The Greens will always have trouble due to a media ban on us. Its very difficult to have letters,profiles and news items published when the media ignore us. The reason the Greens have increased their vote in recent years is due to the diversity of their policies and not being a one dimensional party. With the ALP moving more to the right and becoming a newish looking clone of the Libs the Greens are the only true alternative and the last hope for working families.

Bill Weller
Greens candidate for Kingston SA
AMWU delegate

Yes that is correct that the ALP needs the Greens in the senate but the Unions need the Greens there as well to keep the ALP to its promises. As one Union leader remarked Howard is the devil we know the ALP is the devil we don't.The left wing of the ALP is nearly extinct and along with that so will their policies. The Greens still hold those policies and most voters will never get to see that. ( and they call it democracy )

Bill Weller

The unions are all pro ALP and will not support the Greens. They are set in their ways and will allow the ALP to walk all over them and still vote ALP.

The Greens although have stronger policies for workers will not and cannot expect Unions to assist in any way.

Yes, the media do not give the Greens much space, but do they deserve it. Are they relevent, are they newsworthy??. Bob Brown is a smart media player but the others do not play the media's game and get little coverage.
The Greens strategists need to start thinking outside the box and move into the new media, the internet and by pass the traditional media.

The media and Unions are not the concern for the Greens it is the ALP preferencing family first before them as happened in Victoria. This could happen Australia wide and Family first will hold balance of power. No work place relations laws being changed, no progressive social policy passed and Australia will go backward thanks to the ALP back room deals and the Unions being weak and not standing up to the ALP.

It has nothing to do with the Greens nuggling up to Labor. It is more about the ALP selling their soul to the fundamentalist family first.

Anand

The Greens ?
Who are they ?

Bill Weller,

Congratulations on your up-front, intelligent post.

I'm guessing that competition for preferences is the key struggle between now and their declarations. I wish you well.

It's difficult for me to believe that either the right or the left has any overarching system of analysis which applies consistently at all levels - from the local to the global.

No political group, Marxists, Capitalists or others, can currently offer a method of looking at world at regional, local and personal scales, so as to better seek sustainable solutions to problems of energy flow and the exchange of materials, information and currency.

In a previous post, I mentioned that:

"It does seem to me that the work of HT Odum provides a description of natural and human commerce and material interaction which can provide a basis for arguing the ralationships and values of particular flows of energy, materials, information and money.

David Holmgren discusses the relationship of Odum's work to his Permaculture work in a 2004 interview. See
www.energybulletin.net/524.htm "

Additionaly, you may be interested in the application of Odum's system of analysis to the state of West Virginia.
http://www.epa.gov/nheerl/publications/files/wvevaluationposted.pdf

See also this link, describing the relationship between the idea of emergy (embodied energy) to environmental law (in the US):
http://www.lclark.edu/dept/elaw/objects/Angelo_Brown_emergy_paper.pdf

Emergy or "Embodied energy" is the energy already implicit in something - for example, all else being equal, a punnet of strawberries at the shop has more embodied energy than a punnet of those from your strawberry plants at home, because of the transport and labour involved in getting them to the shop.

Odum spent his professional life exploring natural and technologically driven flows of energy and materials, and developed a system of analysis which is worth the consideration of anyone interested in a sustainable future.

Interesting ideas, worthy of any politician's consideration.