Antinuclear

Inside the Greens circus, minus Bob and the freaks CRIKEY GUY RUNDLE | AUG 28, 2013 The Greens are still slightly in awe that they are a real, live party, as the Green tide rolls on….

Gripping the lectern, clad in a jacket as green as a rainforest or a roulette baize, Greens leader Christine Milne is in full flight, but stops for the laugh. Reminds herself, perhaps, to stop for the laugh. “I know, but it’s true …” Then she ploughs on. She looks Margaret Thatcher, she looks like your schoolteacher, she looks like a church lady, most ungreen, her delivery is wooden, reserved, there’s something held back, but she’s wowing the crowd, a couple of hundred Greens, come in from Canberra and the backblocks, all the senators and Adam Bandt people looking at them with “wow, there’s quite a lot of us, we’re kinda of a real party”, and a few enthusiasts/tragics flown in from the event.

Her speech on Saturday at the Greens’ national campaign launch is hard-edged, upfront political, and eschews a lot of the more spiritual themes that former leader Bob Brown might have put in. She announces refugee treatment inquiries, a Clean Air Act, a party whip vote on equal marriage; every time, rolling back Labor’s welfare cuts, bang, bang, bang, and you get a picture of her parliamentary style: no-nonsense and forthright………

Indeed, it’s a new Greens style of sorts, fitting with the fact that they are, in some ways, the new natural party of government, not now, not even soon, but sometime, when more of the world looks like Canberra — if it doesn’t all end up looking like Fallujah — and knowledge production has so infused so much of the overall system that social classes have been substantially transformed. That gives the new Greens not only a seriousness, a demeanour that has no special pleading about it, but also, of all things, a mild born-to-rule mien, a new class sheen. ….

Formidable, and with a party at as good a level of support as it’s ever been, she seems ready for whatever may come on Threatened Species Day, September 7. http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/08/28/rundle-inside-the-greens-circus-minus-bob-and-the-freaks/