Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to talk about the slimy shade of the so-called Victorian Greens, the party that seeks to present itself as virtuous and full of principles. Let us deal with a few facts. On 12 September 2007, the Melbourne Age exposed an internal Greens document which revealed that the Labor Party is the Greens’ main electoral enemy in Victoria. The official Greens document was produced after the 2004 federal election and was marked ‘For Green Eyes Only’. We were green with envy when we came across it.

The 105-page document refers to a Greens’ head office directive that getting rid of the Howard government was not part of their campaign strategy. Despite all the Greens’ parading against the Howard government, the document is absolutely clear and unequivocal: while the Greens posture about the evils of the Howard government, their real objective is to defeat the Labor Party, not the Howard government. That is why they run very hard in Melbourne, a seat the Liberals cannot win.

The Greens’ highly sleazy endeavour at winning the seat of Melbourne has involved dedicating large amounts of human and financial resources that could have been used productively towards a change of government. I am sure they did not tell the donors their real intentions with respect to those donations—in essence, money taken under false pretences. The Victorian Greens’ righteous posturing on symbolic issues gives the impression that they assume a higher moral ground on their political conduct. However, the expose has shown that they are a cheap and nasty version of the clean image they present, or seek to present, to the voting public.

Since the 2006 Victorian state election, in the upper house the Victorian Greens have voted with the Liberal Party on 68 per cent of parliamentary business. To suggest that there was no deal between the Liberal Party and the Greens in Victoria is just not factual. The record speaks for itself. The Greens have voted with the Liberals under the obligation of their preferences deal at the last state election even when it has gone against their own so-called political party principles. The Greens even voted against their own position on the Victorian Renewable Energy Bill and the Nuclear Energy Bill.

Greens Senate candidate Richard di Natale has unconvincingly stated that the leaked document did not provide proof that a widely suspected formal preferences arrangement existed with the Liberal Party at the last state elections. If the Greens are that cheap to sell out so quickly, how could they possibly be trusted with more than the limited responsibility they already have in the Senate and in the Victorian upper house? The Greens’ double standards make the electorate ponder: what other so-called party principles are they negotiating for preference deals at this time?

The expose has made the Victorian public rightly question the Greens’ integrity beyond their conduct at a Victorian level. I refer, for instance, to the fact that the so-called Senate leader of the Greens, Bob Brown, had to resort to deliberate dishonesty to launch a personal attack on me at a recent Northcote forests forum as a case in point. Not only did they distribute misleading misinformation in my own electorate, he and his colleagues were loose with the truth when they accused me of ‘backing the woodchippers plan to have our native forests logged, chipped and then burnt for electricity’. Bob Brown knows I support the responsible use of waste to generate electricity—and I emphasise ‘waste’. It is regrettable that it revealed the Greens’ double standards and dirty tricks, but I hardly find it surprising because I have always contended that they have no principles. The Greens’ purposeful misrepresentation and lies are motivated by desperation to win votes even if it means deliberately misleading the public at a local, state and national level.

However, the Victorian public is not easily fooled and has made their support for Labor very clear at the weekend. The resounding support for Labor in the by-elections at Williamstown and Albert Park was a great victory in its own right. It was also an indication of the Victorian public’s disgust at the Greens’ double standards. The Greens truthfully are no different from any other political party. They will do whatever deal they can and trade off whatever principles they can for their own political benefit. They are not to be trusted. They are a grubby little party, a party of double standards and no principles. I seek leave to present the Greens voting pattern in the Victorian upper house side by side with the Liberal-National Party’s voting pattern since the last Victorian election.

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