On Saturday I went along to the corner of Victoria Rd and Lyons Rd Drummoyne with other hardy souls from my local Greens Group (Inner West). It was an opportunity to chat to passers by and hand out free copies of Green Voice. I was standing on one of the corners (eastern side of Victoria Rd) holding signs for the traffic to see. The signs read (1. Water tanks, not desal 2. Ban developer donations 3. Better Cycleways 4. Services not Tax Cuts). I had a mix of reactions from a few friendly toots to yells of abuse and one driver gave me the finger which I actually thought was pretty funny. Anyway, one of the persons that I chatted with was a mature lady (over 60). She admitted to being a Liberal supported and had some scathing things to say about the State Labor government - I must add that she approached me because she thought there was an election on that she had missed out on - I assured her that we were just here to speak to people and advertise the Greens.
This lady's stance was based around ALL politicians being crooked and in it for themselves - certainly not the first time I have heard such a thing of late. As I tried to assure her that this is the thing that makes the Greens different - that we don't compromise on our principles, she followed it up with, "I wouldn't trust that Bob Brown." So it got me thinking, how do we appeal to the voters who seem fed up with all the nonsense going on in Australian politics (especially in NSW)? Then tonight on the news there was a story on the tiddly winks being played by NSW Labor.....Rees, Stewart, Robertson and their silly buggers. What happened to governing the state for the people? I don't accept the statement, "it's just politics."
Unless there is some sort of miracle the people in NSW are going to be faced with a Liberal Government - maybe the lesser of the two evils in some respects, but certainly not something to be positive about and definitely something to be feared. The best scenario of course is that the Greens end up with the balance of power in the Upper House. If the Greens don't make significant inroads into NSW politics in the next state election then we have only ourselves to blame. We should pull out all stops (which I'm sure we will).
