LET’S be frank: the Greens have had an absolute shocker of a year so far.
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Not usually as prone to factional infighting as the two major parties - at least, not ostensibly so - the 2017 Greens have been defined by conflict and disappointment.
It all started with Gonski 2.0.
New South Wales Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon was at odds with her party over the government’s new needs-based schools funding package, believing it would leave kids worse off than they would have been under the original Gonski deal.
She said as much in the pamphlets she distributed in her electorate, just as her Greens Senate colleagues were deep in crossbench negotiations regarding the funding arrangement.
The federal Greens MPs voted to exile Senator Rhiannon from the party room for supposedly derailing the party’s Gonski negotiations, leaving independent Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie to take much of the glory for ensuring the passage of Gonski 2.0.
Senator Rhiannon is sometimes referred to as a ‘watermelon’ - Green on the outside, red on the inside.
What the Gonski 2.0 affair also demonstrated was how beholden the Greens were to the unions.
Greens education spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young was reprimanded by the Australian Education Union for offering in principle support for the funding deal, which the union said was at odds with the views of Greens leader Richard Di Natale.
The unions hold sway in the inner-city seats that are the Greens bread and butter.
Negotiations around Gonski 2.0 showed that the party was feeling the pressure - it couldn’t be too supportive of the new model, lest it alienate the AEU.
That was the first half of the year.
The second half is shaping up to be even worse.
Last Thursday, Western Australian Greens Senator Scott Ludlam was forced to resign after it came to light that he had not renounced his New Zealand citizenship.
Mere days later, Queensland Greens Senator Larissa Waters also resigned, upon discovering she still held Canadian citizenship.
What’s worse, the senators were the two deputy leaders of the party.
Incidentally, there was a silver lining to the Ludlam resignation, with 22-year-old Greens candidate Jordon Steele-John set to fill the seat, which would make him the youngest person to serve in the Australian Parliament.
Some people have said the issue around dual citizenship is a technicality, but there’s no denying that having two of your MPs resign because of it isn’t a great look.
And, on Thursday, Tasmanian Greens Senator Nick McKim revealed that he was seeking confirmation that he had actually renounced his UK citizenship prior to being nominated for the Senate.
Meanwhile, in the ACT, a sexual assault allegation was aired from within the party.
It was alleged that a female volunteer was assaulted by a male volunteer during the campaign for both the federal and territory elections in 2016.
The supposed victim claimed that the party was trying to cover the incident up.
If we’ve learnt anything over the past two weeks, it’s this: the Greens are not so different from the major parties.
They’re Machiavellian, they’re incompetent, they’re scandal-prone.
They are, in short, a political party.
Surely the next five months couldn’t possibly get any worse for them.