By Dick Nichols
SYDNEY — The most interesting aspect of the NSW election on May 25 is the answer to the question: Why are green issues, and the candidates presenting them, being denied any but the most trivial coverage in the commercial media?
Nearly everyone here agrees that the poll is the most boring in years. That's no accident. The powers that be in this state are determined to keep the people as sleepy and uninterested as possible precisely because they don't want to disturb the Greiner government's chances of being returned for another term of "good management".
That scenario requires pretending that the Greens are not a "real" alternative, and using that as an excuse to avoid mentioning their campaigns.
In fact, the Greens are the only alternative.
The pretext for this early election, the blocking of Greiner's anti-union laws in the Legislative Council, might have been expected to provoke a furious response from the NSW Labor Party and Labor Council. (Industrial relations experts estimate that Greiner's proposed elimination of the closed shop would lose unions 40% of their members, leaving a shell in the place of once-mighty "Sussex Street" machine.)
No such luck. Bob Carr's Labor opposition is doing everything to avoid drawing together an anti-Greiner majority. That's because the only way to do that would be (1) to totally reject federal Labor and (2) to speak out on behalf of the following "enemies of the state" and Sydney's Central Business District:
l The unemployed. Liberal ads boast that unemployment (official) in NSW is running at only 8.4%. Carr says nothing about joblessness because he has no plans whatsoever to confront it. Apparently the right to a job is a federal responsibility.
l Environmentalists. The peak environmental organisations here denounced the Liberal-National record on the environment last week. Three years of their vandalism provide Labor with a valuable opportunity to win back the support of the hundreds of thousands who are sick of the desecration of our rural and urban environs. But big capital has targeted the green movement as its new enemy, and Bob Carr isn't about to offend the big end of town.
l Small farmers. In country seats disillusionment with the Nationals is at an all-time high, with independent farmer candidates running in a number of electorates. To win their support, Labor would have to denounce federal Labor (especially agriculture minister John Kerin), and Carr certainly isn't going to do that. l Two or three million working people. Greiner's anti-union laws are the inevitable result of Labor's Accord and federal industrial relations policy, as Professor John Niland, the architect of the NSW legislation, has often pointed out. Carr's best chance of winning the May 25 poll would be simply to campaign on the truth about these laws — that they will strip working people (especially in weakly unionised areas) of their last lines of defence. But NSW Labor will commit suicide rather than stir working-class anger and concern to the degree necessary to win this poll.
The near-total media blackout on the Greens is due to the fact that they are presenting the only all-round alternative to this Liberal-Labor Tweedle Show. And contrary to the carefully spread myth that Greens care "only" about the environment, Green policies are putting people and the environment before the defence of the status quo.
A few examples: projects to repair the ravaged environment will also provide sorely needed jobs; massive upgrading of the public transport system will both improve quality of travel and reduce the need for the car, chief source of greenhouse gases; cheaper, publicly funded housing will reduce the urban sprawl which threatens to create one 200 kilometre-long NewSydGong on the NSW coastline.
The Greens' commitment to grassroots democracy also makes them the most consistent opponents of Greiner's anti-union laws. Murray Addison, NSW Greens secretary, put it this way in a letter to the unions:
"In the past the Green movement and trade union movement have sometimes been at odds. This, in the end, seems to have been quite detrimental to both our movements. We feel quite strongly that in the future we should work more closely together, building bridges which will enable our collective weight to bring about social and environmental change to our society."
The real alternative on May 25 is to vote for the Greens in both houses, putting the Democrats second and putting Labor before the Liberals and Nationals.