Thursday, January 22, 2009

The Greens party supports environmental vandalism in Auburn!

I have written a lot recently about the Israeli barbaric attack on Gaza, but here I will try to highlight another issue. It is issue more related to Australian politics.
We can debate for days or even weeks about the Greens party commitment or lack of commitment towards social justice issues, including refugees’ rights, Palestinians’ rights, marginalised groups’ issues...., but I never thought that we should debate the Greens commitment to environmental issues.
Well, we discovered that we underestimated the Greens party’s opportunism.
In the attached article by the Auburn Review, you will discover something that will make you wonder what is the real “colour” of the Greens party.
During the last local government election, the unified message of ALL Greens candidates was “Oppose High Rise buildings”, in addition to the complementary statement “oppose the developers’ greed” and “Community needs, not developers’ greed”. This includes especially the electoral materials of the Greens candidate for Auburn Malikeh Michales, as more than half of Auburn councillors are developers or real estate agents. And Auburn council was in all media outlets for the last decade for “corruption” investigations related to dodge development approvals.
In the attached article, you will discover that the Greens councillor had aligned herself with Liberal – Unity councillors to discuss approval to increase the height and density of high rising buildings near St Johns Catholic Primary School. She did this, despite the Labor – RAGAA councillors’ fierce opposition to this proposal.
To tell the truth, I did not believe my eyes. I again underestimated the opportunism of the representatives of this party. Where are the Greens claims of “sticking to principles”?
I thought that the first and most important principle of the Greens party is to protect the environment. This issue indeed was the object of founding the Greens.
At this stage I recalled my conversations with many well-known environmentalists who quit the Greens for its failure to advocate for environmental sustainability, and instead engaging in power-thirst infightings.
The Greens councillor in Auburn should be proud that she already broke all her election promises and propaganda. Her election leaflet has only 2 main promises:
1- To increase services for refugees and marginalised groups.
2- To protect the environment, by opposing attacks on local (and global) environment by standing against developers’ and big corporations’ greed.
Earlier and before the end of the last year, the same Greens councillor was proud to propose amendments that could have seen the closure of one of the organisations serving mainly the refugees. Without intense lobbying from us, community members and local media, we could have seen the Greens councillor achieving the opposite of “increasing services for refugees”.
Now she wants to fulfil the second promise: to attack our fragile environment and help “greedy” developers to make more millions of $s by creating more noise and pollution in the heart of our suburb, in addition to all other implications.
This article is supporting what I have noticed in the last month, when the Greens (for political cheap score-pointing purposes) opposed any new Labor government action to tackle climate change. The Greens sent a clear message that if the government won’t approve its (The Greens’) sharp emission’s cut, the Greens would prefer to keep the lack of Howard’s government action on this issue.
But, let us discuss the issue more closely. What did the Greens achieve since they took the Democrats’ votes (in addition to large Muslim votes) and increased its political representation on all levels?
The simple answer is: NOTHING.
With intense attacks on our environment, one could start to seriously ask: what is the main platform of the Greens? Why it is still called the Greens?
My advice to the Greens hierarchy is to adopt new name: The Rainbow party. By doing this they can change the colour of the party’s skin as required. Sometimes they can be red, other times can be green. And if required they could be hidden anywhere silently with no colour at all.

My experience inside the United Australia party: why UAP’s humiliating defeat & When will Ralph defect from UAP?

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