I will probably put the Greens at, or near, the top of my preferences, but I wish that organisation would have the moral fortitude to tell the Australian that the choice between Rudd on the one hand and Howard on the other, whatever can rightly critically be said of the former, is still an important one.

Give the AWB scandal, the Iraq War, "Work choices", and Howard's overall environmental vandalism that the choice should be a no-brainer. There is no reason why the Greens should not be able to call upon the Australian public to put the Liberals last whilst still maintaining their independence and a capacity to be critical of Labor on such questions as the logging of Tasmania's old-growth forests.

Had it occurred to the Greens that if they had clearly called for a vote for Labor on a two-party preferred basis back in 2004, that much the ongoing carnage against Tasmania's old-growth forests would have ended.

Instead, the Greens equivocated and waffled and, in the last days of the election campaign, Bob Brown even openly held out the possibility of their being an 'accord' between a re-elected Howard Government and the Greens were the latter to have ended up with the balance of power in the Senate. How Brown could have conceived of an accord with the man who lied in order to drag this country into the bloody war in Iraq is beyond me.

It's all very well to say that most Greens tend to preference Labor, anyway, but back in 2004 the electorate needed to hear a clear message that re-election of John Howard's Government represented a mortal threat to democracy, our environment, the workers and the poor of this country. That essential message which could have made all the difference, did not come from the Greens, nor, in fact, from anyone with any sufficiently high profile, and we are now living with the terrible consequences.

Let's not make the same mistake this time.

(tobecontinued)

The Greens can't win, can they. They are either oppositional blockers, pragmatic politicians, ideologues, looney or dangerous. I am seeing more and more attacks from Labor sources deriding the Greens for daring to work with a Liberal government, if such an animal could still exist. I have never seen the Greens preference the Liberals, though in a couple of winnable seats they have run a split ticket. How dare they advise Green voters to exercise their discretion! If the Greens are forced to play politics from time to time, that is the system they find themselves in. Negotiating between conflicting principles is the hardest thing about politics.

Why we are seeing these 'pro-liberal' attacks from Labor against the Greens is due to State politics. Labor is in every State government, with drastically diminished Liberal oppositions. In most States, the Greens also form part of the opposition. This makes for strange bedfellows, and there is a lot about the State Labor governments to oppose.

Now does anyone here think a Liberal-Green accord would last the first week? This alliance would be dead the moment the ink dried, and would be the trigger for a double-dissolution election. That the Greens would enter into such an arrangement in good faith is fairly naive, and born of desperation to achieve urgent policy results. I think these coalitions are ultimately bad for the Greens, as it was in West Germany. It forces them to compromise principle for pragmatic political outcomes, which alienates their voter base. Tricky, eh?

Labor has the most to lose from the Greens, which is why their attacks are increasing. The Greens the true opposition, and their existance exposes Labor's complicity in the Grand Coalition with the 'enemy'. When the Majors join together to thwart the Greens balance of power, the truth is out. But mostly, the Labor Left is weak and unstable, bleeding members into the Greens at an alarming rate. Voters too. The Greens pose an existential threat to Labor, hence these ridiculous 'Liberal-Greens Alliance' spin cycles.

Can't really see Labor lying awake at nights and worrying about the Greens emerging as a opposition that might knock them off in the current conservative environment.

This may not be the Greens best election. Labor rightly or wrongly is seen as having a s-xy, fresh feel about it. A friend who has just purchased her Kevin 07 teeshirt is talking about the feel of 1975. I've never felt the Greens had a s-xy, exciting, feel to them at all.

The locked in Green voters will be thinking that Labor ran true to form and didn't provide an alternative on Haneef (shades of Tampa) and won't stray, but the swingers may be attracted to Labor. Bob Brown of course will hold his seat, but it might come down to preferences for the Greens to hold Kerrie Nettle's seat.

The Democrats sadly will be limping along and struggling this time. They put themselves out of the picture with their support for the GST. Dillusionment with a Labor Government might make the election after this one the Greens best hope.

Whoops, that should have been 1973, not 1975 of course.

Roll on the election!

Red Fairy, when Gough Whitlam was elected it was "TIME", there was no doubt about that. I think during that era that the electorat still had some respect for politicians. The Labor Party now under Mr. Rudd looks more like an old style Liberal Party than a Labor one; he would have been described as a "wet" Liberal using old terminology. But better that than a bungling right wing Coalition; for example, it is a disgrace the way Mr. Andrews has abused his position.

The Democrats do not have the wherewithall to keep "the b_stards honest" this hopefully will be left to a combination of the Greens, Democrats and Independants to do after the next election. Never before has it been the case of needing to review legislation.

No doubt it will not be long before we see gutter politics from the Coalition declaring that the Greens are on the right hand side of Satan.

Red Fairy & Earthrise. Spare me. For one thing you're just reconfirming the Greens brand as a pack of fire stick twirling loonies.

So you don't like the GST. Then the first thing the Greens should do when they gain the balance of power is put forward a private members bill to remove it. Then watch inflation go through the roof. It's a broad based consumer tax. If you want to buy a new Mercedes Benz that's an extra $10K thank you. The Government pockets that and redistributes it (to a formula that no one can understand) so that fire twirling hippies in NSW and Victoria can collect their dole and still have the bus fare to go to the APEC demo and throw rocks and punches at the police.

Here's the bottom line. The Australian electorate is conservative. They like the Green's message but they're far from convinced they're the answer. Every punch or fracas at APEC is a massive vote against the Greens. Remember Hewson's demos? The Greens demos endorse violence writ large against people who were democratically elected. People like you and me.

Recently the Greens said they wanted to spend $80 billion to reduce carbon emissions. $80 billion. Australia's GDP is about one trillion. So the Greens want to spend 10 percent of our GDP on carbon emissions. We're about 17 million in the black and they now want to throw the whole nation in to the red by about $60 billion - which is about the figure that Howard left as a deficit for the Hawke-Keating Government back in 83.

The Greens are against commodities trading. There goes our iron ore, nickel and zinc industry. So if your social security payment doesn't arrive next year you'll know who to blame. The Greens. They're just as dogmatic as Family First - who they loath. And I thought the Democrats were the fairies at the bottom of the garden.