The Greens: Not what they seem?

It's nice that the Greens are happy to provide readers of The Interpreter with more details of their policies. But isn't that what pre-election policy documents are for?

Apparently not, because after convincing more than one million Australians to vote for them, we now learn that the Greens will be undertaking a comprehensive policy review in 2011 which will include 'looking at' their 'current' international policies. Presumably that's meant to signal they aren't really serious after all about pursuing the various foreign and defence positions I outlined the other day.

We are meant to believe that the Greens, suddenly sobered by their new-found power, have succumbed to a fit of responsibility and will temper some of their more extreme positions and evolve into something more like their German namesake.

There are two ways to interpret the evidence: either the Greens intend to use their newly-gained power to implement their policy agenda (which is pretty scary), or they don't (which is pretty cynical). I'm not sure which is worse.

Maybe Tim McMinn and Anna Reynolds have belled the cat, and the real answer is that, for the Greens, the purpose of pre-election policies is to differentiate themselves from Labor, attract gullible disenchanted voters and serve as bargaining chips to be traded away. The problem is, we don't know which policies are in earnest and which aren't.

The double standard is breathtaking. Surely a political party should be accountable for all its policy commitments. That's certainly the expectation for the major parties. When they do break their promises – as Kevin Rudd did with the ETS, for example – it's a big deal and they suffer real consequences. Why should the Greens be held to a different, and much lower standard of accountability – particularly now they have emerged as a political force? So much for the brave new world of Australian politics.

Voters may have given the Greens the balance of power in the Senate from next July. But they aren't mugs. Hopefully they won't fall for the same bait-and-switch routine twice.

Photo by Flickr user connerdowney, used under a Creative Commons license.