Greens in power is crazy talk

Opinion piece in The Daily Telegraph

Tuesday 7 November 2023

A recent proposal which would see Greens taking seats in the federal cabinet is dangerous at worst and laughable at best.

ACT Greens leader and Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury has floated this radical idea should Labor be forced into minority government at the next election.

He wants Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sign a power-sharing deal with Greens boss Adam Bandt and have Greens sit around the big table.

Rattenbury justified his suggestion on the basis the Greens have, in his words, “some very capable, experienced people”.

This is from a bloke whose ACT government has just decriminalised small amounts of drugs such as cocaine, heroin and ice.

This was passed despite opposition from no less than the ACT’s top police officer.

The Greens have 11 Senators, including David Shoebridge who wants to see police defunded. He’d be just great in a justice portfolio, eh Shane!

Deputy Greens leader Mehreen Faruqi recently wrote that Australia’s support for Israel, so barbarically attacked, was: “One colonial government supporting another. What a disgrace.”

Imagine her in Foreign Affairs!

Then we have the Greens’ longest-serving federal representative, Sarah Hanson-Young, who has always had an anti-agriculture agenda.

If Senator Hanson-Young had her way, life would be so much more difficult for those who live off the land.

It is bad enough that Treasurer Jim Chalmers, in his 2023-24 budget speech, referred to coal, gas and iron ore merely as “the things we sell overseas” – but to have Greens involved in national decision-making would be disastrous.

It is also bad enough the Housing Minister Julie Collins recently interjected during a speech of mine in regarding the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill, questioning my mention of Victoria shutting down its timber industry.

I reminded her timber is what houses are made from!

Labor is way out of touch, but the Greens are deliberately destructive when it comes to the regions and always have been.

Their concept of National Park preservation is to simply lock up vast tracts of land and leave them.

The lack of bushfire preparedness insofar as reducing the forest fuel load, because of the Greens, is always of massive concern to firefighters, many of whom are brave community volunteers.

At 3 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon most eyes will be on Flemington and the “Race That Stops The Nation”.

Not the Greens.

Greens who aren’t outside the course protesting about the very existence of horse racing due to its so-called cruelty, will be saying “Nup to the Cup” elsewhere.

Yet the Greens are all for culling brumbies in the Snowy Mountains.

These horses – part of our proud Australian heritage – are apparently destroying the environment. What nonsense!