medusala said:
FF I agree with what you said re preferences which once again illustrates the point of what a disgrace preference voting is ie you get two cracks at the cherry and another voter only gets one ie liberal in this case but could be alp if the libs and nats stand in the same seat. I firmly believe you should vote for who you want and not just get to vote for everyone other than the one person you dont. The senate with proportional representation looks after minor parties.
The greens are a complete and utter joke, they never, ever vote with the govt in the senate. They are a complete waste of space because they will never form govt and wont negotiate at all. The alp will negotiate with the govt on the vast majority of bills as will the democrats. Thus in most cases they are fulfilling the role of the senate as a house of a review and making amendments to legislation via negotiation. When in opposition the libs did the same allowing Hawke and Keating to reform the economy. Not perfect but it works. Bob Brown has no positive contribution to make to anything, he is just serving time to pick up his massive super payout.
Medders the greens are to the left of the Democrats, and are not really a "balance of power" party - but a party that stands on definite principles. So of course if all Howard needed was the Dems vote to get something through then of course he will negotiate with them.
I struggle to think of a situation where you would give-up on the Democrats because they will not budge, but then would expect the Greens to compromise.
In fact have the Greens ever been in a true balance of power situation? I think you would find they certainly will negotiate, it is just that the Dems position is more likely to shift.
In fact the greens on many things are to the left of the ALP - so surely you would expoect the ALP to agree 1st - which has happened in the past.
Summary - the Greens are not the same as the Democrats. One is a centralist "alternative" to "keep the bastards honest", and the other is a genuine party with fixed principals.
Do you think if the Nats held the balance in a ALP government would they negotiate on homosexual marriage??
In my ultra conservative WA seat of Curtin, the Greens got about 12% of the vote I think?? And I BET plenty of them were Liberal voters trying to get a message across.