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http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21560972-5007146,00.html GREENS CUT DOWN TO SIZE By Malcolm Farr April 16, 2007 12:00am AS ONE of 16 siblings, Steve Fielding worked out that to get ahead of the pack you had to find an angle, a point of separation. If you didn't, 15 otherwise loving brothers and sisters would trample all over you. Fielding, a Victorian and the lone senator from the party Family First, is applying that early lesson to politics. He believes that at the coming election, Family First will stand out from the other minor parties and be chosen by voters as their guardians in the Upper House. Broadly, he argues that the Australian Democrats are finished as a political force and that the Greens have no appeal to mainstream electors. That leaves Family First, according to the Fielding analysis, as the only minor party available to stand up for families and family values. And he believes the Howard experiment of Government control of the Senate means voters will be keen to prevent a repeat, and will be looking for a counter balance to the major parties. This is bold stuff, delivered with Fielding's usual enthusiasm and confidence, and with an attitude that it is all so obvious that explanation is unnecessary. But it is particularly bold given that Family First barely rates as a political entity, getting just 7 per cent of the primary vote in the recent Queensland elections, 4.3 per cent in the Victorian poll, and disappearing in the NSW election just a month ago. Fielding showed in 2004 that Family First can attract the second preference votes needed to elect a senator. In Victoria, he received only about 55,000 first preference votes, when a quota for election as a senator was about 430,000. He prevailed on second preferences. Fielding hopes to get those preferences again for himself, and for more Family First candidates, by demonising the Greens -- the party he sees as his greatest rival. He describes them as "the extreme Greens" and says they push "dangerous policies" in relation to drug use and addiction treatment. In a press release he asks bluntly: "Which party do (families) want holding the balance of power in the Senate? Do they want a party like Family First that supports family values or a party like the Greens that promotes extremism?" He has a point. Nice people though they might be as individuals, the Greens are scary to voters when it comes to the ballot box. And it is difficult to argue that all four federal Greens speak the same language as the general community. A peek at the web site of Green Senator Kerry Nettle of NSW would confirm this. Nettle seems to represent a community based somewhere beyond Australia's borders, a tiny club of excitable foreign policy amateurs and groupies. On her website, just above right of a January photo of "Kerry in Palestine and Israel", is a list of her five most recent press releases - one called for visas for "climate change refugees"; one mourned the death in New York of an Israeli academic; a third urged diplomatic action against Zimbabwe; and the latest demanded talks with the Iraqi Government on a troop withdrawal. There was one that might have been relevant to ordinary Australian voters. It condemned a Federal Government plan for a "so-called 'performance' pay system" for teachers. But even this brief, tangential concession to the fact that everyday Australians have lives that revolve around their children and not around deceased Israeli academics and climate change refugees, is loaded. It is a robust plea for the interests of teachers, not those of the youngsters they teach. Fielding's five press releases listed on his website on Friday dealt with grocery prices; petrol taxes; the WorkChoices industrial relations laws; how those laws might affect public holidays; and concern for Qantas workers and their families. Nettle, who has never worked in private enterprise and operates as if she were still in the student representative council and not the Senate, is not a typical example of how the four Green senators function. However, it remains a fact that of the 43 policies listed by the Greens, none directly deals with families or small business. Fielding has little to campaign with other than himself and his energy, a small, loyal staff, and a clutch of policies that are beyond ideology. His greatest political danger is that he and Family First will be branded as part of the fundamentalist Christian movement, which to some is as daunting as the Greens might be. Fielding has taken advice and staff from former independent senator Brian Harradine but is not a Harradine clone, a campaigner on religion-based issues. He has a Christian faith which is important to him but isn't a prig, swears occasionally and enjoys a social beer. Fielding will rely on his ordinariness to convince ordinary voters he will represent them. |
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