Wilkie: ‘I’ll take every opportunity to speak against the war’

Andrew Wilkie, 2004. Photo by Rob Kennedy. Independent Andrew Wilkie won the Tasmanian seat of Denison at the recent federal elections. Previously, the seat had been held by Duncan Kerr for 23 years and was considered a safe Labor seat.

Wilkie came to prominence in 2003 when he resigned from his job at the Office of National Assessments in public protest against the former Liberal/National Coalition government's decision to invade Iraq. The invasion was based on the claim Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, a claim that later proved to be false.

Wilkie ran as a federal candidate for the Greens in 2004 and 2007, but left the party in 2008 and ran as an independent candidate in the Tasmanian state elections in March 2010.

He has agreed to support the formation of a Labor minority government by not blocking supply or supporting frivolous no-confidence motions. He is not required to support Labor's policies, but instead plans to make a decision on every piece of legislation based on its merits.

He spoke to Green Left Weekly’s Melanie Barnes.

It’s an interesting election result. With a minority Labor government do you see an opportunity to bring about significant changes?

Absolutely. There will be a number of changes. The independents have already negotiated significant changes; we’ve achieved some parliamentary reform, about the length of question time as so on.

Everything has to come through parliament on its merits, based on what’s in the pubic interest, and blocked if necessary. The people who want to maintain our two-party strangle hold, our critics who say nothing will happen — I think the reality is quite the opposite.

There may or not be more policy that comes through parliament, but what does come through will be better policy.

I’ve been criticised about my decision to support the Labor government, and I wanted to remain independent. I and the other independents never thought we would be in a position like this, with a hung parliament; we assumed that a majority government would be elected.

So we were put in a position of having to support one party or another; if we didn’t then the choice would have been made for us. So I thought it better to be proactive.

Do you agree that the House of Representatives would be more representative if it was proportionally elected? For example, the Greens would have 17 seats under that system. Would you argue for such a reform?

I haven’t really thought about it. The situation in the Tasmanian state parliament, the proportional way the lower house is elected, is unique and works well. Every lower house electorate has five members, whereas [every electorate in] the rest of Australia only has one.

The outcome of the federal election has raised issues like: what does it mean if a party gets more votes? What should it mean if a party gets more seats? I would like to see a discussion around this.

In general, I do favour proportional representation, but I think it’s very unlikely we’ll get change anytime soon. There are good models, like in New Zealand where they have single-member electorates and proportional representatives in the same house.

There are interesting hybrid versions out there. I’m not agitating those changes to the House of Reps just yet.

You’ve spoken out against the Australian military intervention in Afghanistan. Do you think Australian troops should leave as soon as possible?

I feel strongly that we should get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. Now the government says the same thing, so what does “as soon as possible” mean?

In my mind, it’s a matter of months. As an ex-military person I know you can’t just suddenly say “get out today”; it takes months to get out. But that’s quite at odds with what the government and opposition say is possible.

On one hand, we’re there to create the conditions for peace to take hold. On the other hand, the presence of Australian troops is one of the main sources of problems. You can’t win, but if we stay it would be a disaster and if we go it will be a disaster.

I do think that Afghanistan needs to be allowed to find its natural political level, otherwise peace won’t take hold.

The biggest cause of the violence at the moment is the presence of the foreign troops. And by far the largest number of fighters there are nationalists, fighting for their village or their province or their country. And that’s what tends to be lost in this discussion.

I stressed during the election, and I’ll keep saying it, the biggest lie is that we’re there to fight terrorists, and if we don’t fight them there we’ll be fighting them here. That is absolute nonsense. Long ago, the terrorist threat morphed into a global threat, not dependent on any one country.

Sure, Afghanistan was a haven for terrorists in at some point in the past, but it is not now. There is no evidence that it will become the global centre for terrorism.

That’s not to say it won’t be an awful situation if the troops leave, but that’s the process that country will have to go through to find its natural political level. And the people who are responsible are the people who created this situation.

I got myself into trouble with the readers of Green Left Weekly years ago when I supported the initial invasion of Afghanistan. That view was based on knowledge I had, which I don’t think is well understood, that back then Al Qaeda actually was a very large political and military movement in Afghanistan and actually had a standing army with battalions of troops.

It was one of the main backers of the Taliban, and I don’t dispute the essence of the 9/11 story, so hence I supported that military action.

But my support ended almost immediately after that because they had a narrow window of opportunity in 2002 to settle things down. There was an unprecedented window of opportunity in 2002 when there was relative calm across the country, there was a sense of optimism about a new future, there was an interest in a central government, but the US and its allies abandoned Afghanistan in order to get ready for Iraq, and that created the security vacuum that is still being back filled with all the problems we’re now dealing with.

So my support ended after a few months, and since then I have been passionately anti- what has happened there.

The Greens have negotiated with Labor to hold a parliamentary debate on the issue. What’s your view on that?

That’s something I’ll pursue in the lower house. There needs to be a proper parliamentary debate about this. Those in the parliament who want us to stay there indefinitely — and that is their policy, they want us to stay there as long as the US wants us to stay there, that’s the extent of our Afghan policy, it’s that crude and simplistic and ineffective — I think the people who advocate that view need to defend it, or pull the troops out.

There was a large anti-war movement at the start of the war, and there still is a majority of people who want the troops to be pulled out. Do you see yourself as being a voice for the anti-war movement in parliament?

Yes. I will take every opportunity to speak against the war and the need to get the troops out as soon as possible. And I think I bring an interesting dimension to this, because the Greens — for all the good they do on this issue, there are a lot of people who have an instinctive response to the Greens and what they argue for. Whereas I bring a similar view, but I’m a more credible critic, having been in the army for 20 years. So I reckon I can bring a lot of value to this debate.

During the election campaign you campaigned for the rights of asylum seekers, to end offshore processing and to implement a more humanitarian approach towards refugees. What are the chances of shifting Australia’s policy on this?

I think any legislative change on this will struggle to get through parliament. Any legislative change in the lower house, I’ll vote against it, Adam Bandt will vote against it. I don’t know about the other independents. They may well vote against it.

What are the chances of ending offshore processing?

The whole point about offshore processing — the whole reason Liberal and Labor implemented it — was to deny these people [refugees] access to Australia’s legal system. It is a ruthless policy in that regard. They’re saying the legal rights that we deserve are not what they deserve.

It says a lot about our view of them as human beings, that they’re a lower class to the rest of us. Get rid of offshore processing, overturn the excision of the islands, don’t pretend they’re not part of Australia, and don’t introduce temporary protection visas.

Any change that needs to go through the parliament will have trouble now — unless the Coalition votes with Labor, which could happen. But so long as the Coalition opposes for opposition sake, it won’t get through the lower house.

You campaigned for action on climate change. What kind of action will you be pushing for?

At the end of the day, there has to be a price on carbon, so much revolves around that, and this carbon price may or may not be part of an emissions trading scheme. Until we have a price on carbon, we won’t see fundamental change.

Until polluters have to pay to pollute — until there’s a price signal in the marketplace — we won’t see much change. Other things are just around the margins.

What about renewable energy?

Yes, and taking advantage of Australia’s natural advantages, and our financial and intellectual advantages. If we had a government years ago that showed leadership on this, Australia now could be a global leader.

Australia could be to renewable energy what Saudi Arabia is to oil. We have enormous strengths, we’ve got natural resources and the wealth to develop them. I think it’s a missed opportunity to take a global leadership role, which isn’t just about money, it’s also about helping developing countries implement this technology too. Rich countries who can afford it should do it.

Do you think government should take responsibility for public investment in renewable energy?

Yes, without a doubt. Leaving it to the marketplace means half these things won’t happen — that’s why they’re going offshore. Australia can easily afford public funding for renewables.

One of the faults in the approach of [Labor Prime Minister Julia] Gillard is when she says we have to wait and build a consensus; well there are some things that are just so big and so important that the government has to take a leadership role.

The Greens have negotiated for a referendum on recognising Aboriginal rights in the constitution to be held within the next three years. Do you agree with this?

That’s also one of the points in my agreement with Gillard. It gives a weight to [Aboriginal people’s] history and existence now; their history and culture should be recognised.

It all depends on what goes into it; it’s easy for prime ministers to agree to these things but the devil is in the detail. What exactly will it mean? In absence of a bill of rights, it needs to be written in such a way that gives recognition to their heritage and their future.

What’s your opinion on the NT intervention?

I’ve got an inherent concern about it. I have been quite critical of it. I’m in no way critical of finding ways to help our Indigenous communities, but I have an inherent concern about this legislation. I opposed it at the time [it was introduced] and I think it should be overturned.

During the election campaign, you also spoke out strongly in favour of same-sex marriage rights. Do you think there will be a chance to get this through parliament?

I wrote a letter to both leaders two weeks ago, which was misrepresented in the media as a “wish list”. It wasn’t, it was my list of priorities. And one of them was a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.

I will look for every opportunity to make this happen. We don’t want to rush it through and not have it reflect the majority public opinion for it. We want it done properly, and not have it knocked back. I’ve no doubt there is overwhelming public support for it.

From Green Left Weekly  issue 851 Thursday, September 9, 2010

Interview with Greens MP elect Adam Bandt:'I'll give a voice to the movements'

Adam Bandt 

 

Adam Bandt, the MP elect for the seat of Melbourne (long considered a “safe Labor seat”), and the Greens' first House of Representatives member to be elected in a general election has been very busy since August 21. He says he left the triumphant Greens' election night party at 11pm thinking that he would have to do some media the next day so should get a good night's sleep. He woke up the next morning and after a couple of hours having coffee and reading the paper, the situation sunk in. “And that was the last two hours I've had to myself since”, he told Green Left in a wide-ranging interview conducted on September 2.

After days of negotiations following the August 21 federal election which left neither of the traditional parties of government with the majority of seats in Parliament to form government, the Greens and the Australian Labor Party announced an agreement on September 1. In return for placing a number of items (including a referendum on including Indigenous rights in the constitution, a full parliamentary debate on Australia's military intervention in Afghanistan, re-opeing the climate change response, expansion of public cover for dental care and electoral and parliamentary procedure reform) on the agenda of a possible ALP minority government, the Greens agreed to support Labor budgetary supply bills and to "oppose any motion of no confidence in the Government from other parties or MPs".

Since then, progressive independent MP elect Andrew Wilkie, who won the seat of Denison in Tasmania, has made a similar commitment to support an ALP minority government. Wilkie spurning a $1 billion dollar sweetener (in the form of extra funding for a public hospital in his electorate) from the Liberal-National Coalition.

The ALP now needs to win the support of at least two of the remaining three independent MPs in order to have the numbers to form government.

Below is the full transcript of the interview with Bandt conducted by Jody Betzien for Green Left. An edited down version will appear in the next print version of Green Left Weekly.
* * *
In the Seat of Melbourne your primary vote soared to 36% and on two-party preferred terms you defeated the ALP candidate Cath Bowtell by 10%. This large votes goes well beyond the traditional Green vote, what do you think is the significance of this rise in the Green vote in Melbourne and nationally?

We made a decision to run a campaign based on some positive values and plans. Compassion, sustainability and equality were the three key principles of our campaign. We called for urgent action on climate change. We called for compassionate treatment of asylum seekers and for an end to mandatory detention. And we called for full equality for same-sex couples.

We set out a positive plan for getting Melbourne running on renewal energy within a decade, redirecting federal money away from roads to public transport. I think that in an overwhelmingly negative election campaign, putting forward a positive vision for how things could be better, was well received.

One of the things that we did differently to last time is that we made conscious efforts to get our message to the people on low incomes who live in the electorate particularly in public housing. This is one of the electorates with the highest concentration of public housing tenants in the country.

We took a very strong stance against Labor's income management proposals, against their plans to toughen welfare rules, and in favour of ideas like making dental care part of Medicare and increasing Newstart [unemployment benefit] payments.

I think those things in combination with a strong grassroots campaign are the reasons for our vote.
A strong contribution to your campaign came from unionists who were angry with Labor's industrial relations policies, especially the plans to maintain the anti-union Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) under another name. How do you see as your role as an MP in this campaign?

I've had a long involvement with this issue. I have represented construction workers before the Royal Commission into the building industry and I have defended many individual unionists and unions against charges brought by the ABCC. And the Greens have had a strong position in favour of the repeal of the ABCC act.

We are now in a position to bring bills before Parliament to abolish the ABCC.

Based on our agreement with the Labor Party, if a Gillard government is elected, we will have the ability to introduce our legislation to Parliament and have it debated and voted on. That is a significant opportunity to ensure that we end up with one set of industrial laws for all workers in Australia, without certain sections being picked off and treated specially.

With a few notable exceptions, the ACTU and affiliated unions backed Cath Bowtell in the Seat of Melbourne, including enlisting staff to ring up members and donating large amounts of money. What is your message to unionists post-election and your victory?

I'm very grateful that a number of unions were able to objectively assess the Greens industrial relations policies and to realise that we had policies that would better protect people's rights at work than under those of the Labor party.

A few unions did tell their members that our policies were the best policies. I am deeply appreciative of the unions which did that.

Other unions supported the Labor candidate, and that is their right. It was disappointing that the peak bodies chose to intervene on the side of Labor when the Greens had the more progressive industrial relations policies. This was disappointing as many unions had expressed the view that peak bodies shouldn't take sides in this contest. But they did and showed themselves to be more willing to support the ALP than a party that had better industrial relations policies.

Some people contacted me to say that they had resigned from their union as a result of their union's funds and ACTU funds being used to run a campaign against a candidate who had a progressive and principled stance on industrial relations.

You would not have won the seat if the Liberals hadn't given preferences to you before the Labor party. After your victory, a number of business groups and right-wing commentators like Gerard Henderson have called on the Liberal party to stop this practice. How will you counter that possibility in the next elections, including the state election?

In this election one in nine people across the country voted for the Greens and if we had a fair system of proportional representation in the House of Representatives we would have 17 seats rather than the one that we've got.

In the system that we've got, the people who voted for the Liberals tended to put us second last and Labor last. Those people's votes were important in the final result.

It wouldn't surprise me if more conservative employer groups do begin to conduct that sort of campaign. And the fact that conservative employer groups are saying that the Labor party should be preferenced over the Greens shows how far the Labor party has drifted to the right.

How do we deal with it? I think my job is now to increase my vote and to ultimately move to a situation where we can win seats like Melbourne because the majority of the people vote for us.

I also had a large number of people come up to me in the final stage of the campaign saying that they were small “l”liberals who were disappointed with the stances that the Liberal party had taken in particular the increasing role that conservative views in organised religion was playing in politics. They felt that the Liberal party no longer represented small “l” liberal values and they were moving to us for the reason that the Liberal party was becoming more conservative as well.

Electoral reform has been placed on the agenda in the agreement with the ALP but the need for proportional representation in House of Representatives elections, which you mentioned earlier, was not mentioned in the agreement. Was it raised during the negotiations with the ALP and will the Greens raise it as part of your electoral reform agenda?

I think proportional representation is important and a fair way of reflecting the will of the people in Parliament and what we've seen very clearly in this election – and it is an increasing trend worldwide – is that people want new new voices that aren't represented by the two major parties.

Of course there are people in Parliament who don't want proportional representation, including the major parties and others, so we have got our work cut out for us to persuade the Australian people that we need a system of proportional representation. It is something that we do want and it is something we have raised in previous parliaments and we will continue to raise.

Obviously the agreement that was reached with the Labor party focused on those areas where we were approaching common ground. For instance, we have got the beginnings of some real movement on climate change, we have the beginnings of agreement on an expansion of the dental care system, and the construction of high-speed rail on the East Coast.

What this agreement isn't is a coalition or an alliance. We have maintained our separate party platforms and this is something we will continue to pursue in Parliament and outside.

One area where we differ from the ALP and we haven't reached agreement on is the issue of proportional representation and there are many others same-sex marriage, asylum seekers, forests, and many other things that we will continue to push in Parliament.

The Greens-ALP agreement promises to introduce a referendum on including Indigenous rights into the constitution. Are you looking at just symbolic recognition or to entrench some real rights for Indigenous people in the constitution? And will Indigenous communities have a say in developing such a constitutional proposal?

I would hope so. It is now an open question as to what kind of recognition it would be, what form it would take and who will draft it. I would really hope that we end up with something substantive out of it. What we have sought to do is open up a front of discussion in the public sphere about the proper way to recognise Indigenous people in constitution. The Greens are very clear that our preference is to see a treaty and to have Aboriginal sovereignty recognised and to push for self-determination. It will only work if it is a recognition that comes from the bottom up and not from the top down.

In the process that will now unfold, should Julia Gillard form government, there will be opportunity for that discussion to be had and that it doesn't go the way of the republic debate.

A parliamentary debate on the Australian military intervention in Afghanistan is another part of the agreement. What positions will the Greens enter this debate with?

We have always opposed the war on Afghanistan. We have been the only party in Parliament to do so. We've said from the beginning that this was the wrong approach, that there wasn't a justification for doing it, and that, at a minimum, there should have been a parliamentary debate, which we believe should take place before any troop commitment is made.

During the course of the full parliamentary debate we will make our position very clear: that this is a war that Australia should not have been involved in and that it is time now for an exit strategy.

There is a big disparity between the views of most MP s and that of the Australian public, with 61% according to a recent Essential Poll wanting Australian troops to be withdrawn. Given the position of both major parties a parliamentary debate is going to be a bit stacked against majority public opinion. Do you see the Greens being able to assist the anti-war movement to mobilise pressure on parliament to come into line with the majority desire for withdrawal of the troops?

On issues like the war in Afghanistan as well as recognition of same-sex marriage there is a significant disjuncture between public opinion and the positions of the major parties. Because the two major parties are in agreement about issues like these there hasn't been the space for debate on them and the disparity has not been brought into the open.

One of the things that we place a priority on is giving a voice to social movements and to that undercurrent of progressive public opinion that is not being represented. The one thing that should come out of a full public debate is precisely how far away the major parties are increasingly from what people are thinking.

Under the agreement the ALP leadership also agreed to re-open the response to the climate change crisis. The Greens have called for placing a price on carbon to implement some form of market solution to climate change. The last plan of that type that the ALP came up with, the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), gave massive subsidies to the big polluters, and according to some analysts would not even have delivered the modest greenhouse emission reduction targets set by the Labor government. How will the Greens' market solution to climate change differ?

There were a number of reasons why we opposed the CPRS. They included those you just mentioned. Under the CPRS Australia's domestic emissions wouldn't start to fall until 2035 plus it took billions of dollars in compensation away from households to give to the big polluters. It would have set Australia on a path of rising emissions and money going into the pockets of large corporations which would have sent them offshore without any reduction of our emissions.

What the new climate committee [to be established under the Greens-ALP agreement] will do is go back to the drawing board and acknowledge that there needs to be a price tag on pollution. There are a number of ways this could be done, ranging from a straight carbon tax to a fully-fledged emissions trading scheme. The principle we will be advancing is that the big polluters should pay the costs of addressing climate change and it shouldn't come from ordinary people and consumers. There are various ways to address this problem and this is one of the things the committee will have to look at. Some are more market-based solutions and others are based more on the taxation system.

We'll now have the opportunity not to play politics with climate change, as was done under the Rudd government, when CPRS was used to try and wedge the Coalition while they refused to negotiate with the Greens over climate change. And it all ended up with what Professor Ross Garnaut described as the worst example of public policy making he had ever seen.

We now have the opportunity to get around the table people who agree that polluters should pay for their pollution and work out a system that is going to stick.

If there is an ALP minority government supported by the Greens, will the Greens commit to assessing and voting on all bills (with the exception of supply bills) on their merits as Wilkie has expressly indicated he will? Will any future agreements made with the ALP be made public immediately, as was done with your recent agreement?

The only guarantees we have made to the ALP in this agreement are to support supply and to assist the government if ant motions of no-confidence are moved and that's it. We will maintain our independent legislative platform comprising the policies we took to the election. There remain many areas where we will disagree with Labor and the other major parties such as treatment of asylum seekers, same-sex marriage, forests and a number of other areas that are not reflected in the agreement precisely because we have different positions to Labor on them.

I will be judging pieces of legislation on two things: one is our party platform and the other is the interests of the people I represent.

What flow on effect to you expect from the federal election outcome to the upcoming Victorian (November 2010) and NSW (March 2011) state elections? There have been concerns in the left and labour movements about suggestions that the Greens may entertain supporting or even contemplate entering coalition state governments with the Liberal-National Party Coalition. What do you say in response to these concerns?

The state elections will be treated as a “clean slate”. There are different issues at play in the state and federal elections.

The Greens are an independent political party. We are not a faction of the Labor party and the Labor party cannot presume that no matter how far they lurch to the right they can always rely on our support.
Having said that I would invite people to look at our record and how we have operated in recent times in balance of power situations. In Tasmania we have Labor and Greens working together in a coalition government with Green ministers and in the ACT we have Greens supporting a minority Labor government.

The political record of the independent MPs by By Graham Matthews

There are very few certainties about the federal Parliament over the next three years. The stunning rejection of both Labor and Liberal by the voting public has left neither likely to form a government in their own right. Whichever party governs, it will have to rely on the support of at least three and probably four independents (with Andrew Wilkie's chance of taking Denison from Labor firming).

Unlike Wilkie, whose most recent affiliation was with the Greens, the three established independents, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott from NSW and Bob Katter from Queensland, came out of the National Party. While they have been described by the media as conservative independents, on a raft of issues they are more progressive than either of the major parties.

Katter is perhaps the most ideological of the three independents. On his website he describes his motivation for leaving the National Party, which party he represented in state and federal parliaments for 27 years. Katter left the Nationals and ran as an independent in 2001, “due to his disenchantment with economic rationality that he felt the National Party was adopting”.

In Parliament, Katter opposed the sale of Telstra in 2003 and again in 2005. He opposed the sale of Medibank Private in 2006 and in that speech lamented the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas and other state assets. “So whether it is the railways, Qantas or the banks, we got a dreadful deal out of privatisation. If Medibank Private is sold, I do not doubt for a moment that we will get the same sort of deal,” he said on November 2, 2006.

No one could accuse Katter of being an environmentalist. A noted climate sceptic, Katter also opposes legislation to protect the environment, and grant Indigenous people native title. “Rural recreation, fishing, hunting, trail riding and camping have all been dramatically curtailed by the environmental push. Property rights were undermined by Mabo and Biodiversity Legislation,” he says on his website.

Nevertheless Katter has spoken publicly against the Northern Territory Emergency Intervention. “The fact that they've had all alcohol taken off them, all pornography taken off them and they're going to have their money taken off them and handed to them - like they were little children - through a trust fund sounds good but in reality it is the most dreadful, discriminatory, repressive laws,” Katter told SBS TV's Living Black program on September 10 2008.

Tony Windsor, independent MP for New England, has also stated his opposition to the NT Intervention. “One of the reasons why I was opposed to the intervention in the Northern Territory is that a blanket approach such as that does not recognise the flexibility that is required,” he told Parliament on February 19 2008. He concluded his speech by calling for the reinstatement of the permit system.

Unlike Katter, Windsor accepts the science of climate change. “I believe that there is human induced climate change. I believe it is something that we should do something about. I am not one of the sceptics,” he told Parliament on October 28 2009.

However, Windsor also opposed federal Labor's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, arguing that the target of 5% reductions was “nonsense” and that, “It does nothing about the issue. It puts in place an economic structure which will achieve not much more than people stopping cleaning their shoes, in terms of saving emissions.”

Windsor also opposed the sale of Telstra in 2002 and the bill to sell the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electricity scheme in 2006. “It was only the two independents ...who divided the parliament to vote against the sale as the Coalition and Labor parties crammed together to vote for its sale as they had done in the NSW and Victorian parliaments”, he said in a press release on August 5 this year.

The newest of the three independents, Oakeshott, is a former National turned independent in the NSW state parliament, who won the federal seat of Lyne in a bi-election when former National Party leader Mark Vaile retired in 2008. While a former shadow minister for the National Party in state parliament, Oakeshott has taken some progressive stands.

Oakeshott has championed renewable energy. He has criticised the Labor government for “browning down” renewable energy legislation, and demanded a national renewable energy feed-in tariff, to encourage investment, in speeches to Parliament in August 2009.

Oakeshott has voiced some support for justice for Indigenous people seeking Naive Title to land, and has noted the objections of the Australian Council for Social Service for the welfare quarantining aspects of the NT intervention. However, unlike Windsor and Katter, he has not publicly opposed it.

The strongest link between the three independents, all of whom came to politics through the National Party, is their rejection of that party. Styling themselves as defenders of the interests of farmers, small business and workers in the country, they oppose what they see as the destruction of services and the threat of deregulation and globalisation.

Whichever major party the independents ultimately decide to support to form a minority government, one thing is certain. On a wide range of issues, from climate change, to Indigenous rights, to economic policy, the independents are objectively to the left of both major parties. That will certainly make for an interesting term of Parliament.

Green Left Weekly 25-8-10