So they did what minority parties are supposed to do, and told labor “we will not pass your plan unless you double the social housing fund and number of houses”, and labor simply ignored it, letting the bill die?
That’s a labor problem. Not a greens problem. It shows Labor did not actually care to fight for one of their core election promises. The Labor of today is captured and exists to prevent real meaningful change, and low knowledge voters like you blame “the left”.
There’s this weird belief that minority parties are supposed to ignore their own policies and just support whatever the closest major party wants. And not supporting the major party means they’re failing in this duty.
So Labor could drop the plan and blame the Greens for it, instead of actually pushing for their own policy. And the media frames this as a failure by the Greens.
The same media that almost unanimously supports Australia’s right wing conservatives, but I’m sure their opinion on this particular point is completely unbiased.
Meaningful change or nothing? Blame labor all you want, the greens voted against an improvement.
Fuck ideals, I want progress.
Even if you disagree with me (which is fair) check your local candidates in theyvoteforyou.org.au - especially independents who vary enormously between rhetoric, voting and even attendance.
Meaningful change or nothing? Blame labor all you want, the greens voted against an improvement.
Fuck ideals, I want progress.
But these aren’t ideals. Those are necessary material requirements for resolving the housing crisis. Shelter, one of the most basic requirements for people to be productive in a modern society. Idealism would be dropping the $56+ billion defense fund to zero and putting it all into housing until we can secure our own population.
Fuck the bare minimum, I want this problem solved before I die. History has shown that without real pressure from unions and “radicals”, Labor might not have even solved segregation (but they’d be making progress).
If the end result is no legislation being passed then surely you agree that its not a win.
We can argue about whose fault it is & realistically that will be different for each bill. For the housing one I would have liked to have seen the greens get it in - it was a measurable improvement. The greens are right to complain about labor bullying but saying no every time gets us nowhere.
If the end result is no legislation being passed then surely you agree that its not a win.
Yes, and if we’re looking at the here-and-now then objectively less housing was built and people suffered. You’re absolutely right about that.
However, my experience and perspective is that Labor are the problem in that situation, and that’s not just some blame game or complaint, it’s part of a bigger picture that Labor are a conservative force who will never do enough by choice. They’ve long abandoned their labour roots and having talked with many current and former Labor rank-and-file, there’s pretty strong signs of corruption and elitism dominating the party. So unless there is material pressure on them, enough to dominate their own interests and those of their backers, they will simply just sit comfortably as “better than the Coalition”, similarly to the US Democratic Party in their two-party system - they ended up being the moderate billionaires’ party, hijacking progressive symbolism to cover for their selling-out. And we saw the inevitable result: a steady ratcheting shift towards oligarchy.
The point of that quick rant is that, the solution - not just small wins but the solution - can’t be to just work with Labor. They will appease people with little short term gains, but rarely-if-ever enough to solve these problems. They’re just not positioned to, even if most of their members want them to, because they’re beholden to their bigger backers. If we want to actually solve these problems, the worker class needs to build collective political power and force the government’s hand away from the business-owning class and towards us. The union movement is being repressed harder and harder even under Labor, so in lieu of reliable union power, the next best option is to replace Labor with the Greens, who have at least shown some level of integrity and independence from the ruling class and have shown backbone in demanding the necessary dedication towards solving the housing crisis. Yes, their resistance resulted in a real loss, but if enough people see that Labor refuses to do enough and saw what Greens were struggling for, and that ends up giving the Greens more support and more power, perhaps enough to force through legislation in a few years, then that will be a profound long-term win. I know that may sound like a gamble, but the growth of the smaller parties is consistent and given the track record of Labor over the last century, getting rid of them will be worth the unfortunate and real losses that come from when when Labor stubbornly refuse to help this country.
Disclaimer: I’m here from /all and not Australian, so there’s a nonzero chance I’m talking out of my ass.
Meaningful change or nothing? Blame labor all you want, the greens voted against an improvement.
It’s not pretty, but from my limited knowledge it seems that voting down the bill was the best course of action. A small party’s goal in a two-party system is to twist the major parties’ arms and force them to effect meaningful change, however the party’s constituents define meaningful change to be. Jumping at the first sign of progress and allowing Labor to claim they’ve solved the housing crisis would defeat any chance of a real solution, establish precedent that Greens will back off from their demands for breadcrumbs and throw the ball in the Liberals’ court after Labor’s bandaid bill predictably fails to accomplish anything. If the Greens wanted to provide something better than a Labor majority both for housing and in general, it seems to me that rejecting the bill was the optimal course of action.
It’s not pretty, but from my limited knowledge it seems that voting down the bill was the best course of action
The thing is, they didn’t vote down the bill. They stalled it by a few weeks while they extracted concessions out of Labor, then Labor secretly dropped the concessions and tried to pass the original bill, then the Greens forced them back into presenting the improved version with yet more improvements. Then they passed it.
It was a long term investment fund anyway, so not a short-term fix, so delaying it by a few weeks isn’t a big deal, especially if the end result is better. Plus, the version that got passed actually changed from having a maximum spend per year to a minimum. So its short term benefit was actually improved by the Greens delaying it.
Like ziltoid101 said (I think) there is a balance. If the greens vote inline with labor every time then they are too weak - why vote for them. But if they block everything then they are preventing progress.
I feel like they have been too far in the second part but thats just, like my opinion man.
Can we please just agree that Dutton is batshit crazy.
to me $10 billion for social housing is a massive win and huge progress over previous governments, the greens demanding cherries on top by blocking it right up until the last minute in the middle of a housing crisis is a joke, they took credit for forcing labor to go around them and give money directly to the states as well
the greens are free to pick their battles, in my opinion they picked the wrong one, for that after 15 years of preferencing the greens above labor they are now behind it
So… (spoiler alert for everyone who is only up to the June 2023 episode of APH in the Vice article):
In September 2023 the $10B housing bill was passed by Labor and the Greens.
Bit of a shame Labor held back for so long on the Greens amendments, but Labor did show here they can work around the inevitable delays of robust parliamentary discourse by approving interim funding for housing in June to get things started while the details of long term funding were nutted out the crossbench.
So they did what minority parties are supposed to do, and told labor “we will not pass your plan unless you double the social housing fund and number of houses”, and labor simply ignored it, letting the bill die?
That’s a labor problem. Not a greens problem. It shows Labor did not actually care to fight for one of their core election promises. The Labor of today is captured and exists to prevent real meaningful change, and low knowledge voters like you blame “the left”.
There’s this weird belief that minority parties are supposed to ignore their own policies and just support whatever the closest major party wants. And not supporting the major party means they’re failing in this duty.
So Labor could drop the plan and blame the Greens for it, instead of actually pushing for their own policy. And the media frames this as a failure by the Greens.
The same media that almost unanimously supports Australia’s right wing conservatives, but I’m sure their opinion on this particular point is completely unbiased.
Meaningful change or nothing? Blame labor all you want, the greens voted against an improvement.
Fuck ideals, I want progress.
Even if you disagree with me (which is fair) check your local candidates in theyvoteforyou.org.au - especially independents who vary enormously between rhetoric, voting and even attendance.
edit: .org.au
But these aren’t ideals. Those are necessary material requirements for resolving the housing crisis. Shelter, one of the most basic requirements for people to be productive in a modern society. Idealism would be dropping the $56+ billion defense fund to zero and putting it all into housing until we can secure our own population.
Fuck the bare minimum, I want this problem solved before I die. History has shown that without real pressure from unions and “radicals”, Labor might not have even solved segregation (but they’d be making progress).
If the end result is no legislation being passed then surely you agree that its not a win. We can argue about whose fault it is & realistically that will be different for each bill. For the housing one I would have liked to have seen the greens get it in - it was a measurable improvement. The greens are right to complain about labor bullying but saying no every time gets us nowhere.
Yes, and if we’re looking at the here-and-now then objectively less housing was built and people suffered. You’re absolutely right about that.
However, my experience and perspective is that Labor are the problem in that situation, and that’s not just some blame game or complaint, it’s part of a bigger picture that Labor are a conservative force who will never do enough by choice. They’ve long abandoned their labour roots and having talked with many current and former Labor rank-and-file, there’s pretty strong signs of corruption and elitism dominating the party. So unless there is material pressure on them, enough to dominate their own interests and those of their backers, they will simply just sit comfortably as “better than the Coalition”, similarly to the US Democratic Party in their two-party system - they ended up being the moderate billionaires’ party, hijacking progressive symbolism to cover for their selling-out. And we saw the inevitable result: a steady ratcheting shift towards oligarchy.
The point of that quick rant is that, the solution - not just small wins but the solution - can’t be to just work with Labor. They will appease people with little short term gains, but rarely-if-ever enough to solve these problems. They’re just not positioned to, even if most of their members want them to, because they’re beholden to their bigger backers. If we want to actually solve these problems, the worker class needs to build collective political power and force the government’s hand away from the business-owning class and towards us. The union movement is being repressed harder and harder even under Labor, so in lieu of reliable union power, the next best option is to replace Labor with the Greens, who have at least shown some level of integrity and independence from the ruling class and have shown backbone in demanding the necessary dedication towards solving the housing crisis. Yes, their resistance resulted in a real loss, but if enough people see that Labor refuses to do enough and saw what Greens were struggling for, and that ends up giving the Greens more support and more power, perhaps enough to force through legislation in a few years, then that will be a profound long-term win. I know that may sound like a gamble, but the growth of the smaller parties is consistent and given the track record of Labor over the last century, getting rid of them will be worth the unfortunate and real losses that come from when when Labor stubbornly refuse to help this country.
Disclaimer: I’m here from /all and not Australian, so there’s a nonzero chance I’m talking out of my ass.
It’s not pretty, but from my limited knowledge it seems that voting down the bill was the best course of action. A small party’s goal in a two-party system is to twist the major parties’ arms and force them to effect meaningful change, however the party’s constituents define meaningful change to be. Jumping at the first sign of progress and allowing Labor to claim they’ve solved the housing crisis would defeat any chance of a real solution, establish precedent that Greens will back off from their demands for breadcrumbs and throw the ball in the Liberals’ court after Labor’s bandaid bill predictably fails to accomplish anything. If the Greens wanted to provide something better than a Labor majority both for housing and in general, it seems to me that rejecting the bill was the optimal course of action.
The thing is, they didn’t vote down the bill. They stalled it by a few weeks while they extracted concessions out of Labor, then Labor secretly dropped the concessions and tried to pass the original bill, then the Greens forced them back into presenting the improved version with yet more improvements. Then they passed it.
It was a long term investment fund anyway, so not a short-term fix, so delaying it by a few weeks isn’t a big deal, especially if the end result is better. Plus, the version that got passed actually changed from having a maximum spend per year to a minimum. So its short term benefit was actually improved by the Greens delaying it.
Like ziltoid101 said (I think) there is a balance. If the greens vote inline with labor every time then they are too weak - why vote for them. But if they block everything then they are preventing progress.
I feel like they have been too far in the second part but thats just, like my opinion man.
Can we please just agree that Dutton is batshit crazy.
to me $10 billion for social housing is a massive win and huge progress over previous governments, the greens demanding cherries on top by blocking it right up until the last minute in the middle of a housing crisis is a joke, they took credit for forcing labor to go around them and give money directly to the states as well
the greens are free to pick their battles, in my opinion they picked the wrong one, for that after 15 years of preferencing the greens above labor they are now behind it
So… (spoiler alert for everyone who is only up to the June 2023 episode of APH in the Vice article):
In September 2023 the $10B housing bill was passed by Labor and the Greens.
Bit of a shame Labor held back for so long on the Greens amendments, but Labor did show here they can work around the inevitable delays of robust parliamentary discourse by approving interim funding for housing in June to get things started while the details of long term funding were nutted out the crossbench.