ACT Greens interviewed

CANBERRA — ACT Greens member of the Legislative Assembly, LUCY HORODNY, spoke with Green Left Weekly's JAMES VASSILOPOULOS four days before the handing down of the ACT budget. Question: It's been six months since you were elected to the Legislative Assembly. What have been your key priorities and major achievements? We have to work out how much to be pro-active and where we must be reactive. There are issues where the government sets the agenda and we have to respond. Some of our priorities are aligned with work the government is doing. For instance, in transport, doing something with the bus system ACTION. We believe in an integrated transport system with roads, cars, public transport and cycleways. We need to look at light rail. We want to be a city within twenty years with minimal car usage, healthy people and wonderful waterways. We would like to see local health centres built for primary and preventative health care. Both the major parties are driven by short term economics, which do not consider the long term economic benefits of investing in education and health. Education is important for our young people so they can do the right thing by the planet. The short term view is so negative. For example, we always hear that public transport is subsidised, yet no one talks about the subsidies put into the use of private cars. We subsidise the roads, parking spaces and cars. We are planning to get more Greens elected. We work with the community, like the Environment Centre and Wilderness Society. We feel it is important to stay connected to those grassroots and represent those movements. We came into the assembly with a bible of policies and they have been good guidelines. But in here nothing is black or white. As we are two MLA's from 17 we won't get our policies up. We have the opportunity to green the assembly. The other parties, when they want our support, know they must factor our wishes in. We work hard to get as much social equity and ecological integrity as we can. Question: What is your opinion on the budget about to be brought down? The first problem is that it was meant to be an open and consultative process. We have not seen this. The rhetoric of the budget is economically driven, it talks about corporatisation and tendering off. Corporatisation is not necessarily a bad thing. There are good ways and poor ways of corporatising. If there is a good vision to it, it can be advantageous. If the motive is to get dollars, it is not necessarily going to improve services. Question: What will you do if it is a bad budget? If it's a horrendous budget we won't accept it. We will be working really hard on the government to amend it. We have been trying to get them on track by talking to them about community needs. Question: Would you be prepared to block the budget like the WA Greens did with the 1993 federal budget? What they did was never done in federal politics before. The WA Greens questioned the process and content of the budget, and it was a big step for them. We would do it as well. Certainly we would not just rubber stamp it. Question: Why did the ACT Greens support Kate Carnell as the ACT chief minister? The Greens do not fit neatly into the left/right paradigm. We are aware that the ALP consider us just an annex or a fourth faction, but the voting patterns in the last ACT elections showed that this was not the case. Our voters come from all walks of life and political parties. The ALP had three years to work out its program and we felt dissatisfied with what it had done. The people of the ACT gave a strong message that they wanted a change. You could argue that the ALP and the Greens constituted a majority of the vote, but in reality it is a two party system and that is a huge problem. Although we supported Kate as the chief minister, that in no way indicated we formed a coalition. We felt that the Liberal Party deserved a go. Question: Why did the Greens support the privatisation of Jindalee Nursing Home? That was a really difficult issue. We talked to the unions who gave us a viewpoint. Then we talked to other people who gave us a different view. The unions then changed their position and lost credibility. It seemed that they gave information and details to push their agenda. There was a lot of contradictory information and statistics and in the end we went with the decision we thought was best.