The Greens WA

[b_auspol]

The Greens WA
https://greens.org.au/wa

And now I’m back into the parties that actually expect to contest seats. Like One Nation, I expect that any readers of this already have an understanding of the basic platform of the Greens, so I won’t both rehashing it all; rather we’ll be looking at their WA election platform.

The Greens WA have a complicated history. They were apparently a separate party from 1990 until 2003, when they finally decided to joined the Australian Greens. I looked at it all, and honestly Greens factional politics is a game up there with Labor factional politics in terms of how complicated and full of hidden moves it is to outsiders, so we’ll just say the WA branch of the Greens were successful on their own, then they joined up with everyone else and the party has generally been successful together.

Currently the Greens WA have 4 members in the Legislative Council; one each in East Metropolitan, North Metropolitan, Mining and Pastoral, and South West. There’s a good chance they’ll hold and/or pick up another seat.

The Greens have a nice WA election platform page where they’ve categorised their platform into six categories. One of those categories is “how we will pay”; this is obviously where they’ve put their tax policies, but I do enjoy them so deliberately going “yes we have costed our plans, thank you for your concern”. On the downside and the “oh yes you are the Greens aren’t you” to their policies section: every last policy has its attached PDF with more detail. And some of the detail in those PDFs really should be up on the policy page, like the dot points of policy goals; the web page itself is more the happy aspirational descriptions. The PDFs are beautiful: lots of detail, everything spelled out carefully and down to the T – it’s just people will never SEE THESE.

First topic is “Essentials”. This is their healthcare, education and housing policies. The Greens point out that COVID has shown that governments can afford to tackle poverty and fully fund services if the political need is sufficient. I expect we’ll be hearing this message repeated a lot over the next few years. They want more money for hospitals and especially for mental health treatment (Mental Health is definitely the current face of ‘expand Medicare’, compared to last federal election when it was all about dental). They want more social housing investment both in new housing stock and repairs on existing. They want a charter of rights for WA to protect people from government and corporate abuse (which is just a little more pointed in a year when we’ve all been living under public health orders and states of emergency).

The Greens also have tucked a small climate policy in here as “sustainable cities and liveable neighbourhoods” which is about public transport, green spaces, walkable neighbourhoods, and planned sustainable expansion rather than just urban sprawl. The Greens want to protect the environment (shock. I know), and rehabilitate the forests, bush, and waterways. And they want to ‘support the regions’ which looks like “spend more money on regional healthcare, transport systems, transition to a renewable energy sector, sustainable timber, more regional eco-tourism, more sustainable farming”. Sustainable is definitely the Greens buzzword this election. This is all very unsurprising: the Greens think we can accomplish it all if we just invest more in our community infrastructure and think about long term sustainability in planning. You can tell that they still don’t have to plan on a short term objective “must be done in 4 years” timeline.

Next is jobs and economic recovery. The Greens are focusing on the “care economy”, which they are defining as education, health, mental health, aged care, social services, disability support and childcare, the arts sector, and green manufacturing. I’m actually happy to see this: there’s been plenty of discussion that jobs in female-dominated industries have been the most heavily impacted by the pandemic, so leading with the industries that are actually proof from digital job losses and which are value-add for employment is completely a smart move. Basically, they’re calling out lack of investment in all these industries and want to invest more. The green manufacturing economy is about “green steel”, hydrogen, and storage batteries. Green steel apparently uses hydrogen rather than coal for the heating in melting and producing steel.

Climate change policy! Hello Greens core constituency issue. They want 100% renewables on a decentralised grid, banning fracking, phasing out coal and gas (unsurprising), a zero-carbon economy by decarbonising buildings, transport networks (more cycling and electric vehicles!) and industry, building more social housing, a fast electric charging network, green jobs for all, regenerating forests, wetlands and oceans, legislating targets for zero emissions (by 2035) and 100% renewables (by 2030), etc. It’s all very aspirational and very Greens.

The next topic is Democracy. This is about donations and lobbyists. They want bans from all for-profit companies, bans on cash for access, and bans on anonymous third party donations. Um. As lovely as this sounds the chances of this happening is nil, and I’m not convinced that Australian political parties will be able to fund themselves on personal donations only. (Though microparties seem to manage SOMEHOW). They also want real time disclosure on donations on a website so we can all see when someone dumps in extra money during an election campaign / a business buys a policy.

Caring for Community! This is more healthcare, education and housing policies. Please don’t ask why they have two sections for this. They’ve got a bunch of disability policies here (unsurprising, given Jordan Steele-John is from WA and the strongest advocate for disability policy in all levels of Aus parliament) including housing, healthcare, public transport and other access policies. Free TAFE (there is a lot of ‘Free TAFE’ going around as a policy right now for the tradie skills shortage). World Class Mental Health Services! (Wouldn’t that be nice). All in all it’s very Greens, very “I don't know how to explain to you why you should care about other people”.

I’m tickled that the taxation part of this policy platform is labelled “How We Will Pay”. The Greens are out getting ahead of accusations about their pie in the sky dreams, people! They want a state banking levy (it’s apparently a levy based on the banks’ liabilities, levelled quarterly on the Big Four plus Macquarie. I am supposing Macquarie get to join the Big Four on the basis that the Greens strongly suspect that the remainder of the Big End Of Town money is parked at Macquarie, which is a fair assumption given the usual things that bank gets up to), an end to all subsidies on fossil fuel industries, and to raise fees on iron and gold ore mining. This all is very classic Greens, of the “if you ARE going to do these bad things, we will tax you. And then tax you more” rather like alcohol and cigarette taxation.

I tried to take a quick look to see if the Greens WA had anything interesting happening about COVID on their social media, but the WA-specific twitter appears largely dead (and enjoys going “Look at our boy Jordan Steele-John!” which, fair) and your standard Greens pollie social media presences are busy agitating about the issues of the day. I’m pretty sure, though, from existing on the internet as a left-type person, I would have noticed if the Greens were currently harbouring any anti-vax sentiments towards the COVID vaccine. They seem as “hurry up and get on with it” as most of the rest of the actual politicians of the day.

The one absolute piece of bullshit I will call out though is the fact that the Health Australia Party are listed SECOND on the Agricultural Region Greens group voting ticket. What the actual hell, Greens? The Daylight Saving Party are also frequently around the same spot on the ticket as Labor. Pretty much everyone’s group voting tickets are an absolute mess this election (end these! Cmon!), but the Greens really need to explain why they’re preferencing anti-vaxxers ahead of the mix of “AJP, Legalise Cannabis, Socialist Alliance, Labor” in Agricultural. Please don’t tell me they spoke to Druery.


Any Predictions?

No. We were predicting minor/micro party reactions, and the Greens are a bit past that now.


Is this party trying to kill me?

No.


Is this party trying to harm me?

No.


Conclusion:

Look, it’s the Greens. They would like a transition to a Green New Deal and if they can get there by removing incentives and placing levies on dirty industries they’ll do what they can. They want to expand Medicare and more free schooling and better public housing and all the policies that everyone on the left really would like to see Labor embrace more wholeheartedly.

Also they would like to remind us all CLIMATE CHANGE IS UNDERWAY, WE NEED CLIMATE ACTION.

It’s the Greens. For me to even list a microparty ahead of them means the microparty needs to have really tickled my fancy. Near the top of my ticket, everytime – this is where I expect my upper house preferences to help fill a quota.