It's extraordinarily difficult to disrupt a two-party system, since the party that is out of power invariably adapts to absorb the majority of the disaffected groups. The only thing that can prevent this is a short-sighted attachment to 'ideology' at the expense of power. The Liberal Party has learnt to drop its ideologies the moment they become toxic to potential voters; the ALP appeared to have learnt the same lesson under Hawke, but seems to have unlearnt it again under Rudd and Gillard -- possibly because of their perceived need to placate the Greens.

Minor parties like the UAP, the DLP, the Democrats, One Nation and now the Greens have to walk a fine line between representing their disgruntled constituents and achieving compromise with the majority in order to actually get things done. Sooner or later they all fall off.

The point of departure for the Greens is that they are not integrated into the principle-free zone which encompasses the Coalition and Labor. But LibLab's politics are shams in which the only interests either component party serves are the interests of their party's financial sponsors, the 1%. This is why representative government is not democracy - the 99% elect them, the 1% buy them. As for the Greens, it is hard to remain forever a voice in the wilderness before degenerating into part of the wilderness as the Democrats did. The Greens could hold out for longer if they committed themselves to democracy (which they have not done). The more voices inject principle into the wilderness, no matter how cacophonous the media commentariat consider them, the better-served are the 99% by the parliamentary process.

The Greens and Labor support this communist agenda 21 of the UN that will totally enslave us.This New World Order concept of one world Govt controlled by the Banking Military Industrial Complex,is not on.

Global warming is BS.The Greens are also controlled by big business.The Greens along with Labor are finished.

Man made global warming is rubbish as this new cooling period will attest. The left better find some other solace to warm their cockles before being burnt on the political stake. Those who still want to rob the public and treat them with contempt pumping global warming should loose their stipends and banished to the urban wilderness.

Good synopsis Peter.

'the dominance of political debate by ever more powerful media interests, and the concurrent spread of new technologies that enable greater information flows and interaction.' Very true but there are encouraging signs that the independent web-based free newsmedia / blogs setup in the last 5 years or so are winning this one. Newspaper sales are going down and the corruption and right wing bias/ news censorship of the News Ltd media is now well known; polls clearly show this increasing distrust.

Re the electoral system, we'd be better off with the Mixed Member Proportional Representation system now used and recently endorsed in NZ. It enables the more diverse views and debates that occur in modern society to be represented in parliament.

To the 'flat earther' bloggers who chime in with their monotonous 'global warming is BS', whether its relates to the subject or not: Do you believe that spacecraft have landed on the Moon and Mars?. Have you seen the photos? NASA is the body that achieved all that. Check out their website http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/ and observe the melting of the poles, increasing CO2 and increasing temperatures.

@Roses: Here are two official graphs from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, showing current sea ice coverage at the North and South Poles:

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png

The south pole figure is above the long-term average by about the same proportion as the north pole figure is below it. Now check the scale at the side. The South Pole chart is drawn to a smaller scale, which means that distance above the average line actually represents a larger amount of ice than the amount by which the North Pole chart is below the line. Your supposed 'global warming' is more than made up for by cooling in the Southern Hemisphere, and this has been recognised by everyone but AGW diehards for some fifteen years.

NASA's ability to get hardware to Mars has no bearing on their -- very successful -- attempts to gain funding and political power by pushing global warming alarmism; why on earth should you think it does? But if you're going to spread their lies, then you should find some which are harder to refute -- if you can.

Give over Roses, praising NZ, & I expect Tasmania for their electoral system is rather counter productive mate. I'd be trying to hide the fact if I believed in it. Both are failing, if not failed states.

Tasmanians would be surviving on bread & dripping if the rest of Oz did not subsidise them to a huge extent.

New Zealand would be the same, if they had not sent a huge percentage of their population over here to get a feed. For those poor kiwis it would be mutton fat dripping too, the worst type.

You'll have to do much better than that, if you want to get real people to let the fairies control our lives.

<< …LibLab's politics are shams in which the only interests either component party serves are the interests of their party's financial sponsors, the 1%. This is why representative government is not democracy - the 99% elect them, the 1% buy them. >>

Agreed EmperorJulian.

So where are the Greens on this issue?

The lack of real democracy incurred by the donations regime and other favours offered by the vested-interest big business sector has surely got to be one of the greatest concerns when it comes to the quality of governance and indeed the future wellbeing of this country.

And yet, we don’t hear boo out of the Greens about this!!

So….. what principles are the Greens really interested in here??

Peter McMahon, you write of the Greens:

< Should they focus on core environmental issues (such as global warming, energy and infrastructure policy), or should they present themselves as an overall progressive party (with policies on sexuality, drugs, euthanasia and the like). >

What about a holistic sustainability strategy?

Isn’t this what the Greens should be concentrating on first and foremost?

Isn’t this the most important thing of all, both in our national political arena and for the future of our country?

I presume you agree, given that you are a lecturer in sustainable development at a University school of sustainability.

The Greens have critically missed the most excellent opportunity with their current political clout to steer this country in the right direction towards sustainability. And I think that Labor would have been reasonably receptive, given that it has the likes of Bob Carr and Kelvin Thomson, both of whom are very vocal in this direction. But alas, we have seen nothing of the sort!

I’d love to get your thoughts on why this is so, Peter.

Roses 1

I agree with your general comment but take issue with this:

'there are encouraging signs that the independent web-based free newsmedia / blogs setup in the last 5 years or so are winning this one'

I'd like to agree, but the signs are that the web-based news and blogosphere is creating a very polarised and vindictive public debate. The outcome of this is in the way the last few elections in Australia and most countries throughout the democratic world have viciously turned against their incumbent governments since the start of the GFC. If the 'free' newsmedia were doing its job, the public would be much better informed about the effect of the GFC on their own economies, and less eager to blame it all on their own governments. Instead, the real culprits - transnational casino banksters, the globalised free-trade system and career military and war profiteers - are not being scrutinised as they should be, except on a few socialist left or libertarian right blogsites that only a few thousand people read worldwide.

Ludwig

Re the ‘lack of real democracy incurred by the donations regime and other favours…’, you say:

‘And yet, we don’t hear boo out of the Greens about this!!’

Well, you can check just this small selection of ‘boos’ (aka media Greens releases) on political donations reform to start with (plenty more on their state and federal websites):

http://greens.org.au/content/federal-donations-reform-report-missed-opportunity

http://nsw.greens.org.au/content/donations-reform-breathes-fresh-air-council-elections

Neither of these media releases appear to have been published by any news outlets. Yet the never-ending smear quotes from their political enemies about their ‘extremist’ and ‘dangerous’ policies get front-page/centre coverage every time).

Also, keep in mind that the Greens have operated for a relatively short period as a very junior party in a reluctant partnership with the Federal ALP to keep an unpopular government in power. Yet both their detractors and supporters expect the Greens to use this very limited and difficult public platform to achieve everything from 100% renewable energy yesterday to economic surplus today to total world peace tomorrow! Give them a break!

Thanks Killarney

The Greens’ policy is good. They want a complete ban on corporate donations. I know they have had a little bit to say about donations. But it’s nowhere near enough. Yes the media is problematic, but if they are not getting their message out there, then they need to try harder, find different avenues, squeeze it in sideways in interviews at every opportunity. It is THAT important!

So then, what about immigration, population, striving for a balance between the demand for energy, food, goods, services, infrastructure, etc and our ability to supply it all, somewhat better than are now doing, in an ongoing manner and with a big safety margin, ie; the achievement of a sustainable society?

Where is the Greens’ message on this??

Could you possibly find something, Killarney… or is it as non-existent as I think it is?

<< Give them a break! >>

No way!! They deserve an absolute hammering. Crikey if they had just seen fit to support Kelvin Thomson and Bob Carr in the things that they’ve been saying about lowering immigration and stabilising population, then they would have been half way to espousing a platform of sustainability.

The fact that they couldn’t even do this much is just deplorable.

"What about a holistic sustainability strategy?"

Go away and read about entropy; sustainability is a joke, a catch-all, meaningless, feel good bit of tripe around which the mindless luvvies can congregate and bleat their mantras.

As for Greens and donations;

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8437830/greens-cleared-over-wood-donation

Wood's $1.6 million donation to the Greens is the largest in Australia's political history. Wood, of course also runs his own media outlet, The Global Mail, without a squawk from the luvvies about media imbalance.

The Greens are inherently misanthropic; they believe in as much 'pristine' nature as possible; the less people doing the least amount of interference with nature, code for living primitive, hard lives, the more 'pristine' nature. Greens don't like people

Killarney I agree with your statement: 'If the 'free' newsmedia were doing its job, the public would be much better informed.
But I think (and hope) you are wrong about the web blogs causing polarization in the electorate. I know polarization of opinion is evident between some bloggers (such as me and Hasbeen) but this is just free speech in action and I reckon that's healthy.

I blame the polarization on the negative, attacking strategies of the major parties and the way the mainstream media reports mainly their 'crap' press releases and does little to analyse their policy statements.

Hasbeen there you go again with nonsense arguments and hyberbole. Is Australia a 'basket case' too, (don't we have proportional representation in the Senate)?

World markets are subdued due to the GFC; demand and prices for NZ (and Tas) products - dairy, timber and tourism are down. Could that have some effect on the economy? Strange too that the NZ government has increased the tax burden on the poor and decreased them for the rich - top personal income tax rate has been reduced from 39 cents pre-GFC crisis to 33 cents. The GST has been increased from 12.5 per cent to 15 per cent. Do you think the MMP electoral system has caused this?

Hi Peter,

'In the end specific choices in regards to policies and personalities, not to mention luck, will play an important part in exactly what happens, but what should be clear is that major structural change is underway in Australian politics.'

Your conclusion interests me.

Is it reflected in the most recent election results in Qld and NSW and the current opinion poling? It seems to me, in those states and probably also WA as well as federally that the LNP is already realigned with electors desires. Isn't'that more the point, rather than any 'structural change' simply because they are at odds with their 'problem being insoluble because of factors that go way beyond national politics'. Clearly it isn't for the LNP.

<< sustainability is a joke, a catch-all, meaningless, feel good bit of tripe around which the mindless luvvies can congregate and bleat their mantras >>

Cohenite, I’m sure that you know what I mean by sustainability, and that is infinitely more sensible than a rapid continuous unending increase in the demand for food, energy and everything else, ie; a highly unsustainable direction, which can’t keep going and has to come crashing down before too long.

If you’ve got a better term for it, do tell.

Come on, you know what I’m on about, so why are you knocking it?

Now, could you please simply outline what you mean by ‘entropy’.

"Now, could you please simply outline what you mean by ‘entropy’."

2nd law of thermodynamics; colloquially describes that things run down; in natural terms things reduce, not remain static; given this sustainability, not taking more than nature can give, means continually reducing either numbers of people, or the standards of living of people, or both.

What do you mean by sustainability?

Cohenite, the second law of thermodynamics is hardly relevant here. For as long as the sun shines, humans should be able to live sustainably on this planet.

Sustainability: living within our means in an ongoing manner. Matching supply and demand, with a big safety margin to get us through hard times. Developing renewable energy sources, improving efficiencies in energy and resource usage, and striving to cap the demand instead of just allowing it to forever increase, especially when there are obvious stresses on our ability to meet this demand. ie: stop population growth.

Currently, both Lib and Lab are taking us in entirely the wrong direction, with their insistence of imposing a very high immigration rate upon us. And the Greens are letting them!

Peter McMahon concludes:

< …what should be clear is that major structural change is underway in Australian politics. >>

Well…. I don’t think so. Whatever structural changes might happen in the near future, they won’t amount to a hill of beans without the change away from the worship of rapid unending expansionism and the embracing of a sustainability-based agenda.

"Sustainability: living within our means in an ongoing manner. Matching supply and demand, with a big safety margin to get us through hard times. Developing renewable energy sources, improving efficiencies in energy and resource usage, and striving to cap the demand instead of just allowing it to forever increase, especially when there are obvious stresses on our ability to meet this demand. ie: stop population growth."

What tripe; the usual mixture of Scottish thrift homilies mixed with some Ehrlich Malthusian junk wrapped in the insidious misanthropy which informs sustainability.

The terms Ludwig uses are meaningless given that technology continually overcomes the limitations which 'nature' oppresses humanity with; after all perfect sustainability is living in a cave grunting at each other; or if you are a real green purist, having no humans at all.

As for population, what about colonising other planets; are you against that?

And please, renewables DO NOT work; any time I see someone advocating the new sustainable future on the back of renewables I think, here we go, another bubble-head with no connection with reality

Why is it cohenite that I detect you as being nothing more than protagonist for the sake of getting your thrills from an argument?

You and I both have very strong criticisms for the Greens, but rather than concentrate on that substantial common ground and approach our differences gently and tactfully, you have ignored the common ground entirely and taken a most unfriendly approach. Very poor form mate. And your comments on sustainability are so absurd!

Obviously you are not worth having any further correspondence with. Have a nice life.