Like many people who are active in our wonderful Greens Political Party I started off in Student Uni politics, the ALP, young ALP politics. There was no Greens back then in Victoria.
Having seen the processes of the Student Uni movement (dominated by ALP people) and seeing the way ALP politics worked was so instructive. The way the ALP ‘Unity” faction worked makes far more sense now than it did then. One of the things that I didn’t understand at the time was the way some of these people activelyI discouraged and hassled young bright people if they were in other factions or disagreed with them. Now it’s easier to see why. Many people who were doing these things weren’t interested in building a strong party, they were interested in their own rise and the consolidation of their own position. It explains so much about who rises in the ALP and we all know the results.
At 18 I was President of the South Bendigo Branch of the ALP, but then came along the ‘Australia Card”, really a dystopian idea. I was opposed to the idea of such ‘State Control’ so we held a public rally in the Town Hall, and in the end I resigned from the ALP. I often say that if I hadn’t resigned then I would have had dozens of opportunities since. I simply do not understand how people remain in a political party that is so blatantly corrupt, taking money from the gambling lobby at the detriment of the poorest, taking money from the logging industry to destroy our natural environment, taking money from the mining industry, the oil and gas lobby etc. all about money, and lets not forget the disastrous foreign policy direction of the ALP; many opportunities to leave.
Anyway, it wasn’t long before I heard that Peter Singer was standing for the Greens at the 1996 federal election for the Senate. A quick story in the local paper and a few people got together and formed the Bendigo Branch of the Greens. We had a great candidate in Doug Ralph and off we went. The Green Vote was 3.2% and has increased consistently ever since and now sits around the solid 15%.
It was always the environment that was my motivation, I always went for walks in the bush as a child, miles and miles in the landscape that had been ravaged by the Gold rush and the destruction it brought, but still, there is always magic around every corner.
Climate change was beginning to be discussed then and the Greens were at the lead. It’s hard to believe that we are not acting globally to address this greatest of all problems but when we see how the political system is totally corrupted by greed and short-term thinking, we start to understand that truth and logic and scientific endeavour are not enough. I still think Global Warming, habitat loss and all the associated results are our greatest challenge, we should not reconcile from being at the absolute forefront of the discussion.
One final thing. I have never been as proud of the Greens as I have over our opposition to the dreadful genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza. A genocide committed with the immoral support of the USA and apparently the ALP and the LNP/ONP. Only a corrupted political environment would allow parties to be on the wrong side of the GW debate, and only a completely divorced moral thinking would not wholly condemn a live streamed genocide.
Go Greens
David
