Another Labor/Greens Coalition ?

Cynics will see the spectre of another toxic combination of a Labor/Greens coalition now that Luke Foley has announced that his party will exchange preferences with the Greens in twenty-five seats at the state election on April 28.  A similar preference deal with apply in voting for the state upper house.

It seems that there are short memories in politics, or perhaps some choose to forget Julia Gillard's emotional farewell speech in which she blamed her unwise decision to go into coalition with the Greens for Labor's defeat - and forcing the "Carbon tax "issue onto the public despite a promise to the contrary.

Others may remember Lara Giddings experience with a Labor/Greens government in Tasmania that nearly brought our smallest state to bankruptcy.  It's former timber industry lays in ruins and there is massive unemployment in the many small towns that were previously prosperous.  To the Greens, principle always takes precedence over practicability !

This preference deal seems a sure indication that if voting delivered a result where the minority Greens held the balance of power, Labor would not hesitate to do a deal and form a state coalition government.  Under such an arrangement, we could expect a massive input of Green's policies, far greater than their influence measured in voter support.

Foremost on the Greens agenda is scrapping the mining of coal, despite this $18 billion industry being a big employer and a valuable source of our export dollars.   Of course closing down the New South Wales coal industry would not reduce coal use by Japan, China and India by a single tonne.  It would merely transfer supply to other countries because the world is not short of coal.  If the Greens ever manage to get their way, it would be Pyrrhic victory for the Australian economy.

The Greens policies call for the removal of horses and other domestic livestock from all National parks.  It seems to be a preference for restricting access to just groups of hikers because this same policy seeks to close roads and totally restrict the use of trail bikes and quad vehicles, and snowmobiles in alpine areas.   This is despite farmers using the high country for summer grazing without issue since the early days.

A Green influence would see the end of widening of Sydney's access roads and probably the end of the West Connex project.  Their full impetus is on more public transport, despite the fact that Sydney lives and breathes by the necessity of it's commercial traffic.   The Greens also have semitrailers and B-Doubles in their sights, intending to force the removal of all goods onto the railways and marine traffic.  This is despite the world experience that a stable distribution network requires a mix of all these options to combine economics and reliability.

Their social aspirations would see the cessation of police sniffer dogs being used to detect illegal drugs.because they consider that "an infringement on personal space ".  Of course they see the inflicting of their policy ideas on the general public by using their numbers in a balance of power situation as ethical - and remember that the disastrous carbon tax was solely at their instigation.

The main avenue of attack by both Labor and the Greens will be the sale of poles and wires to finance badly needed infrastructure.    The scare campaign will threaten a hike in power charges, despite the evidence that those states that have already made that move have seen exactly the reverse happen.

To many undecided voters, the mere thought of the dreaded Greens having any sort of input into state policy decisions will decide their vote !