Drew Hutton expulsion proves the party he co-founded is now Green in name only | Caleb Bond
I always thought the party founded on environmental issues would choose a green hill to die on, writes Caleb Bond.
Call me radical but I thought if the Greens were willing to die on any policy hill it’d be, well, green issues.
But the chlorophyll has seemingly left their cells and been replaced by gender ideology – so much so they’ve expelled one of their founders for defending the right of a female member to suggest that men can’t have babies.
That, quite honestly, is a sentence I never thought I’d write in a newspaper but welcome to 2025 where, in some Australian states, a bloke can become a woman with more ease than he can buy a vape.
This saga began when Greens member and human rights lawyer – yes, you read that right – Anna Kerr publicly spoke against a push by NSW state Greens MP Abigail Boyd to change “woman” to “pregnant person” in legislation.
One of the party’s co-founders, Drew Hutton, posted on Facebook defending the right to free speech of her and other women in the party who’d questioned its transgender policies.
Those posts attracted more critical comments which, in the name of open dialogue, Mr Hutton refused to delete so the Greens suspended his membership indefinitely before expelling him this month.
Ms Kerr, too, was kicked out of the party after she refused to pledge that the Greens were inclusive.
So, just to be clear, the Greens were not inclusive of her views and told her she’d have to agree they were inclusive or they’d exclude her.
Greens leader Larissa Waters has this week defended these expulsions.
It is quite extraordinary that you could stray so far from the original purpose of the Greens that you’d kick out one of the men who helped build your movement, alongside Bob Brown, because he supposedly didn’t fit the ethos of the party.
Mr Brown and his successor as leader, Christine Milne, both opposed Mr Hutton’s expulsion.
It has long been said that the Greens are watermelons – green on the outside and red on the inside – but they have now given up any pretence of being an environmentalist party.
They are Greens in name only.
Let’s call them GINOs – which is rather ironic given the gender issues underpinning all of this.
This was evident in their leadership battle following the federal election.
It’s a strange day when Sarah Hanson-Young is made to look like the sensible one in the room but the Australian Greens First Nations Network, otherwise known as the Blak Greens, opposed her for the leadership in May because she “would not be an effective leader in implementing Australian Greens policies relating to First Nations Issues, racial justice, social justice (and) the liberation of the Palestinian people”.
The national arm of the Young Greens also put up a motion before the May 15 spill opposing Ms Hanson-Young.
And the reason for that is that she’s still vaguely interested in the Greens doing what it says on the tin – being greenies, rather than pursuing every far left issue of social and economic division.
That, apparently, now precludes you from leading the country’s pre-eminent green political party.
This sorry saga is quite sad given that Mr Hutton, Mr Brown and most people involved in the establishment of the Greens would have fought through the ‘60s and ‘70s for the freedom to say things outside of the stuffy conservative establishment doctrine.
They achieved that, paving the way for parties like the Greens to have a platform.
But the left, having now made itself the establishment, is doing exactly what their forefathers opposed and is pulling the rug out from underneath them in the process.
In the words of Lord Acton, power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
If this is how the GINOs conduct their internal affairs, imagine what they’d do if they had real power.
More Coverage
Originally published as Drew Hutton expulsion proves the party he co-founded is now Green in name only | Caleb Bond
Taiwan’s huge request to Aus, allies as tensions near flashpoint
Taiwan has made a huge request of Australia and its allies as tensions remain high over China’s combat readiness war games.
Big step to kick off $25 medicines pledge
Labor will begin its first steps to bring down the cost of PBS-listed medicines from $31.60 to just $25. Here’s how it’ll work.