The following is the text of a letter I sent to an official in the Victorian Greens, explaining my reasons for resigning from the party. For this post I have replace the names of some people with other names.
Dear Fox,
thank you for your email of 24 June acknowledging my resignation from the Greens.
I left the ALP (Australian Labor Party) over 20 years ago in frustration at the amount of time being wasted in faction fights and personal vendettas. I have been in the Greens just on 9 years. I was hoping for something better in the Greens, and for a while it was.
Greens meetings used to be friendly and informative. The focus of the organization was clearly on environmental matters. A little before and then during Covid I wasn’t attending meetings. When I returned after Covid I was amazed at the change in the organization.
An atmosphere of faction fighting, and vendettas now pervades the Greens. Time at meetings is taken up with procedural arguments and threats of misconduct proceedings. A lot of people don’t want to come to branch meetings. The organization is now focused on identity-related and transgender issues. The atmosphere in the Greens has become much like the ALP which I left 20+ years ago. Some of our elected (local government) Councillors have left the party and I expect will campaign as independents.
In May this year, we had two people (Alice and Jerry - all names have been changed) standing for preselection for our local seat in federal parliament. The returning officer, Simon, disqualified Alice, on a couple of trivial rule breaches, effectively giving the preselection to Jerry. When the vote had been 54 to 25 in her favour. When Alice and others criticised Simon’s actions, misconduct complaints were made against the critics and the Misconduct Panel told the critics they could not come to the May or June branch meetings, although the Panel did not give them the details of what the allegations were or who made them. The penalty was imposed with no hearing. I believe this was done merely to stifle debate and prevent the returning officer’s conduct being debated at the next branch meeting.
In addition, our branch Treasurer, Larry, emailed the other branch officer bearers saying that unless Alice apologised to Simon for criticising him (and/or to Larry as deputy returning officer) he (Larry) wouldn’t be able come to meetings because it wouldn’t be “safe” and he couldn’t otherwise “see a way forward.”
Larry’s email of 11 May, (sent to 13 other party members, so it’s hardly confidential) read, in part,
“(12) I require that Alice retracts any statements of her belief that Simon acted inappropriately and stick to factual statements.
(13) If point 12 is not met. I will not attend this meeting as I will feel it is unsafe for me to do so… I suggest that an apology from Alice is a minimal requirement for finding a way forward… I reserve my right to initiate misconduct proceedings against Alice,” [emphasis added].
The suggestion that the meeting would be “unsafe” is utter rubbish.
This attitude of weaponised snivelling victimhood, with false claims about “safety” used to stifle debate within the Greens has come to left wing circles in the English-speaking world from American college campus politics, where students seem to think that encountering ideas or claims they don’t agree with makes them ‘unsafe.’ This is garbage, and it’s not a good development. [See the book ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ here.]
A “way forward” would have been to have a branch meeting, have Alice put up whatever motion she wished, debate it, and have it pass or fail. Larry could easily have stood up for whatever position he wished to adopt and defended the preselection process and outcome if he wished to.
This use of misconduct claims and threats thereof has become common place in the Greens, and its use in stifling debate is hidden from the members by the use of confidentiality, i.e. secrecy provisions, whereby the person complained against is not allowed to tell people who has lodged complaints against them, or what was complained about, or even that there was a complaint. Even if the complaint is dismissed, the person complained against is still not allowed to say that this happened. Ordinary branch members are basically not allowed to know how the party actually operates. I think secrecy should only apply to sexual harassment cases.
Political parties should be able to have robust, vigorous debates where alleged incorrect process are discussed, without debate being stifled in this way. We need to be creatures with backbones, who can stand on our hind legs and argue about whether proper processes were followed, without the need to prevent people coming to meetings, so as to win debates by not letting them occur.
The outcome of the preselection is that the party has a candidate whose sole campaign experience, as far as I can find out, is having been a booth captain at one polling booth on election day in 2022.
I have asked Larry to pass on to Jerry that he (Jerry) should not speak on his phone in public places (like the bus or the shops) about internal Greens matters, not paying attention to who is around him. Others are likely to see this as evidence of political inexperience and lack of common sense. [Our] branch may be full of incompetent idiots, but talking about this on your phone on the bus in West Heidelberg is a bad idea.
People are being appointed to positions in the party where they are helping administer the party, despite having no political experience or knowledge of how the party operates. What other organization does this? I suspect they are appointed merely because their friends know they can put their hands up at the right time.
I have previously criticized the culture in the Greens in a blog post, “The Greens are teaching themselves cognitive behavioral therapy in reverse, “ here.
One way of testing whether the atmosphere in the greens is [deteriorating] or not, would be to look at the resignation rate (as a percentage of the membership) in the period 2017-19 (pre-Covid) with 2022-24. Both periods include an election year. I deliberately exclude the Covid years as being non-representative. If the percentage resignation rate has gone up, this supports my suggestion that the party’s culture has deteriorated.
Since leaving the Greens, I have attended meetings and listened to speakers from the Community Independents Project, and Climate 200, the organisations that have arisen to support the election of the ‘Teal’ independents. The level of professionalism on display in that movement far exceeds what I have observed in the Greens.
Other members who have resigned are looking to work for the environment in ways outside the Greens, or to support a Teal at the next election. I’ll do that as well.
Yours
Richard Snow
I hear you Richard , it’s so frustrating. When I first noticed what was going on - the Linda Gale pile-on, I thought why now? The antics are so stupid, it’s got to be sabotage from another political party or Gina’s mob trying to diminish the Greens influence. Why now when we have so much to do? Sad.
I don’t blame you leaving. I might have too, but I stopped reading the emails, so wouldn’t know for sure. I prefer to spend the time planting trees. Feel like I’m making a difference.
Join the club Richard, but 'do not go quietly into the night' rather we need loudspeakers to let all of those voters who blindly vote Green for the environment and action on climate change? that they are fools if they do continue to support the Greens ! Logo on their advertising should be all pink and baby blue now, Green's policies all the politics of envy, pro murderous villains Hamas! No longer the party of Bob Brown, no longer a Party worth a vote.
PS: wish you'd used the correct names! But reckon I can make a good guess though of who is who in the zoo - or is that name the Year 9 juveniles in charge of AGV State Council now ?