I think on this issue we will have to agree to disagree. I belive in the Australian Greens have been a member for over 6 years. I go to the odd Rally (even though I dont think this makes a scrap of difference) and I pay my membership every year and contribute. I agree the wheels turn slowly but thats how things are in Australia. The Greens MP’s work very hard and struggle with there workloads and need to be commended. In the end as I have always known politics is a numbers game and until the Greens have the numbers the Australian political landscape wont change greatly to combat Global warming. The Greens are doing there best. With Education and further getting the Australian Greens message out into the public space the Greens will one day become a political force to be reckoned with.
We need to carry on the good fight. We need to be a united left force in all levels of Australian government. Talking of splitting any party and dissecting will not advance any Environmental or social justice cause.

Unfortunately, the Democrats failed to win a Senate seat at the election.

The historical Green will have the bigger following for a good while yet, but my feeling is the Green party has alienated heaps of potential voters who will steadfastly vote major over Green until an alternative arrives.

I am not quite so disaffected, I am more a reluctant Green voter. But I seriously hope a climate progressive party without baggage shows up soon, thats would I’ll vote for ahead of the current Greens every time.

If, as seems evident in comments above, the historical Greens can’t see the benefit of learning, evolving, reinventing and growing as new things are understood then we need someone new on the scene.

Also you can’t make good plans looking in the rear view mirror. You need to plan by thinking how the electoral landscape will be, not how it is or was.

The people who want to align with all the historical Green agenda in one party and the climate “progressives” in another. That climate “progressive” movement has the chance to capture the votes that will never go to the current Green party brand.

That could feasibly increase the capture of votes by maybe 20% and firmly secure those elusive extra seats to create a balance of power “green” coalition (at least for climate issues).

Its pretty obvious that the steps to bifurcate the climate movement began at the last election, although those steps were in their infancy. Maybe this new movement foreshadows a driver of increased Green senate vote.

The choice for the Greens is to either:
a) coopt that movement into the Green brand somehow by to some extent reinventing the Green brand, or
b) to allow that movement to grow and hope to pick up the preference allocations from it.

As above doing the same old thing and expecting a different result isn’t clever.

So what must be done (by good and serious folk) is to mobilise enough senate votes to ensure it can’t happen again.

It won’t be enough to rely on a grassroots voter campaign like GetUp. The candidates also need to do their bit, it is no longer enough to be passionate.

This means the candidates need to figure out why they aren’t getting enough senate votes to be able to influence policy like the budget to where it needs to be.

The candidates have two and bit years to examine the question:

“What is it about my policy platform and electoral messages that stops people voting for me.”

A famous definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Time for some “spring cleaning” I’d say.

Are the baby bonus payments going into ‘intervention’ areas/communities quarantined too?

Jeffery@6, I don’t know, but here’s an sceptics guess. More than half will go on fossil fuel carbon emissions reduction programs. About half of what remains will be spent on energy consumption reduction measures which includes fossil fuels, and of the less than a quarter that remains will be spent on ‘renewables’ which may include a nuclear feasibility study. I wait in anticipation of being underwhelmed.