Paul, I'm not sure where you read all that tosh into my statement.

For your info, I myself belong to the class of common labourers.

Which is why I despise middle-class, trendy-lefty fauxialists like the Gillard Labor Party and the Greens.

No noose for me a good flogging is quite acceptable.

"Which is why I despise middle-class, trendy-lefty fauxialists like the Gillard Labor Party and the Greens."

Clownfish as a member of the Greens, I wont comment on the rank and file of the Labor Party, other than to say like Liberal Party members I've met they are generally nice people I may not agree with some of their views but I do admire them for trying to help Australia with no outward reward for the vast majority of party members. But in the Green Party people which I have known for 7 years are not by and large "trendy-lefty fauxialists" but ordinary people, workers, mothers, old blokes, students, migrants the list goes on. They are people who are committed to making Australia a better place. I consider Bob Brown one of the greats that Australia has produced and I say his contribution to Australia exceeds anything Gillard or Abbott has done thus far.
As for the Green vote has peaked! I say time will prove that to be wrong, wrong, wrong. Its a poor comparison the Greens to the Democrats, the demos killed themselves, but that's another story. We are now looking to the state election in NSW. I'm in a fairly safe Labor seat, if there is such a thing, with Ms Keneally the local member our candidate Mehreen Faruqi will, with grass roots support, go all out to win the seat from the Premier, and that's considering our vote in 2007 was 20% and a campaign budget of $8K.

It's like a straw man shooting gallery in here!
True, young radical Greens are annoying and short sighted...as are young radical Lefties of all shades, and young Liberals for that matter. Idealistic tosh? Yep, you get that from all sides.
The author might be interested in why concrete sleepers and power poles are replacing wood: They don't rot, warp or catch fire. Pretty important if you want trains to run at post 1900 speeds or you don't want regular power line collapses.
Some virgin old growth forest must be protected: the historical destruction of over 90% of native forests have destroyed water catchments (farming is to blame here too of course) and created islands so that wildlife cannot dodge the bulldozers or re-populate recovering bush.
Most sensible folks believe in native plantations...so long as some virgin old growth is protected it is not unreasonable to farm native trees. Pine is a different story. It destroys river life and eventually poisons the soil. I watched my local bushland get destroyed for pine and it completely stuffed hundreds of kilometres of creek, killing crays and fishing.
In the last election Bob Brown was the only leader to bring up issues such as fast rail infrastructure and other issues lost in Howard's fog of fear and hype. He would rather spend billions on holy wars than "waste" boom income on infrastructure and jobs!
By all means deride the young, naive and idealistic...but I find these folks preferable to the ignorant dogmatic slavish Right!

Paul, I hate to disappoint you, but there was a very telling breakdown of the Green vote published on Crikey not so long ago.

Green voters were almost exclusively inner-urban, and drawn from people whose careers were either in media, tourism/leisure and education.

Sadly, Bob Brown is becoming more and more the green-left's mirror image of that other rigidly ideological, hard-line, moralising, Senatorial wowser from Tasmania, Brian Harradine.

Clownfish, All I know is The Greens have support from more than 1,000,000 Australian voters and growing election after election. The Party is hard at work developing broad based policy without compromising principles. We are a "Problem" for those that believe they have the divine right to rule this country, just look at the carry on's of Labor and Liberal after the Federal election.
Back in 1900 there were those that were predicting the demise of the Australian Labor Party, then the third party in Australian politics, they believed that the Free Traders and Protectionist would rule Australia forever!