[On June 1, the Socialist Alliance sent the following letter to the Greens national council.]
Dear comrades and friends,
Last night, at its regular monthly meeting, the national executive of the Socialist Alliance voted to contact the national council meeting of the Greens as a matter of urgency in order to directly express our opinion to you on the issue of Telstra privatisation and old-growth-forest protection.
We vehemently urge you to reject outright the suggestion made on May 31 by Senator Bob Brown that the Greens consider supporting the final privatisation of Telstra in exchange for a commitment from the Howard government to ban the logging of old-growth forests.
Such a deal, which would be made in direct violation of Greens' policy on Telstra, would certainly guarantee the final liquidation of Telstra as a public entity, but with no certainty of guaranteeing the survival of what remains of Australia's precious old-growth forests. Who, after all, can believe the word of politicians who promised not to introduce the GST and told us that asylum seekers throw children into the sea in order to provoke rescue by the Australian Navy?
But the main danger in Bob Brown's proposal is not that of being outsmarted by Prime Minister John Howard and Co. in any parliamentary horse-trading over these issues. Much more dangerous is the political approach adopted, which fails to grasp that Telstra can be kept in public ownership and old-growth forests saved, provided the Greens look for support and alliances in the right place.
A majority of Australians oppose the final privatisation of Telstra and also oppose further logging of old-growth forests. The Greens should look first and foremost towards mobilising all the constituencies that oppose these reactionary and destructive policies. For example, why not pledge Greens' support for a campaign to block Telstra privatisation that draw<%0>s in the Telstra unions as well as telecommunications users and all opponents of privatisation? For its part, the Socialist Alliance would be 100% behind such a campaign.
The same approach holds for old-growth forests. A broadly based campaign, involving environmentalists, communities and unions, and which was sensitive to the issue of alternative employment for affected forestry workers (such as has been suggested by organisations like Earthworker), would stand a much better chance of ending destructive logging than deals with a government that didn't even know how to spend the environmental dividend that the previous phases of Telstra privatisation were supposed to produce.
If the Greens threw their weight behind such campaigns for these two entirely just causes, Bob Brown's time and reputation could then be spent building and championing them, both in the Senate and out in the country. The increased vote received by the Greens at the last federal elections was in part due to your stand on Telstra and old-growth forest protection, which typify the growing rejection in this country of the Coalition and Labor versions of standard neo-liberal politics.
Hundreds of thousands of Australians voted Green in the belief that you represent an alternative to the profit before people approach of the major parties. If Bob Brown's suggestion were adopted by the national council it would be a signal that the Australian Greens are beginning to tread the path followed by too many of their overseas counterparts, of sacrificing one of the four founding Green principles (social justice) for marginal or imaginary gains in the area of the environment.
The Socialist Alliance earnestly hopes that you will reject such a course, because we are convinced that the best hope for building the political alternative to neo-liberalism in this country lies in closer collaboration between all forces that stand for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability.
We believe that it is vitally important to open a dialogue between our two organisations on the fundamental questions involved in building the alternative, and we look forward to beginning discussions as soon as is mutually convenient.
Yours in solidarity,
Dick Nichols,
National co-convener of the Socialist Alliance
From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.
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