Well, it’s not easy writing up their policies, at any rate, because for all the public perception of The Greens as a single-issue party, there’s an awful lot more to their policy platform than the environment.
I’m going to start with a brief conflict of interest statement. First, while I’m not a member of the Greens – or of any other political party, actually – I will be handing out How-To-Vote Cards for them at this election, and probably scrutineering for them as well. So you can take it as read that I do, on the whole approve of their platform. I’m not a party member because I am, at least in theory, a swinging voter – I really do prefer to look at all the parties and make a choice every election about which party most reflects my beliefs about how our society should be run. Being a party member sort of obliges you to vote for that party, I think! It so happens that for the last few elections, the Greens have been the closest to my beliefs of the parties that actually run candidates in my electorate, so I choose to help them out.
(Having said that, I do tend to vote for even tinier parties in the Senate if they appeal to me, and then send my preferences to the Greens. This is probably something I’m not supposed to say in public, but it does happen to be true. Quite apart from anything else, I rather like the Democrats, and view them as an endangered species, worthy of my Greenie vote. Conserve idealistic-but-doomed political parties, I say!)
