PETER VAN ONSELEN: How the hypocritical Greens are in love with an endless roundabout of wasted time, money, and moralising

The Senate committee investigating the consulting industry’s practices has finally released its report after being postponed four times.

After eighteen months, thousands of questions in advance that took endless productivity-sucking time to answer them all, and literally dozens of hearings that cost God knows how much money, what were the commission’s key recommendations?

May the kangaroo court that it quickly became hold more of these hearings, and that the organizations that appeared before them must pledge to reappear every year in the future. Forced to participate in the painful and pointless process again and again.

You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.

It’s a pointless exercise to save the nest of senators who get paid extra to run committees like this. Is it a coincidence that there are now more than a hundred parliamentary committees active at the same time? More than ever since the Federation.

These committees are almost always simply ignored by governments. They are like a toy for backbenchers and crossbenchers, to give them something to occupy their time.

This particular Senate committee has allowed numerous incorrect claims to be made under parliamentary privilege, rarely correcting the facts when mistakes were made.

The Greens have of course separated themselves from the majority report that both major parties have supported and are demanding that stronger measures be taken that they as a party do not adhere to.

Hypocrisy is your name for Australia’s left-wing minor party, and the Greens could soon control the balance of power in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

Greens senator and committee member Barbara Pocock, who was part of a tag team in which Labor’s Deb O’Neill had challenged the Australian cases during the hearings, split from her Senate colleague by denouncing the committee’s recommendations .

At least Senator O’Neill finally saw the light.

But what about the Greens? If they want to demand more transparency, why don’t they practice what they preach?

Readers may not be aware of this, but the Greens don’t even allow the public to access their party conferences like the major parties do. They keep them secretly, in a closed store, away from the public eye.

Political parties are private organizations, which means that they are essentially just corporations concerned with getting members elected to public office. Yet they are not subject to privacy laws like other companies.

They align their activities with all kinds of taxpayer-funded assistance: staffing, election funding, and massive allocations of government-funded office resources.

And there is a major lack of oversight to ensure they don’t abuse their taxpayer-funded rights.

Labor Senator Deb O’Neill (pictured) split from her Greens committee colleague, a sign she was moving on from previous performance art

But despite all this secrecy and merging government funding with a private political party like the Greens, Senator Pocock is targeting consultants who do work for the government by using her platform to suggest all sorts of undesirable things to do.

Evidence supporting the allegations being made is a ‘take it or leave it’ option. Allegations are treated as facts. Silence is the only response when the hypocrisy of the (mis)behavior of political parties is raised.

No wonder the public has little time for those who represent us in Canberra.

The Greens recently called for an end to voluntary unpaid work – just as leader Adam Bandt was advertising for volunteers to work in his office.

You couldn’t make this up if you tried.

Hypocrisy and the Greens are not a new phenomenon. After years of protesting against big money donations in politics, in 2011 the Greens received the largest political donation from a private donor in Australian history: $1.6 million from the founder of travel website Wotif, Graeme Wood.

Suddenly the Greens had no problem with large donations. Then-leader Bob Brown said he was “forever grateful” for it. Yet they still whine when donors to the major parties are revealed.

Values ​​are only important if they are reflected in a person’s actions and if they are applied universally, and not just when it is convenient. Unfortunately, that is not the credo the Greens live by.