The Rise of The Greens and One Nation in the Media

In today’s top stories, the left-leaning SBS News published a story about the right-wing conservative party One Nation, as well as a story about the left-wing Australian Greens party. I mean, this is good to see. It’s good to see SBS publishing news from all sides of politics.

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Regardless of my personal political persuasion, I think it’s vital for democracy that all views are presented openly and honestly. The moment the media try to cover up one side of politics is when democracy starts to fail us. If we don’t allow opposing voices to be heard, then we’ll end up with only one voice as we’re seeing playing out in China. Chairman Xi Jingping does not want opposing voices and it is costing the Chinese people. Constant harsh lock downs to try to eradicate a virus that is impossible to eradicate. I know people in China, and it’s grim. Even SBS will admit that China’s COVID-zero strategy is causing more harm than good.

Anyway, the point is, we need to hear views from all sides of politics in order to have a well-functioning democracy. SBS are at least publishing from both sides. Their One Nation story focuses on former Coalition MP George Christensen who left the Liberal-Nationals and is now running on the senate ticket for One Nation. Sure, they’ve focused on him now becoming eligible for a taxpayer-funded one-off payment if he loses, but they’ve still given One Nation some airtime. Mr Christensen left the LNP due to his “disenchantment with the party’s direction, its net-zero climate pledge and ‘destructive pandemic policies’”. He is a vocal critic of government-enforced health mandates. It’s highly unlikely that he’ll be elected as a senator, however, his presence on the One Nation ticket certainly won’t hurt their chances.

The leader of The Greens, Adam Bandt, is pushing for dental care (as well as mental health care) to be included in Australia’s universal healthcare program, Medicare, through a billionaire’s tax. The billionaire’s won’t like it, but I fully agree with providing dental care to all Australians. I’ve always found it strange that dental care was never included in universal health care. It doesn’t make much sense to me from a health perspective. Are healthy teeth not part of a healthy body? He’s also pushing for a rise to welfare payments to $88 a day getting all welfare recipients out of poverty. It should be noted that Labor have ditched any plans to increase welfare due to the expense involved. The Greens also have a plan to build 1 million homes in order to take pressure off Australia’s over-inflated housing market. The major parties don’t like to touch this issue, so it makes sense at least some voters will migrate their vote over to The Greens. Of course, many Australians will simply not vote for The Greens out of principle due to their policy to eliminate the Coal and Gas industry.

Polling from Roy Morgan certainly shows that the minor parties are doing fairly well. One Nation have increased their figures to around 5%, while The Greens are up around 12.5%. As I said, if voters feel that they are being hurt by the major parties, at least a certain percentage of them will vote for a minor party.

Actually, even the public broadcaster the ABC are reporting on both The Greens and One Nation. “Not just the Morrison and Albanese show: The Greens and One Nation show off their election pitches”. It seems that the media (to some extent) have realised that hiding information from voters is a bad idea.

Although many would say that The Greens and One Nation are polar opposites (they hate each other by the way), I think they are fairly similar in that they are both minor parties seeking voters who are disenchanted with the current two-party system. They’re both willing to speak their minds on contentious issues. They’re both willing to fight the hard fight. And I think, that’s what Australia needs. We need people who don’t shy away from difficult conversations, and we need the media to respect that. Sometimes I feel that the two major parties just like playing it safe. They’re so afraid of losing elections, that they often don’t want to touch tough social issues like housing, immigration, and welfare. They’re scared that if they show any support for the minor parties or their “fringe” ideas, voters will punish them, so they pretend they disagree with them on nearly every issue.

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