The Greens today announced that their policies would include the decriminalisation of drugs (not all, mostly that happy pill we call “e” and cannabis), an obscure push to get us out of cars and onto bikes, another hazy initiative to get us eating the Green’s beloved vegetables rather than meat, covering gender reassignment under Medicare, and, perhaps most outrageously of all, an increase in stamp duty and taxes for home buyers.
These are the statements of a noble and courageous creature. It reminds me of those wonderful silk screens you sometimes see in art galleries of Samurai impaling themselves on their own swords. In the face of defeat it is best to spill your own blood and therefore escape the ignominy of having your enemies spill it for you.
I found it surprising that an Australian political party (especially one on the rise, according to the polls), can summon the shear recklessness to state emphatically and without qualification policies that will guarantee not victory but political suicide.
Imagine! To attack the steed of our age, the power horse of our industriousness, the mighty car; to rid ourselves of its steel pipe aroma, its heart congesting congestion, its waste and its futility in the face of an oil crisis that has no cure, only an expiry date.
Imagine! To recognise addiction as a medical dilemma and recreation as capable of irresponsibility rather than criminality. To control damage rather than provide for its continuation.
Imagine! To force health upon a people who refuse to acknowledge the personal and social cost of ill health. To attack root cause rather than symptom. To enforce, through legislation, prevention rather than cure, knowing that it invariably costs less.
Imagine! To tax those who can afford it to help those who can't... and those who can (remember - you don't often make much use of infrastructure if you live in a cardboard box)
Imagine! To realise that mental anguish and alienation can sometimes require surgery to be overcome.
Imagine! To acknowledge the many economies that must be balanced – the social, the cultural, the environmental and, finally and possibly least significant, the economies of wealth – and that one must not gain precedence or domination over the others.
Imagine the Greens winning with this policy platform. Not bloody likely!
Conviction is a rare sentiment in politics and clearly goes against all the wealth of wisdom provided by our news polls. Yes, it is folly, but we would be the poorer without it.