Front row seats for the brawling Greens

It’s not just a fight. It is that most amusing of all donnybrooks, a hippy fight. One not only to watch but something to remember and relish. Forget the Scomobile sans Scomo or Shorten’s manufactured town hall excursions, a Greens stink is what brings the crowds back to politics.

In Sydney, there have been allegations made against Greens MLC, Jeremy Buckingham of sexual harassment, unwanted touching. We don’t know the details and perhaps that is best.

But we know these allegations exist because the Greens MLA for Newtown, Jenny Leong, said so under parliamentary privilege despite a finding of an internal inquiry found the allegations unproven.

Ever since, Green old salts like Bob Brown have gone to ground, perhaps shamed into silence with the certain knowledge that the party of environmentalism has become an unfunny parody of student politics.

I don’t expect many people have the stomach to grasp what is really going on here. It is only the crazy brave who would plunge headlong into the fetid pool of Greens factionalism.

The first thing I noticed in the wake of Leong’s nifty, risk-free use of parliamentary privilege is that those who stacked up with her and those who came out agin’ her were drawn neatly along the party’s factional lines.

If we put aside the unpleasant nature of the allegations and watch who has come out in support of whom, what we are left to conclude is this is a factional battle in progress.

Factions in the Greens? Surely not, I hear you say. The Greens are a united group who gather as one in forlorn NIMBY protests and collectively macramé their own yoghurt. All right, stereotyping saves time but in the case of the NSW Greens, it is not apt. The NSW Greens is a misnomer. There isn’t a skerrick of environmental concern across the party.

Without getting in to the pernicious details or without having to consult the green colour chart (red-green, blue-green, green-green etc) the NSW Greens basically fall into two main camps, – A bit mad on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays while on the other side of the battlements stand the stark, raving, howling-at-the-moon crazy every single day of the week.

In other words, those who have nodded fervently in agreement while reading Rousseau, Mao and Trotsky to those who shun books as the hallmarks of white privilege and would consign the lot to the flame if they could figure out a way to make the vast bonfire carbon neutral.

Meanwhile in Victoria, the fighting has been replaced by calls for peace, love and understanding.

Two weeks out from an election, the Greens, who believe violent language and bad male behaviour is a hanging offence when it happens elsewhere, but when the viciousness is perpetrated by one of its own, it is not just ok but part of an important element of one’s personal development.

The Greens candidate for Footscray, Angus McAlpine, is an “entertainer” who goes under the stage name, Fat Gut. Mr Gut was, and possibly still is, a rapper who used to call gay men f..king faggots.

I thought that language went out when VicPol disbanded the old Squirrel Squad (so called because undercover police officers would loiter around in public toilets et cetera etc) back in the 1960s but then I don’t spend a lot of time listening to rappers.

Gut also knocked out a catchy little tune about date rape, suggesting the date rape drug Rohypnol was a useful tool.

“Got no class when trying to get some ass, put a rowie (Rohypnol) in your glass and wait for a few minutes to pass.”

By his own party’s admission, Gut made poor choices on social media. Oh dear. But in the interests of free speech and all that, he has been forgiven for debasing and vilifying women and gay men in song.

Indeed, the Victorian Greens decided not just to keep him on the ticket but to explain that he was undergoing a “personal journey.”

Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam came over all Tammy Wynette, standing by her man before getting a bustle in her hedgerow.

“A process of change is a journey and there are steps on the way, it often doesn’t happen overnight,” Ratnam said in support of Gut.

In other words, yes, there are two paths you can go by but in the long run there’s still time to change the road you’re on.

It really makes me wonder.

This from a party that spends its time judging others harshly without wit or wisdom, trampling due process with calls for the sadistic shaming of the guilty, the mistaken, the foolish and sometime even the innocent.

The Greens are a hopeless joke unleashed on Australia’s bloated middle class.

The old stereotype would suggest the Greens’ political existence relies on public concern for critically endangered lichen rather than human beings, but the Greens have moved on from environmentalism. At least with the old green Greens we knew what to expect.

Now, they’ve become a tawdry shadow of the worst elements of the major parties, the ugliest possible expression for the terribleness of modern politics, a dangerous cocktail of sanctimony and cant.

Still, it is a lot of fun to watch them brawling. Get yourself a good seat.

Fight, fight, fight.

This column was published in The Australia 16 November 2018