‘Transgender cult’ purges Greens of its true believers

The Greens in some states have been taken over by a cult that has come to control key decision-making positions in the party.

Greens leader Larissa Waters gives her first press conference as leader in Melbourne. Picture: NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui

Politics abhors a vacuum. If a political party occupies a clear space in the body politic but then, for one reason or another, vacates that space, some other political force with similar appeal will move in.

This is the situation that currently confronts the Greens in Australia. Neither of the major parties has good policies in such areas as climate change, the natural environment and AUKUS, and the Greens, therefore, have attracted voters who feel strongly on these issues.

The Greens, however, are finding themselves facing growing voter disenchantment over perceived aggressiveness and doctrinaire approaches.

The fact is that the Greens in a number of states have been taken over by a cult – a transgender and queer cult – that has come to control key decision-making positions in the party, such as disciplinary and preselection committees and administrative positions, that give them enormous power, and they use this to influence preselections and expel those who disagree with them.

Co-founder of the Greens, Drew Hutton with wife Libby Connors at their home in Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Consequently, Greens politicians tread very lightly when it comes to policy areas such as gender for fear of losing preselection.

Like many other party members, I have become a victim of this cult. I was expelled from the party, not because I made statements that opposed key beliefs of the Greens but because I refused to censor comments on a couple of Facebook posts that asserted that men were biological males and women were biological females.

The cult position is that people are whatever gender they define themselves as and anyone who disagrees with that position must be expelled or, if they are not party members, they should be otherwise cancelled. I was, therefore, told I had to censor all such comments from my Facebook posts. I refused on free speech grounds and so my membership was suspended, and then I was expelled when I continued to refuse.

I join at least 40 other members that I know of who have been expelled or forced out of the party over the gender issue. Many of those expelled have been great environmental campaigners with decades of loyal service to the party. It is a purge of “green” Greens. People in the community are beginning to sense that something is not right in the Greens, and the party will need to work hard to calm this disquiet. The first thing the Greens need to do is analyse where their vote comes from.

Drew Hutton.

Most political analysts agree that the Greens’ voter base is what some call the “knowledge class” and what Musa al-Gharbi calls “symbolic capitalists”. These are people such as academics, doctors, lawyers, IT workers, health professionals and teachers. They make up about 30 per cent of the working population and a good percentage of them vote Green.

However, they are not homogeneous. About half are young, relatively poor and likely to look favourably on candidates with radical identity politics. The other half are a little older, a little more prosperous, and have more liberal humanitarian than radical identity views. The former will possibly stick with the Greens despite their authoritarianism; the latter will probably desert them and give their votes to one or another of the major parties or, more likely, the teal independents. The result will be that the Greens will find their base vote is diminished and find it very difficult to win seats.

Before the major parties gloat and tell people this is merely a Greens issue, they need to have a closer look at their own record. Labor state and federal governments have introduced anti-discrimination legislation that elevates transgender rights over women’s rights, and the Liberal Party behaved appallingly with its treatment of Moira Deeming on this same issue.

The Greens and major parties should all face up to this important moral and legal issue. The Australian public showed with the marriage equality referendum that they are open, tolerant and inclusive. They did not, at any point, vote for the rights of children and women to be overridden. Parliaments should make this clear to prevent this having to be adjudicated by the courts.

Former leaders of the federal Greens Bob Brown and Christine Milne. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

How can the Greens avoid the same sort of demise that befell the Australian Democrats? It will be very difficult. The extreme transgender/queer faction is well entrenched in the key decision-making centres of the party and those Greens who maintain a more traditional view of what green politics is all about are ignoring this and getting on with what they do in their local areas or they are keeping their heads down so they don’t become another victim of the purges.

Leadership is needed. Both Bob Brown and Christine Milne, the two former great leaders of the Australian Greens, had the character and courage to tackle the issue head-on. I believe they would have demanded an end to the purges and an inquiry into how the party could better implement the green politics principle of democracy in its processes.

The question is: Does the current Australian Greens leader, Larissa Waters, have the same character and courage to get the Greens out of this mess?

Drew Hutton is a founding member of the Australian Greens and the Queensland Greens.