The Australian Greens are once again locked in a race with their NZ cousins to see who can scrape the deepest level of fetid sludge in the political barrel. Well, you Kiwis might have Darleen Tana, Golly G and El Loco Woko, but they’re facing some pretty revolting competition from across the ditch.
As if the bullying, sexual assault, rape, stealing, drug abuse, drug smuggling, promoting bestiality and necrophilia and paedophiles, weren’t enough, there’s the anti-Semitism.
Thankfully, the Greens have just earned themselves a powerful new enemy in Australia. One that has the potential to strike right in the Greens’ electoral base.
Firstly, though, our very own Loco Woko Downunder: a Greens candidate who seems determined to fill out the entire Bingo card of Green awfulness.
The ACT Greens have defended a candidate’s social media posts admitting to taking an illegal drug, expressing strident anti-Israel views and calling for politicians to be hanged “in the street”, saying the remarks were “impassioned” but related to key issues for the minor party.
Yep: anti-Semitism, violence, criminality, hate… all key Green issues, for sure.
But for someone who claims to ‘disavow violence’, Greens candidate for the seat of Kurrajong, James Cruz, sure seems to like inciting violence.
Social media posts surfaced in which he said he wanted to “f..king kill politicians” and “send them to The Hague and hang them in the street” over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers.
Mr Cruz also wrote “f..k Israel” and “their genocidal regime” in response to a news article about a woman and baby in Gaza being killed by Israeli forces.
“I don’t give a s..t how many of their occupying forces die when they couldn’t care less about indiscriminately slaughtering civilians, and actively cheer as they die,” he wrote on Facebook in July 2014 […]
In other posts on X, Mr Cruz said he had “already admitted to taking md”, referring to the drug MDMA, and advocated for the abolition of prisons while also pushing for “banking execs” to be imprisoned.
Mr Cruz also said his party was “literally, unashamedly … going to do all these things” in response to an article about a NSW Greens candidate describing a coward’s punches as “brave” and arguing for fewer police.
That’s how you ‘disavow violence’? Another way, according to the Greens, is by glorifying violent terrorists.
The historic posts surfaced just days after Mr Cruz was forced to issue a clarifying statement over a separate post on X in which he appeared to suggest Hezbollah should be removed from Australia’s list of proscribed terrorist organisations […]
Another Greens candidate Harini Rangarajan came under fire after she reportedly wrote a blog post comparing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden to Jesus Christ.
Laughably, the Greens are falling back on the old ‘my account was hacked’ excuse.
As next year’s election looms, though, the Greens have earned themselves a powerful new enemy.
Independent schools are preparing to launch a nationwide campaign in Greens and marginal electorates calling out the “relentless and baseless vilification” of private schools and urging constituents not to support parties that would abolish their funding and limit educational choices.
Independent Schools Australia revealed it would begin targeting seats held by the left-wing minor party, as well as other hotly contested electorates, following increasing criticism over the allocation of government funding to private schools.
This is an issue that could well strike at the Greens’ electoral heartland. Greens voters are the wealthiest voting bloc in Australia, concentrated in the chic inner suburbs of the biggest cities. The sort of people who send their kids to private schools: in Green Central, the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, the owners of million-dollar terrace homes truck their children to private schools out of the area, rather than Fitzroy Primary (too full of refugees from the nearby public housing towers).
ISA chief executive Graham Catt said his organisation was gearing up to take the fight to the Greens, with school leaders, teachers and parents making clear “they’ve had enough of the relentless and baseless vilification of families who simply want the best for their children”.
“Parents are making significant sacrifices in a cost-of-living crisis, and we know from our research that families – especially in key marginal seats – feel betrayed by policies that threaten their educational choices,” Mr Catt said.
“With an election approaching we will be working to ensure families’ voices are heard loud and clear in key electorates, including those held by the Greens.”
While the Greens want to slash private school funding, not everyone is so sure.
The row with the ISA could be one of the Greens’ first major tests in holding the formerly Liberal Queensland seats of Ryan and Brisbane, with the potential to complicate the party’s plan to win more wealthy marginal seats off Labor, the Coalition and teal independents at the next election.
As part of research by the ISA conducted late last year, more than 80 per cent of the 2000 parents surveyed agreed it was important that families had the right to choose which school was best for their child.
More than 70 per cent agreed every child had a right to “some level of government funding” for their education, while 66 per cent agreed that if independent school funding was cut, the public system could not cope with the increased enrolments.
Let’s see if Greens voters are really prepared to practice what their party preaches.
