As one of the Greens who filled in this questionnaire (and several before), this article is so fundamentally biased that I will not contribute in future.

This sort of polling has an air of science to it and is little more than the writer's opinions. I will defend his rights to express his opinions but not when they are claimed to be built on mine.

Why are Greens 'messianic'? Is it messianic to have strong and consistent views?

He goes on: "Either Australians will be converted to Greenness, or the party will self-limit around these levels. The latter is more likely." Where did that conclusion come from? His survey?

There are several other such non survey based comments.

I note Greens have been overrepresented in this survey. Well with luck others will follow my example and solve that problem.

Gavin Mooney

Graham, your suggestion that Green's policies are on the left of the political spectrum is mistaken. Concerns about the environment are not susceptible to left/right classification--conservation issues have been an agenda of conservatives as well as others for as long as I can remember--and I'm well over sixty. The rest of their policies are neither Marxist nor anarchist. In Europe they would be classified as ranging from centre-left to middle of the road. They may be to the left of the ALP, but that is because the ALP has lost its soul in its attempt to regain votes.

There has been an attempt by certain less than pleasant commentators to shift the perception of the spectra of political views, and to characterise straightforward and sensible views as extreme. (It is in any case an absurdity to suppose that a view must be or even is likely to be wrong because it is extreme.) I am sorry to see you tagging along.

Fellow OLO punters will recall Gillard's Extreme slur against dear Bobby Green, thus:

"BOB Brown has brushed off Julia Gillard's criticism of the Greens as an extreme party, dismissing the attack as "product differentiation".

The Greens leader today denied his party posed a threat to Labor, despite plummeting support for the government on the back of its carbon tax plan." http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12298&page=2

Sharing many of the same voters and therefore competing for them will cause increasing wedges between Labor and the Greens

- that I only hope widens.

However if the Coalition comes back in, there is no why the Coalition will cancel the Carbon Tax - they may just rename it.

Tax revenue is the lifeblood for any Governing Party to buy votes.

Pete

Quite so, guy. I think that this article reveals more about confirmation bias than it does about the Greens. There's more to qualitative data analysis than dressing up opinion with a facade of 'data'. I've said my bit on the other thread about this article.

Rather than copy & paste, here's the link:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4573#118425

I think that the survey results are pretty right but the conclusions are off the beam.
I for one vote Green because it is the best choice out of a poor three on offer.
I am sure that many others are in the same boat and would vote for a more non-focused party if it where available.
I agree with Jay Of Melbourne, that “The Greens would get my vote, and no doubt that of many more "average" Australians if they ditched the fluff.”
They will, I think evolve into a more moderate party and leave out the “fluff” giving them more appeal to the “man in the street”.
Of course they will always attract the ire of the devoted Lib/Lab voters who have been brainwashed into believing that anything other than “their” party is wrong.
I also believe that as the crisis of peak oil and global warming get more pressing, more “middle way” voters will turn to them.
I think that if the Liberals do obtain power, it will be their last throw of the dice.
They do not have any real answers to the problems that we are facing other than “business as usual”.
After a full term of that, voters will turn away in droves looking for a better alternative. If Labour can change it’s spots, reinvent it’s self into a genuine working mans, environmentalist party, they will be, with the Greens the two parties left to fight it out.

ozbib

I have always found protestations of the Greens as being extreme left puzzling also.

Conservation appears to have lost its meaning to which I would add libertarianism - both terms have been co-opted for political/self interested purposes rather than to apply to preserving the environment which sustains us and true freedom of thought, speech and life choices.

It is not mere whim that Bob Brown urges voters to select their own preferences. If the Greens are here to stay, hopefully they will remain above the vested interests of right and left wing politics and continue to provide some balance and rationality.

We needed a start on reducing fossil fuel dependency and cleaning up pollution, we now have a start.