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The question, however, is whether this week’s kerfuffle was an isolated incident, a slight off-track fun, or whether it indicates a seismic shift from the Greens from being “green” – environmentalists in the first place – to a panoply every growing number of activist causes and their associated ideologies.
In fact, his electoral policy platform was a veritable catalog of progressive causes, from imposing anti-racist training for all members of the federal parliament to “decompressing white privilege and white fragility” to a promise impossible to finance to abolish all student debt.
Meanwhile, the Victorian branch has just fired its newly elected convener, Linda Gale, after a bloody online campaign against her over allegations of historic “transphobia”.
(In 2019 Gale co-authored an internal discussion paper rejecting the party’s increasingly doctrinaire view that statements such as “there are two sexes” and “trans women are not the same as biological women” are not they should even be allowed to be spoken aloud.
Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam dismissed the election result, claiming there had been an administrative error, but also tweeted: “There are limits to all debates. We do not allow a debate on whether people of color should have access to the same spaces as whites, because it is racist. In the same way, the rights of trans people should not be debated, because it is transphobic. “
A “shocked” Gale wrote in The Age last Thursday: “I have never questioned the authenticity of transgender identities, nor the right of trans people to dignity or equality. As a convener I made a statement reaffirming the “Greens’ commitment to trans and diverse members. But I didn’t have to be judged for my actions on paper. I was expelled for alleged crimes of thought.”
She was not alone: the Greens of New South Wales last week expelled another member, Anna Kerr, for her statements on trans issues, which her accusers claimed she “inflicted direct harm on other members and they created insecure spaces within our party. ” Such defamation, Kerr told Wendy Tuohy of The Age, was “a very effective way to silence dissent.”
None of this plays well on the outside. A month after their election victory, the Greens risk wasting some of that goodwill – not what voters who supported their climate policies would necessarily have adhered to.
Nor do they want the most extreme members of the party to frustrate the practical climate measures put in place by Labor because they are not meeting any unattainable goals, as they did when the Greens thwarted the plan to reduce carbon pollution from work in 2009.
The Greens need to remember the job for which they were elected: to help Australia move forward on the path to a sustainable, carbon-neutral future. It would be a shame to see them miss this opportunity.
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