Why The Greens might not change
by Malcolm Cook
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25 August 2010 3:00PM
This post is part of a debate - click here to see how this debate started and developed.
Thanks to Kien Choong for his question. Alas, I don't have any fully formed thoughts on it yet.
One partial one, though, is that political parties that develop out of or closely associate themselves with particular social movements may be more constrained in their ability to 'move towards' the centre and become more pragmatic and flexible, as this could well alienate their traditional supporters. For the Greens, the fact that they only won 11.4% of the primary vote with a swing of 3.6% towards them in an election that seemed particularly favourable for them may make this tension even greater.
BTW, I agreed with the Greens' criticism of PM Rudd’s decision to dodge of the Dalai Lama and the manner of the dodging.
Photo by Flickr user najeebkhan2009, used under a Creative Commons license.
