18 February 2009

Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven - Greens and Labor still Hunky-Dory

| johnboy
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The ABC brings the news that both Greens and Labor are happy with their parliamentary agreement.

    The two parties met [yesterday] to formally review the agreement that saw Labor returned to power.

    Greens leader Meredith Hunter says 23 of the 95 outcomes listed in the agreement have already been delivered.

    ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says the Greens’ decision to side with the Liberals in several crucial votes in the Assembly hasn’t damaged the party’s relationship with Labor.

Despite this rosiness Mr Stanhope does get in a grumble at the end about the Greens getting their votes wrong by lining up against him. He promises to “discuss” these errors with them in future.

UPDATED: The Greens’ Meredith Hunter has published her thoughts on the meeting.

    “Both parties are firmly committed to the Agreement, and are pleased with the progress that has been made in these first few months.”

    “Of course there is a lot more work to be done, and the Greens are well aware that some of the Government’s more substantial policy commitments are yet to be acted upon.”

    “Since the Agreement was made in October, the twin impacts of climate change and the Global Financial Crisis have become noticeably more apparent. The appropriate response to the combined economic, social and environmental challenges before us is to implement policies that deliver benefits on both fronts.”

No word yet from His Chieflyness.

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The first sentence of Meredith’s thoughts on the parliamentary agreement says everything I needed to know: “This meeting was the first opportunity that the ALP and ACT Greens Members have had to sit down together since signing the Parliamentary Agreement last year”

All due care and attention is being paid to this partnership.

Bresnan: We’ll bring half-hour buses within the next half-year.
Chief Minister (next day): No we won’t, too costly, no timeframe set to get round to doing it.

Chief Minister: Caroline LeCouteur has questionable motives for being against the data centre (gas-fired power station) as she wants to stop new fossil-fuel based power generation.
Meredith Hunter (next day): It would have been “helpful” if Mr Stanhope had spoken to the Greens first before spraying. Damage control kicks in.

Meredith Hunter: We’ll deliver our commitments now “over the next 4 years”, some time, when the Chief Minister decides with Katy that they’ll spend a bit here and there to their doing. (We’re not really ineffectual folks and still have a say).

And now we have the inevitable defense of the agreement even with Ms Hunter having to write a letter to the editor in the Crimes today, to reach the people, smooth the bumps, keep up the charade.

There are other examples, making it boring reading everytime they play ping-pong in the media.
Turned off from the Greens long ago? Lefty socialism? Chances at next election?

proofpositive6:29 pm 18 Feb 09

So far as the ALP were concerned the terms of the agreement were only aspirational in nature

Do we know all the details of this 95 point agreement between Labor and Greens. Most of policies said to deliver economic and environmental benefits have not been evaluated to determine the likelyhood of their effectiveness.

Still if they’re sure to an average degree of certainty that there is a high probability that something done will produce a result of X + or – 30% who are we to argue because there is no way they can be wrong.

what passes for jovial, jocular for stanhope?

I thought it wasn’t in jest.

It’s hard to say from the article whether Stanhopes line at the end was serious or a ‘jovial, jocular’ statement.

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