Senator Andrew Bartlett
Thursday, December 23, 2004
 
Democrats & Greens
A week or so ago, some of the media ran with suggestions the Democrats were thinking of trying to merge with the Greens. This was a distortion of comments made by Lyn Allison, but it become a story anyway which then gave others the chance to comment on it (even though what they were commenting on was wrong to start with).

It's amazing how often this question comes up, which led me to thinking about why it keeps getting mentioned even though its never really looked like happening. I remember in my earlier times in the Democrats, we ran as part of a broader alliance of groups - loosely calling ourselves the Green Alliance - with Drew Hutton as the Lord Mayoral candidate (Drew was the Greens Qld Senate candidate in the election just gone).

This was before the Qld Greens Party was formally formed. There were plenty of opportunities then and in the preceding years when those who gravitated towards forming the Green Party could have joined or merged with the Democrats but chose not to.

They always perplexed me, because usually the reasons people gave for going to all the trouble of setting up a separate party - which would then inevitably be in competition with the Democrats - were variations along the theme of "the Democrats were formed by an ex-Liberal Party Minister so they're all really just closest Liberals and therefore too right wing".

I still hear comments like that every now then even today. I’ve always found such a line of 'reasoning' incredibly shallow, but I guess it's another reminder of the strength of perceptions over reality. Of course, some people wanted to set up a separate party so they could have control of it, and others specifically wanted a more overtly ideological 'Left' party.

I have been involved in negotiations a few times over the years to varying degrees and at various levels about the possibilities of cooperation/alliance/ merger with the Green Party. I never saw any genuine signs of real interest in this path from Green Party people even back in the early '90s.

Sometimes I think that's a pity - I used to be quite in favour of the idea some years ago (a view not shared by every one in the Democrats obviously). But 12 years of effort by the Greens to replace the Democrats in the Senate has left the two of us with a lower combined vote and no extra Senate seats between us.

Still, the two parties are quite different in our approach to politics and on business/economic issues and I don't really see the point in even bothering to look at alliances at the moment.

Despite all that, here's a photo of Bob Brown and me with an appropriately cuddly slogan.


DEMOCRATS & GREENS

Laura from Melbourne, produced it and posted it on her site, so I though I'd copy it here.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, December 23, 2004 Permalink
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