Short shots on the Swans, Apple, Corvette and Debate. The Greens policy platform. It is internally consistent, and has several ideas that are worthy of notice. It certainly does not deserve the bile and vitriol they have been subjected to by politicians, the media and web-pundits. The weakest part of The Greens platform is foreign policy. On the whole, I give the Democrats the nod over The Greens in terms of policies I preferred.

Poll : Favourite third party platform?

Shorts

• Poor old Sydney Swans, going down to St Kilda. They are consistent though, always getting in the final eight. One day they will take a Grand Final. Show it 'em Sydney (next year anyway) btw their shop needs to sell a Sydney tie. I am crass enough to wear it.
• Apple goodness is not absolute. The wireless connection tools in OSX are confusing and crappy. This morning my iBook decided it was connected to weiss-net rather than my own wireless network. It wouldn't let me on weiss-net as it needed a password. I was unable to get it on my wireless network through the wireless admin/config screens. I went downstairs to check that the Thinkpad could find it which it did, when I unslept the iBook after that and it found my wireless network. All that hassle for nothing. Windows and Linux wireless config tools are far better than OSX's in this respect.
• Much Corvette goodness this weekend. Took the tinted top off the car and drove out over the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenadoah Valley. A wonderful drive in the nice weather that Virginia can produce in autumn. It reminds me of Mittagong or Narooma weather, where there is a cool breeze but the sun is still shining brightly. Best of all worlds there.
• The worm reckons Latham outdid Howard in the debate.. I like this comment from Latham on Iraq in the debate;

  It diverted so many resources from the real task - in Asia - if all the money had been used to break up al-Qaeda, to smash Jemaah Islamiah, to find bin Laden, the world today would be a safer place

  Don't know if it would be safer, but the approach would be far more productive than the US's failed excursion into the Middle East.

• I shouldn't laugh, but it is hard not to get the giggles. Mexicans stealing Hollywood movie stars, what next, Birnam Wood will come to Dunsinane?

Greens

The Greens have been copping a rollicking from the Liberals lately, most likely because their preferences will weigh heavily toward Labor. The Greens have also been subject to derisive comments from the internet community as well. To determine their platform from the spin that the Libs, their followers and the media is publishing it is a good idea to have a look at the policy platform of the Greens.

Interestingly entering "the greens" into google turns up greens.org.au as the first result. From a webdesign point of view, their website is not set up well to have people quickly read their policies. Their policy documents are in the web unfriendly pdf file format. Which I am not alone in disliking reading on a website. If I am viewing a website in a browser, I don't like another program having to be loaded to read the document. If you try to read their policies as HTML, they deep link three directories down, which means to read it, you *really* have to want to read it as you are going to be clicking like mad to get through all the menu's. For instance, "care for the earth" has eighteen sub menus. They need to hire a usability expert for their website first.

Care For The Earth

Their philosophy toward the environment is rational and reasonable. For instance;

1.1.7 equity within and between generations

It is all common sense, that people would be hard pressed to disagree with the overall philosophy. I believe on of the American Indians called it not defecating in your own bed. Their bio-diversity platform makes claims to stop the destruction of native ecosystems and the clearing of native vegetation, but their is no mention of how they plan to achieve that within a market economy. I do like this comment though;

2.1.5 encourage effective habitat management, including the ecologically appropriate use of fire

Australia carries the European and property society fear of fire. Fire in a culture where everything is viewed as property is feared disproportionately as it is seen as a destructor and subtractor of property. This is a European world-view that needs to be quashed completely. Given the Australian landscape, fire needs to be viewed as a creator of new growth, rather than a destroyer of property.

The Coastline

Australians are a coastal people and the continent is harsh enough in the Great Dividing Range and interior that this will remain so. New development and populations in Australia will probably move to the sea and the continental shelf once new technologies are found to exploit that area. The continental shelf will most likely be used for intensive off-shore farming as well in the future.

The Greens have as their policy in developing long-term policies to counter coastal urban and tourist development. Complex systems, of which ecosystem are very definitely a part, tend to have the greatest vibrancy and activity at the edges. Coastal systems exhibit that behaviour, consequently they contain a disproportionate amount of an ecosystems vitality.

Rather than banning or stopping development there, a more appropriate response is to find a way to make humanity contribute to that vitality in a positive way without having to dump radioactive waste there to keep humans out. Humans are a product of complex systems and their environments too, and seek the areas of greatest vitality and information transferral. Humans will go to these regions no matter what. It is beast to attempt to control the effects rather than the cause (to quote James Madison on another topic).

New Tech and Information Tech

The Greens have numerous policies on existing industries such as Agriculture and Construction. Both old time industries that were part of the industrial revolution and with the industrial revolutions consequent effect on the environment. Other than Genetic Engineering, which can be construed as a modern permutation of farming, they do not have any policies on high tech industries such as science or information technology. Their policies and the industries they target are industrial era. It is hard not to get the impression they are fighting a preservation battle more suited to the 19thC than the 21stC.

Information has moved to an abundance model already. The cost of moving data, the cost of creating new data, and the cost of software based systems (once commoditized) is near zero. Once humanity moves off world, the cost of land will drop to zero. Once nanotechnology and universal replicators appear, then the cost of manufacture will drop to zero as well. It is hard to see The Greens policy platforms having any relevance in an era of abundance. They also do not offer any policies that can hasten humanities arrival into an abundance era either. Their policies are the policies of scarcity and protection. Ecologically many of them are very necessary, but they offer no insight into the future.

That being said, they are a responsible third party that has helped the Senate become a genuine house of review. They are also consistent on their platforms and do not sway with the wind, or the current polls. Good luck to them, I hope they make the major parties sweat, and remind them that there are minorities out there with political voice that are not prepared to put up with the spin of the major parties and the mass media.

Population

The Greens see Australia's existing population as unsustainable. From their platform;

The Australian Greens are committed to reducing the environmental impacts of Australia's population in the understanding that the required changes are political, social, technological and economic as well as demographic. Neither the planet as a whole, nor any one country, can sustain unlimited growth in its human population. Ecological indicators alone show that we are presently living well beyond Australia's sustainable means.

I come into direct conflict with The Greens here as I think Australian immigration should be increased to 1 million a year until the population reaches 40 to 60 million. We use fresh water heavily, but the agricultural industry consumes by far the most of it. We are heavy on the local ecosystems and land, but again this is because we live in cookie cutter housing developments with European style gardens and poor transportation infrastructure that demands we abuse our locality. The problem in my opinion isn't the number of humans, or the size of the population, it is the European and Industrial era lifestyle we have chosen to live.

I have faith in new technologies and new cultural memes to take root and enable Australia to support three times its existing population. You only have to spend time in the United States to be notice how more ecologically aware Australians are. This is a cultural meme, that has been accepted and propagated by Australian society.

Economies of scale in heavily capitalized industries contain the most danger to sustainable living. They have little care for localization and dump an archaic and inflexible solution on all environments and localities. Again an abundance model allows for infinite and ongoing localization. With the abundant resources of a creation society, it allows people to customize exactly to their local and their environment's needs.

The Greens should be funding nanotechnology to break the back of capital intensive industries and their destructive economies of scale. Rather than seeking to control and legislate scarcity through preservation and micro-management of the environment.

Energy

The Greens platform on fossil fuels as the engine of the Australian economy is quite rational, they seek an end to the reliance on the polluting nature of fossil fuels. The good thing about alternate energy technologies is that the allow for decentralized energy. Solar Panels, wind technologies etc are small impact technologies that can be deployed locally. I expect that with technological advance the notion of a central power station will disappear.

On the subject of nuclear technology, while they are against nuclear proliferation, their phobia of nuclear technology extends to;

14.1.3 the global elimination of nuclear reactors

I am not sure why, medical technologies in part depend on radioactive properties that reactors generate. Nuclear technology other than the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island accidents have been remarkably reliable and safe. They also pollute far less than coal or oil power plants. The Greens have little faith in Engineering as a discipline here.

James Lovelock of Gaia fame believes that nuclear power is the only way to provide the worlds increasing energy needs. Lovelock also offers an interesting conservation technique, since humanity is scared witless of radiation, he proposes we dump radioactive waste in areas that are to be preserved. Since humanity is the main contributor to ecological destruction, it will keep humans out and let the ecosystem continue to develop unhindered by humans.

Democracy

It is interesting to read the Third Party's policies on democracy and involvement of the polity, as they are usually more open to change than the major parties are; as the major parties spend more time consolidating their power once in. The Greens are for a Republic but hint continually toward some style of direct democracy. They fully believe that legitimacy and knowledge resides with the community rather than representatives or a ruling elite.

The Greens are against he Governor-General having any political weight. In other words the Head of State is to be ceremonial only, with the House being able to dismiss the Prime Minister (rather than the GG through the reserve powers). The Greens are also for a Bill of Rights. Their constitutional beliefs are very pragmatic and reflect the "wet noodle" state of the current Australian Constitution. They do however, see the "precautionary principle" that they place their environmental decision making should have a constitutional basis/reference.

All the Australian Federal parties fail to understand Federalism. Like the Liberals and Democrats (I do not know for certain but I suspect that Labor does to), they want to abolish the states;

2.22 support the eventual abolition of the states

Like the other parties they covet the responsibilities of the states. So much for diffusing power amongst localo government that are closer to the issues. The Greens like the other political elites want no barriers to the absolute power of Federal Parliament. This is a failure of civics in Australia. The Federal Government is supposed to be minimal government, with constitutional rights to legislate in the sphere of federal issues only. Not *everything* under the sun.

Economy

The Greens base their economic policies off of the demands of sustainable and maximizing the quality of life of individuals within this system. They base maximizing the quality of life on the principles of Equity, Empowerment, Choice and Cooperation. Interestingly their definition of equity does not discriminate between existing generations and future generations. The Greens do not have complete faith in a market economy and under their pillar of cooperation provide for other means so that individuals can make informed rational choices. The Greens also place strong emphasis on a strong public sector to enable social justice.

In macro-economic policy The Greens seek to domesticize Australian debt. I am not sure how they plan to do that, they offer no real policies to achieve that. Considering that most of Australian debt is private, it is Australians seeking credit from overseas. Obviously overseas creditors see Australians as a good bet to make their payments on time, or credit would not have been extended. It also shows that Australia does not have cheap domestic credit, otherwise Australians would be using that to fund their debt.

The Greens also plan to reduce the amount of foreign ownership of Australian firms. In a market economy this isn't as important as it is in a protectionist economy. The reason Australian firms are being taken over is that there is not a large enough domestic Australian market or a large enough pool of Australian consumers to be able to raise capital for Australian firms. Increasing the number of Australian economic actors and hence consumers to the level of other nations such as the UK, France and Germany will alleviate this problem.

Taxation

The Greens have some interesting ideas on taxation, all which fit with their idea's on preservation and sustainability. In terms of taxation they seek to tax the consumption of resources rather than taxing labour;

3.1.5 reduces taxes on labour and increases taxes on resource use and pollution

They seek to discourage speculative (and non-productive) investment, but no mention of how they will achieve that. The Greens also see the taxation system as a means to socially engineer the community. This makes them little different from the major parties in that aspect. The Greens do plan to phase out the GST which is a good policy IMO. They also plan to stop any breaks and exemptions from Capital Gains Tax. The Greens also plan to introduce estate taxes. Given how The Greens plan to start the estate tax at $2 million, most families will appreciate into that net worth unless it is linked to inflation. Taxation systems like bracket creep, and once hooked on a source of revenue governments rarely like giving it up. I can see that happening here.

Foreign Policy

This is probably the weakest part of the The Green platform. They offer no insight into their views on foreign policy other than to scale up the basis for their domestic policies to an international platform. They have one section on Global Governance which looks to the UN to provide international leadership. But they lack a strong international doctrine like Labors "Asian Engagement" or the Liberals tired old "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine. There is also no mention of defence, proliferation, terrorism or human trafficking in their platform and how they will seek to solve that issue regionally. Bit disappointing actually.

Conclusion

I cannot recall voting for the major parties in a Federal Election, so the party platforms of the Third Parties are of interest to me. The major parties already get too much (undeserved) encouragement from voters. I recently reviewed the Australian Democrats party platform, on the whole I have to say, I agreed with more of the Democrats principles than The Greens from their platforms and policies. So the Democrats would get the nod over The Greens from me. At the House of Representatives level, I prefer Labor's foreign policy over the Coalition, the Democrats and the Greens, so they would get the nod over the Greens there too.

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