No, not the Rugby league team, but the State Parliament.
The most interesting outcome of last weekend’s NSW State election was not the resounding strength of the Liberal win, but rather the resounding extent of the Greens loss. The electoral campaign post-mortem of the Greens will no doubt share all the hallmarks of the one they undertook for the recent Victorian State election. Perhaps this time it will be easier to blame it on the dirty Jooos?
There are two narratives flying around the internet which posit reasons for the defeat of Greens Candidates at the poll.
The first is that the Greens missed out on seats because voters wanted to act with certainty to end 16 years of Labor rule. In other words, a protest vote was not an ideological option for voters due to the extent of their dissatisfaction of the previous administration.
The second is that the Greens have been exposed, led by their Marrickville candidate, as a supporter of the racist, hypocritical and counterproductive BDS program to victimise Israel.
The first message has been carried by the mainstream media, with little reference to the influence of the second. The weekend TV and radio coverage of the election result made much mention of the Green’s failure to win a seat, but did not rate a mention of the anti-Israel sentiment of candidates such as Fiona Byrne, and the endorsement given to this by the party body.
The media intransience and reluctance to find the real story doesn’t alter the true awareness of the voting public on this matter. The Greens themselves are however fully aware, as exposed by Andrew Bolt.
Similarly, on his blog, former premier Bob Carr writes as follows:
“Thank God, The Australian newspaper pinned down the Green Party candidate in Marrickville who tried to lie her way out of support of a boycott of Israel. This is the party of principle but its candidate twisted and genuflected and contorted to avoid defending a position she had publicly taken on Marrickville Council, namely that there should be an active boycott directed against the Jewish state. She tried to say taking the issue up in state parliament was not the same as “vowing” to take the issue up in state parliament.…. You can’t get your local council to sign up to a boycott of Israel and say you will pursue it in parliament and then try to wriggle out of it in a state election six months later. You deserve what you get.”
The Greens Party has been punished by free thinking voters who have looked beyond the environmental credentials of the Greens to their social and fiscal policy positions. They have finally realised that the Greens are not a reincarnate of the Australian Democrats. They can see that the far-leftist ideals of the movement, and their policies relating to social conditioning, justice, welfare and foreign policy expose Australia to high risk. I know many Jewish people who have formerly voted for the Greens, and/or would like to do so in the future due to their views on environmental sustainability. However knowing the party’s position on other matters has over-ridden their desire to express their “greenie” credentials at the ballot box.
Whilst the unfounded and obnoxious position of the Greens relating to Israel (a world leader in environmental sustainability) is of concern to the Jewish community, it is not a headline consideration for the general electorate. With this in mind, I believe that there is a more important message in this election outcome for Australia as a whole. That is, a return to the relationship between State and Federal Government, and the division of roles and responsibilities. Many of those who took issue with Fiona Byrne may have had no interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but would have been well aware that foreign policy is not the domain of Local Government, or State Government. They still punished her accordingly for engaging in politics of no relevance to her mandate as the Mayor of Marrickville.
Combine this with the NSW swing to Liberal and the electorate is saying something very powerful. It is time that we refocussed politics on balancing the economic equation. We deserve a better quality politic in Australia, and it should be driven by the growth of wealth and distribution of resources. Any Government that tries to inflate its way out of net debt positions which escalate toward intolerable levels create more entrenched and longer term problems. The NSW Government has been guilty of this, and the current Federal Government is walking the same tightrope.
Australia is in a volatile and vulnerable political era. The impact of floods in Queensland, decades of neglect of infrastructure renewal in NSW, the decline of manufacturing nationally, and the forthcoming loss of resources revenue from the north and west resulting from carbon pricing will place huge strain on Government budgets. In a global context, political stability is starting to fracture faster than most people imagine is possible. Australian’s are relatively insignificant global citizens, but not immune to the shift of regional political power.
Quality politics is more important than ever. The lack of quality leadership within our political system is worse than ever. The public realisation that Government does not have as much control as it is perceived to have also becomes clearer every day. The job of the politician has changed, driven by the single phrase soundbyte. The idiocy of creating instant policy so as “to be seen” to be doing something has become accepted Government modus operandi in Austalia.
What I can hear the electors of New South Wales saying is that they have a higher expectation. They want their politics to focus on economic sustainability, growth, affordability, and social infrastructure that works. It may take time, but if the O’Farrell Government can kick start NSW and reverse its dismal State Budget from further decline, it will be an example to Governments right around Australia. They have been given a legislative mandate, free from the need to engage in political horse-trading and reliance on third party support. Let’s hope they use it well.
To the voters of Marrickville, excluding the 12,020 who voted for a candidate that supports policies that are clearly anti-Semitic, – thank you for your good decency and good politics.
To the Greens, your destructive outlook and your desire to stand against economic prosperity, growth, and commercial reality, not to mention your boycott of Israel for having the tenacity for defending itself against terrorism, will hopefully lead you further towards political oblivion at all levels of Government in Australia.