The Greens need to stop this 'hard bargain' stance of theirs. It has cost us progress on important matters in the past and would cost us progress on this topic now.
"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" --Voltaire. In english: 'The best is the enemy of good'. Don't prevent progress in the direction everyone needs in pursuit of the perfection up front. You won't get perfection and you styme any progress in its pursuit.
I dunno, equally the government should negotiate better and stop doing this "our way or the highway" style stuff where they act like good governance is tyranny of the average preference default.
The greens have the same duty to their voters labor has to theirs, the government needs to be willing to negotate and can't just hold the left hostage by saying "either rubber stamp this or we make it more right wing".
fr, "my way or the highway" is not a political stance we need
It's funny how both you and naevaTheRat used the same phrase, whilst talking about different parties. I actually agree with both of you - you can't start up front with a hard stance of everything you demand. We need to compromise to get the ball rolling as a starting point. It is so much easier to progress a policy further once it is moving in the right direction than it is to get the whole electorate to get behind too much too soon. Otherwise you see stuff like repeal of the Emissions Trading Scheme. Yes, the scheme was imperfect - but it was a start; and it was overturned because it didn't 'go far enough' for the Greens. And now we have nothing.
Same goes for the Republic debate.
Same goes for the Voice.
We'll see it with changes to housing costs as well if we don't get behind progress - any progress on the matter.
My wife and I each earn over the Median Australian salary of ~$74k. We should easily be able to afford a house. But there are barely any 3+ bedroom homes within a 10-15km radius of the CBD under $1Million. That's ludicrous. Even assuming we had $200k saved for a deposit, an $800k mortgage over 20 years means repayments of about $74k/year at ~7% interest. It should not cost 100% of a median salary to buy a home. Instead, we rent a 3-bedroom townhouse for 60% of median salary. Which is also ludicrous. The kids have no yard, just a brick courtyard. There are jobs advertised full-time for less than what we pay on rent. I have no idea how someone earning $40k/year survives in this economy.
The present housing situation is simply unsustainable. We either start doing something about it now, or we face some sort of serious crisis down the line.
I'll be very honest, i'm old enough to have seen the greens party birth and from a perceived lunatic fringe to the mainstream. But the current lot have been incredibly obstructionist and it's cost them voters. Styming progress because it's not perfection then makes the left position look milquetoast and unable to accomplish anything due to "infighting" which is gleefully exploited by the right again and a fucking gain.
Yeah we need to do a fuckton better. But when parties come hard to the election with the policies we need, the voters tell them to go get fucked. So if we gotta drip feed some of the "scary" shit to progress, fckn drip feed it.
Though I understand the point you make, the Greens have been able to get better deals by pushing the govt. Sometimes they have not succeeded but often they have. I guess it's about knowing how far and in what way to push.
Here's the Greens response to the Budget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYIEYvq2a5M
There are going to be a lot of people who go quiet in a few months when the rental market doesn't suddenly destroy itself, and they realise they can't simply double rent 😂
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