Dear oh dear, the author just completely misses the most important stuff!

This country is running into a massive crisis, first and foremost because the terrible combination of an ever-bigger population base and an ever-more damaged environment and more rapidly exploited and more rapidly exhausted primary resource base... along with an economic system that is removed from reality in allowing massive debt to build up and which is based on GDP which is calculated by adding positive economic activity and negative activity together and calling it all positive!!

All the hoo-haa about Rudd’s Big Australia recently demonstrated that there is a great deal of concern about rapid population growth, an economic system that is predicated on rapid continuous growth and a government that espouses continuous growth as the solution to everything, while it has been proven to not only not be the case but to be directly associated with some pretty major problems, such as stressed water supplies, urban sprawl, infrastructure that is not keeping up ever-increasing demand, etc, etc.

The major policy arena that the Greens should be concentrating on is as clear as it can be – sustainability, including population stabilisation, a stead-state economy and an end to ever-increasing pressure on our resource base and environment.

If this sort of policy was sold to the Australia public, it would resonate very well, and the Greens WOULD become a major political force.

But alas, the Greens are just not very green at all…. and continue to concentrate on much smaller peripheral issues…. and effectively support the liblabs with their grossly unsustainable policies!

They did well in the Federal election directly because of the protest vote factor, not because they had anything particularly appealing to offer.

They could become a major political force. I see the way ahead for them as being obvious. But it would appear that old Bob Brown, and who knows who else, will have to exit the scene before this can happen.

Our current federal parliament and the recent very close result in Victoria demonstrate the synthesis of the Laboral/Liberal parties; their parallel thinking on Economic Rationalism and other issues have left no room between them for a 'middle of the road' party like the now defunct Democrats.
The Greens offer a new dialectic. It's now up to the Labor party to decide which side it's on. For the past couple of decades, it has appeared to favour competing with the Liberals as conservatives rather than progressives.

No Grim...the GREENS don't offer a 'new' dialectic..they offer the SAME one Marx did ! thinly disguised communism!

They are nothing but Fabians.. 'wolves in sheeps clothing'....

Have a look at the image on the sheild between the two men with the hammers.

http://www.sunray22b.net/fabian_society.htm

Notice also....that mankind (the people along the bottom) are now worshipping SOCIALIST literature...and power...

I kid you not...that IS their objective.

The END of the Greens?

Let's hope so.

There will be no "end" to the Greens.

They will at some point in the future simply morph into a vaguely trendy rump of one of the existing Parties. This will still allow them to trumpet "values", but without the necessity to actually do anything constructive.

This has been the pattern in Germany, where the Greens have existed in one form or another for thirty years. They still struggle to get much more than one in ten of the voting population on their side, and have consistently discarded their "principles" whenever it happens to suit them.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. We are talking about political realities after all.

One of the problems, of course, is that they care too much about the "big" issues. Like population (thanks Ludwig) and conservation and global warming and other similarly fundamentally intractable stuff. This allows them to pontificate at length (thanks Ludwig) without the need to propose anything remotely useful or practical.

This is another reason they won't go away. There will always be an idealistic fringe group (we used to call them hippies, back in the old days) who love to tell everyone how terribly we are treating the world, and how everybody should wake up and do something about it.

Not that there's anything wrong with that either. It is important to have someone nagging all the time, like a fussy mother-in-law giving constant advice about the way you clean the house.

But thank goodness they will never actually get anywhere closer to power than as a distant voice of "wouldn't it just be great if..."

And Ludwig, if you really want to understand the impact of your anti-growth ideas, take a closer look at Japan.

http://www.economist.com/node/17492860

"Japan is heading into a demographic vortex. It is the fastest-ageing society on Earth and the first big country in history to have started shrinking rapidly from natural causes."

Let us know, won't you, which part you have difficulty understanding.

While it may be simplistic to dismiss the greens as anti-growth, they should still be dismissed.

The fact that the party's policy rants occasionally strikes a chord with voters in some suburbs is hardly a major mark in their favour - Pauline Hanson also struck a chord with voters.

The greens seem to occupy pretty much the same niche in political ecology as the all-but vanished Democrats, as a haven for the nutty and disaffected, and for voters protesting against the major parties because they cannot clear up all of Australia's troubles all at once.

There are people of principle in the greens, as there were in the Democrats, and occasionally they may have something interesting to say. But if they want a seat at the policy table they should get busy and earn it.