On staying and fighting
The Victorian Greens Convenor election has been rerun, and the results declared.
As a bookend to my earlier article, I republish with her permission an email sent today from Linda Gale to some party members.
Dear friends and fellow Greens,
I'm sending you this update because you reached out to me about the recent Convenor election furore in the Australian Greens Victoria.
Two things of note have happened in the AGV recently.
You may have heard that Declan Mulcahy and Emi Martin were recently declared elected as Co-Convenors for the remainder of 2022.
Here are the numbers:
1,358 valid votes were cast (up from 913 in the first election).
Mulcahy and Martin received 850 votes.
Seek Further Candidate received 508 votes (or 37.4%).
Both in numbers and in percentage, the Seek Further Candidate result is unprecedented. It sends a clear message to party leaders and to the membership as a whole: don’t treat our party with such disrespect.
Many assumed that the troublesome voices complaining about social media attacks, procedural fairness, interference by elected reps in an internal election, and the right to debate were isolated cranks – irritating, to be sure, but ultimately in a tiny minority. This vote shows that a very large proportion of party members share those concerns.
One can only hope that someone is listening.
The second big thing is what is happening at our branch meetings. Suddenly it is all the rage to attend branch meetings as uninvited observers. Half a dozen individuals have started attending branch meeting after branch meeting, ostensibly as observers, but actually with quite a lot to say. This has included people who are no longer AGV members.
Various reasons have been proffered – ‘I’m here to support a friend’ – ‘I’m here to ensure it is a safe space’ – but the cumulative effect is that discussions have been commandeered and branch members told how to run their meetings by outsiders. It has been intimidating and off-putting for many members. Far from ensuring a safe space, this tactic has made many members want to avoid their own branch meetings.
This should be a positive time in the Greens. We have more representatives in the Federal Parliament than ever before, including a Green Wedge in the House of Representatives, where Adam no longer stands alone. The opportunity to make a real impact on climate policy has never been better. We stand a good chance of increasing our representation in the Victorian Parliament on 26 November. And we are in the final few months before our democratically determined new Constitution comes into full effect, which should make us a more effective, responsive and participatory organisation.
How sad that when we should be going from strength to strength, we are being undermined by self-indulgent bullies. Some members have suggested that there is a deliberate conspiracy afoot to destroy the Greens. Others, that it is a cynical ploy to take over the Party now that it has won real power and influence. While I cannot disprove either theory, I am more inclined to think that most of the current moral panic in the Greens about trans safety is driven by good intentions.
In order to reassure one group – some of whom claim emotional vulnerability, and some of whom conduct themselves like the worst sort of bullies – a group who in reality have been enthusiastically welcomed in the party, who in recent years have held multiple senior positions and who have been supported in repeatedly amending our policy in their favour – to reassure them that they are welcome and their identities respected, the Party has shown itself willing to throw some important democratic principles under the bus. No conspiracy theory is needed to account for this: we have done it to ourselves.
We have seen our public leaders support, and even join in, bullying tactics. We have seen vague claims of ‘feeling unsafe’ weaponised against dissenting voices. We have seen good people slandered and the party’s reputation dragged through the mud. All in the name of inclusion.
And in so doing, we have left 508 party members sufficiently disillusioned or angry that they voted Seek Further Candidate in a one horse race. And this is the tip of the iceberg. Others who didn't go so far as to vote SFC are nevertheless deeply concerned by the democratic failures. Still others have already resigned or simply withdrawn. I have received messages from members who are at their wits end, who cannot bring themselves to volunteer or donate, and who find the new totalitarian approach thoroughly dispiriting.
Every form of diversity is welcomed in the Greens, it seems, except diversity of opinion.
Any oppression can be named and given space in our meetings except the sex-based oppression of women. While lauding intersectionality and considering all other axes of oppression, we somehow dare not mention sex.
And despite giving lip service to intersectionality, unidimensional, single-issue identity politics is elevated above everything else.
Free speech – a right for which progressive Victorians fought major campaigns (see the Counihan monument on Sydney Road, Brunswick) – is decried by a scary number of members as “a right-wing talking point”.
(At a July 2022 State Council, it was proposed that the Greens policy against discrimination on the grounds of political belief should be amended to say that the Greens oppose discrimination on the grounds of any political belief that is consistent with the Greens policy and charter! That is, that the ruling party should have a right to suppress political views that are not aligned with those of the ruling party! Of course, this suggestion was not supported, and the Greens policy continues to have a straightforward opposition to discrimination on the grounds of political belief or activity. But that such a totalitarian approach was even proposed by a member of our governing body is deeply worrying. One doesn’t need to mention 20th Century tyrants to see the folly of such an approach. A quick glance at contemporary Hong Kong, Myanmar, Russia or Saudi Arabia should demonstrate the point.)
Meanwhile, huge swathes of the northern hemisphere are on fire, species are moving from at risk to endangered, from endangered to critical and from critical to extinct at a horrifying rate, our Great Barrier Reef is dying, and Australia continues to dig up and export fossil fuels. There is a planet to save, and the Greens are a critical part of achieving that goal. Not to mention critical social justice fights for First Nations justice, health, housing, and many more. We have fought so hard to get this party into a position of real parliamentary influence. Let’s not sit back and watch a bunch of wreckers tear it down in the name of ideological authoritarianism.
I can’t tell you what needs to be done. I don’t have any easy solutions. But surely part of the solution is to stay and fight for our movement. Don’t resign. Don’t walk away. Don’t sink to the destructive, mud-slinging level of those who have attacked Rohan and me. Talk to other members. There are a lot of people who want to see the Greens survive this storm and return to doing what it does best – building a better world.
Hang in there.
Linda Gale