If the Greens party room expels New South Wales Senator Lee Rhiannon over their internal disagreements about the Gonski 2.0 legislation, it would set in motion events unprecedented in the history of the Greens.
Reports suggest that the nine other federal Greens politicians are actively considering removing her from the party room with meetings to be held this week over Rhiannon authorising anti-Gonski 2.0 leaflets distributed in New South Wales while the party was in negotiations with the government over the education funding legislation.
It has been reported that the extraordinary — and, at this stage, only potential — move to kick Rhiannon out of the party room follows two other times Rhiannon has been censured over her public dissidence: once for issues resulting from her losing the education portfolio, and once for the rise of the Left Renewal in New South Wales (a section of the Greens that is critical of leader Richard Di Natale). Rhiannon denied this claim this morning on ABC radio, and previously said in a statement she has never been a member of Left Renewal and has nothing to do with its emergence.
The New South Wales branch — of which Rhiannon is the only federally elected representative — has been particularly agitated over the Gonski negotiations with the government, with the Left Renewal group posting on Facebook yesterday congratulations to Rhiannon for listening to the union movement, teachers, and the party membership about the legislation:
“Left Renewal are astounded at the willingness of Sarah Hanson-Young and Richard Di Natale to negotiate with the Liberals on this bill, and to waver on Greens principles so far as to fail to rule out any cuts to public schools. This has cost the Greens the trust and support of unionists, teachers and public education activists across the country: trust built so strongly by years of fantastic work from the late John Kaye and from Lee Rhiannon before she had the Education portfolio stripped from her by Party Room.”
In the event Rhiannon’s colleagues vote her off the island, the Greens constitution allows the elected representatives to make this call if it is believed the parliamentarian’s “actions are causing or likely to cause severe damage to the party”. Rhiannon would still be a Greens politician in the federal Parliament, but would effectively sit as an independent. Rhiannon would have seven days to appeal the decision.
After this, the NSW branch of the Greens would then have to decide, within four weeks, whether it should commence expulsion proceedings against Rhiannon. All this will play out before a potentially bitter preselection battle in New South Wales against Rhiannon ahead of the next federal election, with former leader Bob Brown the most vocal in his opposition to Rhiannon remaining in the federal Parliament. Rhiannon has yet to say publicly whether she will run again at the next election.
Rhiannon said this morning that authorising leaflets on specific political issues was an important part of her work, and the first leaflets were released in the days after the Gonski legislation was first announced, and she wasn’t aware of negotiations with the government at that time. Rhiannon told the ABC this morning she felt bullied and harassed over the claims.
“Is it really a hanging offence when I am just doing what I do all the time? Supporting community, supporting local greens groups to be politically active,” she said.
The faster the Greens get rid of Rhiannon the better.
Times two!
There’s a lesson in the fate of the Democrats. In betraying their party’s members and voters to pass Howard’s regressive GST their party room pollies shot their party in the foot with a bazooka, leaving hem legless ever since.
them
Interesting point….but this is probably not a GST moment.
Dion, you have a poor memory for history. At the 1998 election, the Democrats policy was for a GST which excluded food and the “necessities” of life. This was clear prior to election date, and is what they were able to deliver when Howard was left with nowhere else to go after Brain Harradine and Len Harris (of One Nation) would not support a GST at all. Three of the Democrats’ Senators did not support the all of the policy, and voted against the GST. Their vocal dissidence began the myth which you perpetuate, partly because of the”disunity is death” syndrome.
The adoption of this election policy in 1998 by an executive group was a blatant betrayal of the membership-approved platform of the party which was well known to the voting public as being diametrically opposed to regressive indirect taxation especially when it was part of a Howard economic package to fund a handout to the Liberal Party’s donor corporations. It was the bazooka shot to the foot which left the Australian democrats legless forever. The vote of the venal pollies in the Senate party room to pass a GST was the opposite of the party’s platform and served as the coup de grace.
The Greens is a party of protest, much like One Nation….they would be well advised to stick to “horse trading” instead of wanting to own the government’s policy outcomes.
Never have I heard a sillier suggestion. The uncomfortable truth is that people are sick of the two main parties giving each other tugs behind the bike shed. If this has not dawned on you by now that explains why they don’t even get it. They labeled Corbyn an old protesting Trotsky until he stole May’s majority. The days of the old comfortable government swap arrangement are over. The Greens may, or may not, amount to anything, but it would be a mistake to think that this “protest” is going to vaporize.
Protest? No, policies. The only sane policies on most topics. Gonski 1 or 2 is thorny. And sabotaged from the outset by both Libbies and Labbies.
They become the ‘Eco-Liberals’ their bourgeois genealogy was always developing into.
Liberal, small l, sure. Always been far to the left of either of the other two. Lee did what her state wanted her to do, in the state’s house (the Senate) Other Senators in other parties should not be afraid to follow her lead in this.
Liberalism, the small ‘l’ kind, is centrist. Leftists know that political attitudes are the product of material culture, the proximity to the means of production etc. Like it or not, The Greens are a party of property. So the capital ‘L’ it is. Anything else is fantasyland.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2016
Fantasyland is where we are, then..
I’d love to see the methodology supporting the graph, and in the meantime will argue, pace Hobbes, that ‘liberty and necessity (he meant of an authority) are consistent’. Indeed, if you want to see the inconsistencies most starkly, look at the authoritarianism of rightward libertarians.
I’m more than happy to allow that the ALP embraced economic rationalism during the eighties, and that embrace dragged them rightwards economically. However, the individualism preferred by the progressive libertarian element of the Greens doesn’t necessarily drag them leftwards economically. It just underlines their bourgeois values.
Did you bother with the quiz that shows where ‘you’ are?
Methodology is probably assessing where the parties policies answer the questions in the quiz, and where the supporters of the parties are.
But it’s approximately correct, IMO. Especially in how it shows up the me-too-ism of the Labor and LNP party positions.
Lee is a curious case… She was prickly this morning on ABC-RN, expressing anger at Fran for being part of the hated mainstream media who have raised questions about her role in the Greens.
Unlike other pollies with radical pasts she hasn’t explained or brushed off (”we’re all young once, ha ha…”) her role as a member of a pro-Soviet communist micro party right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Instead she has always gone on the attack, accusing anyone who ever mentions that of being a “red-baiter.”
After communism collapsed she joined up with the Trots, the ones who’d been expelled from the ALP or left in disgust after their entry-ism had failed, and formed the NSW Greens.
They’ve been a dismal electoral failure ever since, the most poorly performing branch the Greens. But I’ve always wondered how she got on with all those Trots… As we know, Stalin and Trotsky didn’t exactly see eye to eye. But, like Lee, they’re all getting pretty long in the tooth now so I guess they managed to bury the hatchet (or ice-pick), and work on NSW Greens infamous platform of absolute opposition to absolutely everything!
Another idiotic remark. Opposed to coal but in favour of renewables. Opposed to dumping penalty rates. But in favour of decent pay. Opposed to gender inequality. But in favour of equal pay. Opposed to environmental destruction. But in favour of sustainable solutions. Suggest you go to their website and see their policies Teddy.
John they opposed Rudd’s ETS and helped produce a government which approves of Adani. They opposed Gillard’s Malayasian solution and now we’ve got the human wreckage of Manus. The opposed the marriage equality plebisicite and now we’ve got NOTHING. In my neck of the woods (inner west Sydney) they opposed a metro underground railway (and are continuing to oppose it) and now we’ve got the WestConnex motorway. Who is the real idiot here?
To all those who are saying the Greens are a protest party, they don’t have to actually compromise to produce outcomes for a better world for us, I say, yes – you are dead right. They haven’t.
Like all other Trotskyites, they’ve become neocons riddled with ‘the white man’s burden’ that seeks to educate us all into better moral shape. Thomas Frank’s “Listen Liberals” should be compulsory reading for the lot of them.