comes from within. You must be alert all times to the scourge of rightist deviationism. It has already begun.
Last fortnight federal Greens co-founder Drew Hutton told the Sydney Morning Herald the party had adopted “a hyper-militant approach during the last three years,” citing the members’ “terrible way … of expressing their moral superiority over everyone else and their refusal to talk meaningfully with ordinary Australians”.
And former NSW Greens MP Ian Cohen warned the party not to forget its “environmental roots”.
This talk of moderation and refocusing is but a front for usurpers. They are emboldened by your wipeout in the lower house and will attempt to sully the party’s ideological purity.
If anything, the election result calls for you to be even more militant and more sanctimonious. Call out these dissidents, ostracise them, expel them from your order, I say.
They claim the Greens have departed from the party’s foundational philosophy, but no good-minded person could doubt your environmental credentials.
After all, in your brief appearance on ABC Breakfast last week, your referred to “the planet” no less than eight times. Incidentally, which one were you talking about?
You also made a big thing about diversity in that interview.
“We need a parliament that looks like the community,” you maintained. That is an incredibly good point and one that your four predecessors – all of whom, like you, are white – have constantly reiterated.
As for your colleague and Yamatji-Noongar woman Dorinda Cox, who unsuccessfully ran for the deputy leadership as well as deputy whip, she just has to accept that you value diversity in the parliament but not in the party.
I see Nick McKim scored the job as party whip. That is a great pick. Nick’s finest moment was last year when he publicly berated then Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci at a committee hearing, threatening him with jail as he swore at and accused him of lying.
This was a most revealing insight into what life would be like, particularly for those in private enterprise, under a Greens government.
Larissa, I appreciate it is both difficult and thankless to be the only party that is fully committed to combating climate change.
Banning new coal, oil, and gas projects is just the start. I hope you do not get called a hypocrite like Adam did last year when he was caught travelling business class on a one-hour flight from Melbourne to Canberra.
As sensible people recognise, it is vital the Greens travel at the pointy end of the plane.
That is the optimum viewing position to observe the effects of CO2 emissions on the atmosphere.
It is time conservative journalists stop vilifying Greens politicians with examples of their hypocrisy.
If they refuse, get Sarah to stamp her feet again and demand a royal commission into the media.
And you should be forthright in pointing out there is nothing hypocritical about the fact that most of your colleagues have complimentary membership of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge. Where else are they going to mix with Australians doing it tough and talk to them about issues such as the cost of living?
Anyway, that’s it from me for now. Remember: no reversion to plain old environmentalism, no let-up in the battle against corporates, no abandonment of hostilities against Israel, and no stopping the fight for socialism.
Do all this, and I guarantee you will lead the party to its logical (for want of a better adjective) conclusion.
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