21 October 2008

The real Green leadership battle needs to be finished first

| johnboy
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The Canberra Times reports what’s been rumbling in the Green blogosphere for a few days now.

They don’t have a leader.

A reasonably involved public observer might have thought it was Shane Rattenbury. He seemed to do more media and was put up for the Chief Minister’s debate.

But it seems that is not the case:

    The Canberra Times understands the Greens’ three Members-elect Shane Rattenbury, Meredith Hunter and Amanda Bresnan met for about four hours yesterday to discuss the party’s leadership and their strategy for negotiations with the two major parties. Greens spokesman Tom Burmester said the discussions were set to continue.

But before they can really talk turkey with the majors they are going to need a leader, and that might have to wait until they know about the potential second seat in Molonglo.

It could be a long wait.

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I`ve turned…too busy hugging trees to care

Definitely a beat-up.
Although they are going through the technical process of electing a party leader to satisfy their party’s constitution, Rattenbury said on Monday that they would meet with the Libs and ALP on Tuesday. I expect that they’ll have formalised their own leadership well before a deal is done on who will have minority government.

Mrshmellowman12:52 pm 21 Oct 08

To be effective they don’t have to have a leader – anyway – the Greens are all too self effacing to put their hand up for the leadership.

Shane can not do it because there are two women so that would be a continuation of the paternalistic hegemony that has been crushing women underfoot for eons
Meredith and Amanda can’t do it because Shane has better credentials as a talking head.

Personally I think they should agree to split it between them – there are only three of them and they won’t have the same infighting problems of the Libs

Shane can talk to deep green issues and Meredith, who is much better at social welfare type issues, can talk to housing, poverty, equality etc and Amanda can have the rest

Gungahlin Al said :

Beat-up by CT in the absence of anything more incendiary to report.
Slow news day? Make wild assertion and see what pops up.
Predictable, but nonetheless disappointing…

Dunno Al, my reading of the jungle drums suggests they have a problem here.

* Same goes for comment @ barking toad about Greens being decisive. Care for another comparative list? *

Deja vu again repeated for a second time.

Aurelius said :

One of the problems with the minor parties is their inability to make decisions.

Riiiiiiight. Because the ACT Libs are so good at that. And NSW Labor. And any bunch of Democrats…. ok, they’re now minor to non-existent. (I could keep going on the majors.)

But c’mon!

Same goes for comment about Greens being decisive. Care for another comparative list?

Gungahlin Al12:22 pm 21 Oct 08

Beat-up by CT in the absence of anything more incendiary to report.
Slow news day? Make wild assertion and see what pops up.
Predictable, but nonetheless disappointing…

One of the problems with the minor parties is their inability to make decisions.
They’re too hung up on consensus and not wanting to offend anyone, that they default to a position of not making decisions at all.
They need to have some structure, and leadership. Even nationally, Senator Bob Brown isn’t their leader, he’s just the one who has been a Senator the longest.
They need a leader, but from my experience in working with them, they’ll resist picking one for as long as possible (and will earn the disrespect of the community and the other MLAs as a result).

barking toad12:03 pm 21 Oct 08

Greens being decisive as usual.

They’ll be great for the ACT.

Wish they’d pick up all those posters. I can’t use any more wooden stakes.

Not good. At a time when their star is on the rise, any whiff of disunity and internal bickering even before the polls are declared (or whatever it’s called when 100% is counted — er, or is it?) does not look good.

Especially when some sectors of the community are already/still grumbling the ‘Greens are anti-business’ mantra.

Everett: Well, I’m voting for yours truly!
Pete: Well, I’m voting for yours truly too!
Delmar: … OK, I’m with you fellas.

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