ponde,

"Praying in a public place where tax payer money is used in wrong.
Wrong because there is no evidence that prayer works.
If a MP wants to feel good and pray he can do it on his own time."

I know not if St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, would be considered a public place but some millions of taxpayers' money was recently spent on building the spires onto the towers, so it might be wrong, by your lights, to pray there.

The Cenotaph in Martin Place is certainly a public place and is maintained by taxpayers' money,just as is Parliament House in Canberra.
Perhaps you and the Greens might object next ANZAC Day when prayers are said there by people both on and not on the public payroll.

Are prayers answered from on High?
Lourdes would seem to fit the bill, or are you going to ignore my earlier post addressed to your good self?

Shadow, The Greens must be doing their job, as it clear that we have many of you arch conservatives rattled. If as you would assert in you posts we are a spent force in Australia then why the effort to denigrate the party and its policies. If we are history, just ignore us, after all we are going to fade away. I have little concern with the up and downs of voter support, its rather fickle at the best of times. Although according to the AEC in the house of reps the Green vote was down by 3.11% did you misplace the decimal point. Oddly in the seat of Melbourne our sitting member Adam Bandt increased his primary vote by 7.03% the voters of Melbourne know a good local member when they meet one. Even the Mad Monk in his silver tail seat only managed a 1.97% swing.

Take the Greens small business policy,
A few points in the policy.

# lower taxes by cutting company tax for small businesses from 30 per cent to 28 per cent, helping 600,000 small businesses.
# raise the instant asset write off from $6,500 to $10,000 to encourage small businesses to purchase productive assets to help them grow.
# Strengthen competition policy to prevent big business using their market power to gain unfair advantages over small business.
# Give the Small Business Commissioner legislative backing and double the funding to $10m so it can act as an effective advocate for small business.

According to you this is some kind of Bolshevik policy which is unimplementable, only a clutter of populist wishlists. Unlike the Coalition which only has eyes for Big Business and what it wants. Where is the Liberal Party policy on small business

Paul,
Everyone knows the Green platform but the fact remains, it's a middle class senior citizens party which is unable to attract the young, intelligent men who are the crucial part of any movement.
If the platform doesn't recruit these men then on it's own merits then there's obviously a problem, no?

Paul,

I see maths is not your strong point. If you primary vote in 2013 is 8.6% and has dropped by 3.1% that is a loss of nearly 30% of your total vote.

The reason that most Australians feel such contempt for the greens is that they have no concept of how business works. The small business policy which is pretty much cut and pasted from labor is a prime example. The reason small business is struggling is because of the huge burden of regulations imposed by the labor green alliance that costs time and money and makes them uncompetitive. A few small tax breaks on money they are not making is pure tokenism.

The state where the greens have the greatest influence is rotten with the consequences of thoughtless activism. Tasmania thanks to the greens who have crippled the forest industry, stopped hydro electric dams, and pulp mills being built, has the fastest shrinking economy, employment and population in Australia.

It looks as though most people are becoming wiser and the elections in Tasmania will be proof of that.

Shadow, you are being silly, about Tasmania. It is a well established fact that although a beautiful island Tasmania suffered economically long before the Greens existed, even long before federation, even before it was Tasmania. You raise issues that relate to sustainability in that state, your conservative line when it comes to forestry of "chip it up, and ship it out" is not sustainable. Please take the time and read some real policy

http://tas.greens.org.au/policies/tas/forests

Can you comment on Adams vote in Melbourne and compare it to the Mad Monks vote in his silver tail electorate. Even in "Abbottland" 13,873 (15.5%) people had the good sense to vote GREEN!

Paul,

While it is true that Tasmania started behind, it had the potential to catch up. However, under the Labor/Green alliance, it has gone backwards at an unprecedented rate, shrinking and shedding high value jobs.

The forestry deal is a prime example of incompetence. Firstly much of the native forest the greens want to protect has been logged previously and is far from pristine. The reason that the state sells chips is primarily because it cannot export timber competitively and the "high value add" that the greens ignorantly waffle about is labor intensive done far cheaper overseas.

The only three viable alternatives are
a) Close 90% of the forestry industry and produce niche market timber.
b) Continue as before selling timber and wood chips.
C) Build the modern low emission pulp mill in the Tamar valley that add huge value to the chips, makes the timber and forestry more viable, and creates high value technical jobs that spend their money in the area.

The greens idiotically block b) & c)

As for Abbott, I see that he got an increased 2/3rds of the primary vote, while the greens vote shrank. The greens/labor vote shrank by about 3%.

Adam Bent in Melbourne got an increased vote, but the liberals vote increased too to 23%. The combined greens/labor vote shrank by 4.5%