More Greens Party graffiti vandals
December 11th, 2007Most people think that graffiti is a mindless vandalism. People scribbling seemingly meaningless words with spray paint on public property – surely no-one could see that as art?
The Greens Party does.
Their leader, Greg Barber, has been known to do a spot of graffiti himself, so he obviously doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with illegally defacing things. And now, as the Brumby Government tries to crack down on the vandalism that costs the community time and money to clean up, and that’s a blight on our beautiful Victorian landscape, the Greens Party is defending graffiti in the Parliament.
“A lot of graffiti, including tags, can be political, aesthetically pleasing and thought-provoking,” Sue Pennicuik, Greens Party Upper House MP said during a speech in Parliament - during which she also said that the laws to crack down on graffiti vandals were “draconian” and “unnecessary”.
Unnecessary? Clearly despite her “green” credentials, Ms Pennicuik hasn’t caught a train lately, or walked through a public place that could be beautiful but instead is covered with mindless scribble.
Some councils have even been forced to employ full-time staff to clean up graffiti. I wonder who the Greens Party thinks should bear that cost? Don’t they think taxpayers’ money is better spent on health, education and combating climate change?
“Not everyone hates graffiti and not all graffiti is bad”, Ms Pennicuik bizarrely pronounced.
Cleaning up graffiti costs the community – money that could be spent on services and protecting the environment? Doesn’t the Greens Party think protecting the environment is a more worthy cause than fighting for graffiti vandals’ right to deface public property and to be known as graffiti “taggers” instead of vandals, like Ms Pennicuik did in the Upper House?
Greens Party ducks the big issues
October 18th, 2007
Greens Party supporters vote for the Greens Party because they’re concerned about the environment. So doubtless they expect their elected representatives to question the Victorian Environment Minister very closely, to keep the scrutiny on what the Victorian Government is doing to fight climate change and make sure we have enough water.
If that’s what you were expecting, you must be feeling pretty disappointed. When the Greens Party finally got around to questioning the Environment Minister – last week – surely it was on something really important, that affects the whole community, or even the whole world? Something like climate change, perhaps?
No. Greens Party leader Greg Barber’s hard-hitting question was on the what scientific information the Minister will be collecting in order to make his decision about whether there will be a duck hunting season next year. Sure, it’s an issue that stirs up a lot of passion for a few people, but is that really what the people who elected the Greens Party expect him to be focused on?
And when it came to actual votes last week, the Greens Party predictably let their supporters down again. Last week, they didn’t just vote with the Liberals 68% of the time. They voted with them 100% of the time.
The Greens Party has been pretty annoyed with Labor for pointing out their record of voting 68% of the time with the Liberals in the Victorian Parliament. No doubt now that their record stands at 70.4% they’ll be screaming even more loudly.
Memo to Greg Barber: voters aren’t stupid!
September 17th, 2007The Albert Park and Williamstown by-election results showed overwhelmingly that voters reject the Greens Party’s deals with the Liberal Party.
Since this website was set up to highlight the Greens Party’s deal with the Liberal Party before last year’s State election, and their record of voting 68% with the Liberal Party, The Greens Party has been trying to blur the issue; claiming that they “don’t do deals” and that not every vote in the upper house should be counted when it comes to determining how often they vote with the Liberals. Their Victorian leader, Greg Barber, even went so far as to illegally deface an Austin Powers-inspired billboard put up to emphasise that the Greens Party is voting 68% with the Liberals!
During the Albert Park by-election campaign, we also outlined concerns with some of the Greens Party’s policies – like their plans to phase out select entry schools like MacRoberston Girls’ High. The Greens Party wasn’t very pleased about this, labelling concerns expressed by a former MacRob student as “lies” – just like they have with the fact that they vote 68% with the Liberals.
But it’s pretty hard to convince people that your political enemy is lying – when they’re quoting directly from your policy!
The Greens Party’s Victorian leader clearly thinks Victorians are stupid. He likes to suggest that Greens Party voters are more intelligent than others – but at the same time as calling them intelligent, he behaves as though they’re stupid; he thinks that if he suggests often enough that the Greens Party “doesn’t do deals”, Victorians will forget about how the Greens Party gave the Liberals half their preferences in 24 seats in return for Liberal Party preferences in four inner city seats the Greens Party thought they could win. He thinks if they claim to be surprised about suggestions that the Liberals gave them a website, people will overlook the cosy relationship the Greens Party and the Liberals enjoy, with their joint strategy meetings and eerily similar parliamentary questions. He thinks that if he denies that the Liberals are helping the Greens Party, then Victorians won’t notice that State Liberal Leader Ted Baillieu is out talking up the Greens Party, telling his supporters to vote for them – or that they gave the Greens Party the ultimate political helping hand, by not running candidates against them in the by-election.
He even thinks that Victorians will overlook his criminal activities.
But Victorians aren’t stupid, and the people of Albert Park saw past Greg Barber’s smoke-and-mirrors, and clearly indicated on Saturday that they didn’t want a representative in the Victorian Parliament who would largely vote with the Liberals and who would lie to their electorate about the political deals the Greens Party makes.
Rather than electing a Greens Party member to represent them, the voters of Albert Park clearly indicated that they would rather have a strong voice in the Brumby Labor Government than Greens Party lies.
“There’s plenty of water”
September 13th, 2007Greens Party candidate for Albert Park, John Middleton, obviously doesn’t think we’re in the middle of the worst drought Victoria has ever experienced.
He apparently hasn’t noticed dry gardens and parks around the electorate he wants to represent. And he clearly hasn’t talked to the people he wants to represent about how – like other Victorians around the State – they’re doing their best to save water, because they know supplies are at historic lows.
John Middleton was asked by journalists this morning what the Greens Party plan to manage Victoria’s vital water infrastructure is, since they’ve ruled out supporting the desalination plant we need to secure our water supplies.
“There’s plenty of water”, he said.
Although Victorians have every right to be proud of our amazing response to the Victorian Government’s campaign to save water – we’ve reduced our water use by 22% in Melbourne, and by similar amounts in regional Victoria – we know that our dams are currently only 38.9% full.
Does the Greens Party candidate for Albert Park seriously think that 38.9% is “plenty of water”?
Does John Middleton seriously believe that the people he wants to represent – who are doing their best to comply with Stage 3 water restrictions – think there is plenty of water?
It’s ironic that it’s the Greens Party – the Political Party that purports to be the only one that cares about climate change – isn’t thinking about how to secure our water supplies against climate change so we don’t run out of water!
But why would you, if you think there’s “plenty”?
If you were wondering why the Greens Party voted against vital water infrastructure, why they won’t support a desalination plant that will provide up to a third of Victoria’s water needs – a desalination plant that the Victorian Government is going to run using renewable energy – now you know.
They think there’s “plenty of water”.
Deal or no deal?
September 13th, 2007The Greens Party made a deal with the Liberal Party before last year’s State election.
And the evidence suggests the deal goes much further than just the preferences the Greens Party gave the Liberals in 24 seats, and the preferences the Liberals gave the Greens in the four inner-city seats they thought they could win.
This week proof emerged that during the last Federal election, the Greens Party didn’t actually want to get rid of the Howard Government – a government that has largely sat on its hands and done nothing about climate change over the past 11 years – the Greens Party didn’t even want to reduce the Liberals’ vote!
Instead their strategy was to attack Labor and take votes from Labor while “preserving” the Liberal vote.
Preserving the Liberal vote! Is that what Greens Party supporters expect of them?
Greens Party supporters are also angry that the Greens Party members they elected to the Victorian Parliament have been largely voting with the Liberals since they got in. 68% of the time with the Liberals, to be exact.
And why wouldn’t they be angry? This is the Political Party that sells itself as the Party of purity – the Party that doesn’t do deals, and is more concerned than any other party about the environment. But since being elected, the Greens Party has voted with the Liberals to stop Victorians having a say if the Federal Government tries to build a nuclear power plant in our State. And they’ve voted with the Liberals against tax cuts for hybrid cars – cars that can lower greenhouse gas emissions by up to 70% compared with ordinary cars!
So much for being the party that’s the most committed to stopping climate change!
And just why are they voting with the Liberal Party so much?
The Greens Party denies doing a deal with the Liberal Party – even though their own Federal leader praised it as a “sign of political maturity”. They’re denying they’ve held secret strategy meetings with the Liberal Party. They “claimed to be surprised” at newspaper reports that they’ve been the recipients of anti-government website addresses from the Liberals. The Greens Party is even denying that they they vote with the Liberals 68% of the time – and have made a selective list of upper house votes that contains more of the votes where they voted with the Government than the votes where they voted with the Liberals to try to “prove” it!
The Greens Party is even denying that they’ve had any help from the Liberals for tomorrow’s by-elections. But once again their Federal leader, Bob Brown, is out contradicting them by thanking thanking “the weathermakers in the Liberal Party” for the chance of winning Albert Park.
That’s a pretty big political boost that the Liberal Party has given the Greens Party – not running candidates against them is generally what parties do for their coalition partners. And Ted Baillieu, the leader of the State Liberal Party, even went out and told voters they should vote for the Greens Party tomorrow. And yet while Bob Brown was honest enough to come out and thank them publicly, Greg Barber – the Greens Party’s Victorian leader – denied that they’d even had any help from the Liberals!
No deal? No help? No credibility!
Dirty Greens Party political tricks
September 12th, 2007The Greens Party loves to pretend – and hopes their voters will believe - that they are above the sort of “dirty tricks” that they’re accusing Labor of.
They’ve come out and claimed a letter sent to Albert Park residents to inform them of the Greens Party policy of phasing out Victoria’s excellent select entry high schools, like MacRob, contains “lies” about their policies.
That’s Greens Party dirty political trick number one – accuse your opponents of lying, when actually they’re just quoting your policy which states very clearly:
“3.3.6 Phase out selective schools, streaming, and other models in the government system that channel students into separated pathways” (p.2, The Greens Party education policy).
Then accuse your opponents of trying to distance themselves from their message – have a look at the brochure that’s landing in Albert Park letterboxes today – it clearly states that “John Brumby and Labor believe that all students and their parents should have choice when it comes to education”. It’s clearly absurd to suggest that Labor is trying not to be associated with the important message that the Greens Political Party wants to take away choice from Victorian students and their families!
Greens Party dirty political trick number two is also simple: deceive the voters . When you realise that the people whose votes you want don’t like your policy of closing down great schools like MacRob – schools that give gifted students the opportunity for a fantastic education, even if their parents couldn’t afford the fees at one of Melbourne’s elite private schools – just do a backflip. Or at least make it seem like you’re doing a backflip.
Put out a press release – like the Greens Party did yesterday – saying you have no intention of closing down the school. Then hope your voters aren’t smart enough to realise that if you made MacRob another high school where you didn’t have to pass exams to get in, you’d have effectively closed down the select entry school, even if the doors technically remained open.
Greens Party dirty political trick number three? Manipulate the numbers. The Greens Liberal Deal website was set up to highlight the Greens Party’s record of voting 68% with their defacto coalition partners, the Liberals. The Greens Party has responded – yet again – by labelling this as “lies”, with Greg Barber, the Greens Party’s Victorian leader, going so far as to illegally deface a billboard set up to draw attention to their record. Then they put up their own set of numbers, which only includes SOME of the votes in the Victorian Parliament, not all of them – and for some reason, includes more of the votes where they voted with Labor than where they voted with the Liberals!
Greens Party dirty political trick number four – deny your deals. Despite the deal the Greens Party did with the Liberals before last year’s State election, where they gave the Liberals half of their preferences in 24 seats in return for Liberal preferences in the four inner city seats the Greens Party thought they could win, they continue to claim they “don’t do deals”.
Their Federal leader praised the deal as a “sign of political maturity”. The Victorian Greens Party continued to deny they did deals.
They held joint strategy meetings to discuss with the Liberals how to attack their common enemy – the Labor Government. They continued to deny they did deals.
They mysteriously ended up with an anti-government website address remarkably similar to the one the Liberals had been using during the State election campaign last year. They continued to deny they did deals.
The Greens Party continued to vote with the Liberals in the Victorian Parliament 68% of the time. They continued to deny they did deals.
The Liberals decided to give them a good chance of winning the Albert Park by-election by doing what any political party would do for a coalition partner – not running candidates against them. Bob Brown thanked the Liberal Party for that favour – but the Victorian Greens Party continued to deny they did deals – or even that they’d had any help from the Liberals!
Even when State Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu was out spruiking for Greens Party votes – they still kept denying the Liberals help them!
Greens Party dirty political trick number five – lie about your opponent’s policies. Make sweeping statements like “Labor doesn’t care about improving public transport” and hope that the voters don’t notice that the Labor Government has actually just introduced an extra 200 train services a week and completed the Craigieburn rail project, and is working on a wide range of other programs to improve public transport to improve public transport in Melbourne and regional Victoria even further. But then, as Greg Barber, the Victorian Greens Party’s leader, told 3LO:
“Who’s gonna believe…a party talking about another party’s policy?”
(Greg Barber, 3LO 11TH September, 2007, 9:10am)
Greens Party dirty political trick number six – claim the Greens Party doesn’t go in for dirty political tricks. Then hope your voters don’t notice that The Age has published extracts from your “For Green Eyes Only” report on why you didn’t win the seat of Melbourne – a report that reveals that the Greens Party head office had sent out a directive that getting rid of the Howard Government was not part of the Greens Party campaign strategy, and that the Greens Party’s goal was to attack the ALP vote and allow the Liberal vote to be preserved.
Greg Barber likes to suggest that Greens Party voters are more intelligent than other people – yet he’s hoping that like children watching a magician, they won’t realise that the Greens Party’s purity is just an illusion, created by the Greens Party’s dirty political tricks.
Vote Greens Party, say the Liberals
September 11th, 2007Can the Greens Party persist in saying there’s no deal between them and the Liberals when even Opposition Leader Ted is out spruiking for Greens Party votes in Saturday’s Albert Park by-election?
When Ted Baillieu was asked who Liberal voters should vote for in the byelections, he said: “I am not somebody who is going to advocate a vote for the Labor Party, that’s for sure, in either seat. I think the Labor Party needs a good kick up the bum.”
But even though the leader of their defacto coalition partner is out talking them up, the Greens Party will probably still carry on with their political strategy of trying to fool voters into believing they’re the Political Party of purity – the Party that doesn’t do deals.
They kept denying it during the State election last year, even after giving the Liberals half their preferences in 24 seats in return for Liberal Party preferences in four vital inner-city seats. They kept up the chorus of denials in the face of reports that the Greens Party and the Liberal Party were holding strategy meetings, and were perhaps even swapping anti-Government website addresses. They hoped no-one would notice that they were voting with the Liberals 68% of the time; even going so far as to publish their own statistics that only took some votes into account.
Even when the Liberals handed them a great chance of winning the Albert Park by-election by behaving as coalition partners always do, and not running candidates against the Greens Party, Greg Barber still refused to acknowledge that they’d been given any help by the Liberals! Even Bob Brown acknowledged that one!
They’d probably keep rejecting the evidence that the Greens Party did a deal with the Liberals, even if the newspapers published a letter Greg Barber wrote to Ted Baillieu saying “Let’s fight our common enemy, the Labor Government!”
The Greens Party plan for mediocrity in education
September 10th, 2007The Greens Political Party education policy says they want to “phase out selective schools, streaming, and other models in the government system that channel students into separated pathways” (p.2), even though they also give lip-service to the claim that “Every Victorian should be able to develop their full potential” and that “Funding models should ensure access for all, through additional funding to students most in need.”
But if every Victorian student should be able to develop their full potential, surely that includes our best and brightest?
Surely it’s not just average kids or kids with disabilities who are entitled to the best possible education?
Perhaps the Greens Party secretly sympathises with their defacto coalition partners, the Liberal Party, who think public education is so important that last time they were in government in Victoria they sold off 300 schools and sacked 9000 teachers!
Perhaps the Greens Party also privately thinks that exceptional kids should get a really good education – if their parents can afford the school fees of almost $20,000 at elite Melbourne schools?
Labor has plans to open two new select entry schools, as well as new Selective Entry Accelerated Leaning Programs – including in Albert Park Secondary College when it reopens. But the Greens Party is campaigning in Albert Park on a platform of closing these programs down! Shouldn’t we be giving every student, in every school, every chance to reach their full potential?
The evidence shows that academically gifted kids can quickly lose interest in learning, with school becoming an endless drone of basic lessons aimed at average kids. The Greens Party plan is a plan for mediocrity.
Part of planning for Victoria’s future is promoting investment and innovation, building on our strengths in areas like biotechnology, micro and nano-technologies, life sciences and environmental technologies. If we deliberately held back our most talented students, like the Greens Party wants to, just to ensure they’re not “separated” from less academically talented students, Victoria would be missing out.
Missing out on the creative, dynamic and high-skilled workers we need to ensure we remain the leading biotechnology location in the Asia-Pacific region, and that we continue to grow in areas like the information and communication technology industry. Missing out because of the Greens Party plan that all students should be average.
The Greens Party doesn’t care about planning for more and better jobs – and ensuring a bigger share of the investment pie for Victorian families. The Greens Party’s national leader admitted last week that the Greens Party are contesting the Albert Park by-election not because they’re interested in Victoria’s future, but because they want to “make things zing” in the Victorian Parliament.
They’re clearly not interested in serious policy development – and voting with the Liberal Party 68% of the time seems to be their preferred way of “making things zing” in Victoria.
The Greens Party has a real chance to win the Albert Park by-election, and deprive the families of Albert Park of a voice in Government. That real chance is thanks to the deal they did with the Liberal Party – and Bob Brown even thanked their defacto coalition partners, saying “we have to thank the weathermakers in the Liberal Party” for the good chance of winning Albert Park.
Greg Barber, graffiti vandal
September 6th, 2007
The Greens Party showed their true colours this week, defacing a billboard that was put up to highlight the Greens Party’s record of voting with the Liberal Party 68% of the time.
Greg Barber, the Greens Party’s Victorian leader, didn’t like the depiction of himself as the Liberal Party’s Mini-Me, so he decided to take the law into his own hands – by defacing private property.
Most Victorian families have been affected by illegal graffiti at one time or another – whether it’s because a train is delayed or cancelled due to vandalism, or because their fence has been spray-painted by teenagers.
And most hard-working Victorians would be outraged to think that an elected Member of their Parliament – someone expected not just to uphold the laws, but to make the laws – would deliberately break the law, committing an act of vandalism that we’d normally associate with juvenile delinquents.
It’s understandable that Greg Barber is angry about the Labor Party drawing attention to his Party’s habit of voting 68% of the time with the conservatives in the Liberal Party. He doesn’t want voters to know the truth. The Greens Party has even gone so far as to publish a set of numbers of their own devising – ludicrously, these numbers include not just voting on actual Bills, but every passing joke of a motion called by the Liberals! And the numbers still don’t add up to what they claim is their record of voting with the Government – they’re 5% out!
But even if you understand why Greg Barber was upset about being exposed as the Liberal Party’s Mini-Me, surely that doesn’t excuse flagrantly breaking the law and having no respect for other people’s property? Don’t Victorians have the right to expect better standards of behaviour from their Members of Parliament?
We certainly wouldn’t excuse a criminal who stole a car, or was caught shop-lifting – why should vandalism be any different?
Greens Party set to seize Albert Park
September 4th, 2007The Greens Political Party looks as though they might win the seat of Albert Park, with private polling revealing an unusually high number of voters are yet to make up their minds.
But Greens Party voters elsewhere in the community are shocked and disappointed that the Greens Party is voting in Parliament with their defacto coalition partner the Liberal Party 68% of the time (check out the ABC TV news story about it here).
People who voted for the Greens Party in the State election last year are angry about the secret deal with the Liberal Party that Greens Party leader Greg Barber refuses to explain – or even acknowledge – to the people he’s supposed to be representing.
It’s time that their record of voting with the Liberals 68% of the time and their voting against measures such as favourable tax treatment for hybrid cars that emit less greenhouse gases is thoroughly scrutinised. They even voted to stop an anti-nuclear power referendum in Victoria. Last week the Federal Greens even briefly flirted with keeping Howard’s unfair WorkChoices legislation.
The people of Albert Park are being presented with a choice during this by-election, and you should have access to all the information about the Greens Party that is asking for your vote – not just access to the information the Greens Party wants you to have, which includes misinformation about their record of voting 68% with the Liberal Party.
And they’re not just voting with them. There have been suggestions that they’re holding secret strategy meetings together. There’s the website that may have been given to the Greens Party by the Liberals as a gift – and there’s the even bigger gift the Liberals have given the Greens Party, of not running candidates against them in key by-elections.
The Greens Party’s Federal leader thanked the Liberal Party for that gift, saying “we have to thank the weathermakers in the Liberal Party” for the good chance of winning Albert Park. And yet Victorian Greens Party leader Greg Barber bizarrely refuses to acknowledge the helping hand, claiming that they wouldn’t take help from the Liberals – and that none has been offered! How stupid does he think the voters are, exactly?
But then, Greg Barber also claims that voting 68% of the time with the Liberals is just to keep the Government accountable - through the bizarre means of voting down pro-environmental legislative proposals.
He’s trying to save the forest by chainsawing down all the trees. If it wasn’t so serious, it’d be a joke.
This website was started to draw attention to the Greens Party 68% Liberal voting record, which has been a real shock and disappointment to many Victorians. The Greens Party has been called the “eBay party of Victorian politics”, because “everything is up for sale”. They’ll vote Liberal 68% of the time as long as the Liberals help them win seats in the inner city, through secret preference deals and even not fielding candidates in key by-elections.
That’s why Greens Party voters are so angry about the Greens Liberal Deal. We are going to continue to diagnose, expose and oppose it until all Victorians know what’s going on in the Parliament they elect to represent them.
