i guess voting for democracy is out of the question?

If the Greens stuck to environmental issues instead of mixing it with their perverted social agenda they might win a lot more votes.

Reckon Rudd is playing shrewd and using the Hawke friendly politics strategy testing the political weather during the first term, and hoping for a chance to promote a true Labor stance, which should be what some are calling up-to-date Keynesian mixed economics, which could mean spending a heap of Costello's future fund, once Rudd gets confidently stabilised to buy back what Adam Smith said years ago, that there are certain areas of national nfrastructure that should always belong to government.

Adam Smith's code was broken of course, with the establishment of the East India Company, which controlled the whole of Ceylon, managing the huge military force needed to control the Buddhists and Janists, especially the Janists who were dead against clearing the wooded hillsides for tea.

Certainly with our ever-growing corporates we are heading back to those days, with corporate bosses not much different to those who ran the big colonial companies, which also included those of the Dutch just to the north of Australia.

Certainly hope Rudd has situations like the above in his mind, doing something about what can only be called rampant capitalism, which strong sensible governments need to put the political brakes on.

Why we still have to go back to the father of Big Biz Laizey-faire to regain economic wisdom, goodness knows, but of course, Adam Smith was a well-balanced thinker, being a studied philosopher as well as a commonsense capitalist.

Historians are also inclined to group Maynard Keynes with certain aspects of Adam Smith.

The Greens are still the Greens. No amount of speeches will change either of the big two from what they are. Environment will naeer be their over riding theme. As such the Greens remain the only environmentally friendly Party.

However, having been in contact with several Greens this last 12 months I can only say they have even more radical views than you might think. No, not legalising drugs etc. Their immigration and population policies are extreme and have no place in this country.

If you don't know what I mean, email a Greenie. Join an internet Green group and read the exchange of identical views. No change tolerated.

There is, by the way, no danger of Rudd slipping back to traditional Labor policies. That ended before Hawke took over remember? Today's left is yesterday's right. There is little left on the left and they look terribly lonely whoever they are,

All this would be very interesting if much of it were true. The evidence presented for The Greens change in position or 'snuggling up to Labor' is threadbare at best. All I can see here is that Bob Brown supports war in Afghanistan (which is not entirely true) and that the drug policy is like more like Labor's (which if true says more about the progressive policy of Labor than The Greens because the policy ain't changed that much).

So what about the other 40 odd policies, innumerable media statements, speeches and actions of The Greens MPs and candidates since the last election? As an insider I can tell you that there has been no move from The Greens commitment to a strident belief in social justice, ecological sanity, real democracy and peace not war.

That's not to say that there are areas where the Greens could take more challenging positions – that is a fair point well worth discussing. However to say The Greens are snuggling up to Labor on the basis of one leaflet which uses the term 'Labor can't do it alone' in discussing the Senate numbers and getting rid of John Howard's majority is a bit of a long bow.

If the Greens had such a commitment to peace you would think that they could hold a non violence anti war rally! They display more violence than the average person.