LIKE many Victorians I have watched the growth of the Greens vote with increasing concern. In the recent federal election the Greens claimed historic success, with Adam Bandt elected as the member for Melbourne on the back of Liberal preferences.
The Greens also appear to be on the rise in the state election and there is talk of a Green-Liberal deal to secure government. The reality is that the Greens need Liberal preferences to win any seats.
I hope that the state Liberal leadership, in its considerations, will ask what service to Victoria’s future would be done by delivering seats to the Greens with Liberal preferences.
Green policies need to be exposed for the radical fringe they represent. No voter should cast a vote for the Greens without knowing that despite the mask of Greens branding, heroin injecting rooms and death duties are high among their priorities.
As a senator for Victoria I hope the state parliamentary and organisational leaders of the Liberal Party recognise the significant precedent that a preference deal with the Greens would represent.
If it comes to pass, the Liberal Party would be dealing with an organisation that is fundamentally opposed to Liberal beliefs.
The real policy agenda of the Greens goes far beyond saving old-growth forests and protecting frogs and bandicoots. How do we know? Bob Brown’s recent elevation in Julia Gillard’s Labor-Green alliance exposed the Greens’ priorities.
Brown didn’t talk endangered species and wild river conservation when he signed off on a power-sharing arrangement with Gillard. He was strangely silent on genuine environmental issues. Instead, the Greens offered their radical view of higher taxes and removing choice in education and health. Their agenda begins with extolling euthanasia and goes on to death duties, gay marriage, increasing taxes, carbon or otherwise, and ripping government funding from private schools.
What’s next? Legalising drugs and heroin injecting rooms as previously embraced by the Greens?
This is the Greens’ agenda in the Australian Parliament. Greens in the Victorian Parliament won’t be any different.
John Brumby’s Labor Government goes to the polls on November 27. The Labor Government has been an extraordinary disappointment. In contrast to the successful reform agenda of the Kennett government over just seven years, 11 long years of Labor has delivered little beyond cost overruns, an army of media advisers and ever-increasing spin.
This year, Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu has led the charge to expose the mismanagement and lack of vision of the Brumby Government. He has effectively presented himself as a genuine alternative premier with a real agenda for the future of Victoria. The Brumby Government’s lacklustre performance means the election is there for the taking.
Victorians, and particularly Liberals, don’t want a preference deal with the Greens that entrenches a radical agenda. The future of Victoria depends on the party leadership taking into account the views of many grassroots Liberals.
Helen Kroger is a senator for Victoria and a former state president of the Liberal Party of Victoria
