It’s been a good couple of weeks for Greens Derangement Syndrome in the press gallery. It kicked off last week, with James Massola’s report on Richard Di Natale, the farm he owns jointly with his wife, and the hiring of au pairs to help with the child-wrangling.
“Greens leader Richard Di Natale failed to declare his family farm in Victoria’s Otway Ranges for 15 months …” Massola’s article opened with breathlessly.
Great get, except it wasn’t true. As Massola explained further down the article, the farm — which was a property in his wife Lucy Quarterman’s family, and thus jointly owned by marriage — had been declared on the register of business interests. It had also been declared on the register of spouse’s interests, which is a confidential register.
The comparison to David Feeney’s Northcote house imbroglio was thus ludicrous. Feeney had entirely omitted his Northcote house — one of three he and his wife own, plus her Canberra flat (owned by a “trust”, funny word here), which she rents to him for his parliamentary allowance — for two years. The place was simply invisible, until he was dobbed in.
Di Natale’s partner’s farm was always on the register — indeed, on two of them. Di Natale and partner had made an error in not declaring it as a residence not a business, under his name. By no means is that a serious contempt of Parliament, since the intent to declare the property was clear.
Doubtless, David Feeney simply had a two-year mind slip in not declaring the property at all — but a cynical person might conclude that its absence from any register was convenient to an old Labor hack running in an old Labor seat and unwilling to own up to a $6 million-plus portfolio. It’s the lack of any declaration that makes it a serious contempt.
On the au pair front, Massola also had a degree of misconstruction, the first half of his story dependent on calculating out the room plus board plus pay — about $450-$500 per week — as covering a 40-hour week. Yet the Fair Work Commission’s definition of “au pairing” is clear as crystal – an au pair is not a nanny, and not a full-time cook/cleaner. It’s not permitted to oblige them to take sole care of the children, without a parent present, which limits the hours.
The Fair Work Commission’s definition allows for the fact that the role is an odd one, incorporating board and cash, and usually part of extended travel. There was no reason not to calculate the rate on the basis of 20-25 hours a week — at which point it is entirely within minimum wage rates.
If the episode suggests anything, it’s probably that such positions should have a few more regulations attached to them — such as the keeping of time sheets, and giving Helga/Lars/Sky a Fair Work contact leaflet, so they know their rights and recourse.
But even with those caveats — which appear to have been worked into Massola’s article after Di Natale’s media flack informed him of the full detail of the matter — the thing was off and racing. The Oz gave it a big splash in the middle of the week — where a labour law academic repeated the error that an au pair’s job was a 40-hour-week gig — and it was as useful in reminding people that the Greens are now a party drawn from the professional strata of society as it was for anything else.
Last night, 7.30 got into the game — running an equivalent of the famous old “Labor Split Looms” headline that Packer newspapers were said to have permanently set up in lead type in decades past — with a “NSW Greens split looms” story about the fact that, gasp, there are factions in the Greens, and gasp, some of them were rather to the left once.
For years there has been conflict between one group in the NSW Greens that wants the state branch conformed to a national organisation, and another group, drawn from the left, which would like to keep a degree of branch autonomy. There was a story there — with a recently appointed administrator taking the party to the Fair Work Commission — but it was wrapped in a shopworn and inaccurate portrayal of the NSW branches factions, of which there are three: the Green greens, the “watermelons” (red inside, green outside), who are drawn from ex-Trotskyist inner-city groupings, and the “Eastern Bloc” (haha) comprising those whose history tied them to the more, erm, official representatives of the Marxist left in decades past. The report elided the last two — and actually disappeared the Eastern Bloc altogether (yes, appropriate, ha bloody ha).
The fact that there are three groupings, in different alliances, is one reason why the NSW Greens have stayed together. In any case, NSW reds have always been pretty Green — the “green bans” movement of the 1970s started by the Communist-aligned Builders Labourers Federation was the first major green-red movement in the Western world. The struggles against the wholesale destruction of Sydney by its roads corporation was pioneered by the Trotskyist group led by Nick Origlass in the 1960s and ’70s. The German Greens were founded after both the Green bans and the formation of the Tasmanian UTG party, as a Green political party in 1972.
Which is why the NSW Greens split is always being forecast but never occurs, no matter how bracing the factional battles sometimes become. And if the show had wanted an accurate guide to it, it could have done better than having as its sole talking head David Burchell, long-time ex-editor of Australian Left Review, and a man who is famous for lecturing the left on the tyrannical pulse buried deep within its bosom blah blah, which he is in a position to know because he joined the Communist Party in the 1970s — the 1970s! — before going on to be a News Corp op-ed writer for a few years.
Burchell hates the Greens with a passion, mainly because he’s still railing against the Greens from 20 years ago — telling the ABC that the party is divided between hardened leftists, and the types who are more “anarchist”. Anarchist? This is the Greens 2016. There’s no time to be anarchist. Someone has to get home so the au pair can go boogie-boarding. It’s not easy having Greens Derangement Syndrome, but it is set to continue for a while longer.
You can take the hack out of The Australian but you can’t take The Australian out of the hack?
The worst GDS was the election of Di Natali, the very model of a modern trimmer & tacker, as leader of a forward looking party.
The Black W(r)iggle seems to spend each day intent on obliterating anything resembling Green principle or radical thinking.
Of course, the hacks do wotta hacks gotta do, lie, obfuscate and misrepresent.
“Anarchist? This is the Greens 2016.”
Guy, I know you don’t know Sydney very well, but its worth googling “Inner West Council protest” and checking out the footage of Sydney’s inner west Greens in action last tuesday night at Petersham town hall.
I know you’’ll avoid the Telegraph’s on principle, or claim their footage was doctored or something (“Greens and grubs in vile protest” – they wrote). But there’s plenty more versions online, including some by supporters of the protest.
Many of them are proud of what happened, and regard it as some sort of victory for the oppressed resident (some of the wealthiest property owner in the country). Other are more circumspect, and simply edit out the violence. Or in the case of one Greens aligned transport advocacy group, suggest it didn’t happen.
The videos clearly shows two Greens sitting state MPs, various councilors and the candidate for the seat of Sydney whipping up the rage of mob before and after the meeting – which was quickly shut down admidst some of the ugliest scenes I’ve ever seen at a protest. One girl has since been charged.
I went along to protest myself, but what I witnessed disgusted me.
Jamie Parker, Greens MP for Balmain speaks after visibly “aiding” a minor state government official out the door, and vows to make the new inner west council “ungovernable.” He urges the protestors to return to the next council meeting, he names the date, and shut it down again.
Anarchy? Getting close, Guy… Watch the videos.
Jenny Leong posted on Facebook that it was “an amazing effort.” Yes, it certainly was that.
And a massive own goal for the Greens too in their battle to help the Coalition get rid of Albo.
The thoughts of Guy…rusted on Greens supporter!
Well he would say all that, wouldn’t he?
Teddy’s comments sound nearer the mark!!
Allow me something further…. I was at the Petersham meeting to protest the WestConnex motorway. And I know this dates me, but I recall the anti-expressway movement (some things never change!) of the early 70s that Guy refers to. I went many meetings and demos in those days, and don’t recall Nick Origlass as playing any part. His disciple and biographer did though, Hall Greenland – one of the “ex-Trots” Guy also mentions – now NSW Convenor of the Greens.
You can see him in some of the protest videos from Tuesday night – a tall white-haired man yelling loudly into the face of a minor state bureaucrat.
I watched the 7.30 Report after Guy alerted to me, and thought it was a pretty fair assessment. The tensions in the NSW Greens may not “tearing it apart” (as News Ltd would hope), but they certainly play a big role in the party’s significant underperformance in NSW. Its support base is concentrated in the affluent gentrified inner ring suburbs, and that’s enabled it to win two State seats there. But it has gone backwards everywhere else in Sydney. Just outside the borders of Newtown and hugely Anglo, now very wealthy Balmain – where Sydney becomes more Asian and economically diverse, its vote falls off a cliff.
There the party’s faux Marxism and close association with inner city “hipsterism” makes it the butt of jokes.
Guy’s defense of DiNatale was risible. Sure, he has not done anything that thousands of wealthy people do, quite legally. They don’t pay their staff anything more than they actually “have” to. And they get advice on how to minimize the expenses involved in looking after multiple properties while living busy professional lives. Who wouldn’t? “You’d have to be mad not to” as Kerry Packer once told us. But the optics of this are just terrible for the Greens, something Guy doesn’t even address.
Instead he labels critics as being “deranged”. It seems to perturb him that this now includes the ABC, and presumably the Age – who broke the DiNatale story. Maybe all the media is “deranged” or suffering from something. Clearly they’re “mad” not to see what Guy sees.