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April 16, 2012
Most of the commentary in the mainstream media around Bob Brown's resignation as leader of The Greens and his retirement from federal politics- doesn't critically address the philosophy behind The Green's politics. The strong emphasis on the politics is somewhat surprising given The Green's claim that they, unlike the others, are a values based political party.
David Pope
The Greens reject GDP as the dominant measure of human progress as they are in favour of a more integrated set of ecological, social and economic goals and measures because they consistently highlight the social and environmental costs of the continuation and expansion of capitalism at all costs. They argue that the current economic model or paradigm based on the limitless exploitation of the earth’s limited resources has reached its use by date.
It is surprising given the UN's recent recent conference on a new wellbeing and sustainability based economic paradigm that effectively integrates economic, social, and environmental objectives.
It is a counter paradigm to the neo-liberal one, which as Susan George pointed out, is premised on the idea:
that the market should be allowed to make major social and political decisions; the idea that the State should voluntarily reduce its role in the economy, or that corporations should be given total freedom, that trade unions should be curbed and citizens given much less rather than more social protection. In this model the market mechanism is the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment... the economy should dictate its rules to society not the other way around.
There is little questioning of the neo-liberal economic in the mainstream Australian media because it is culturally hegemonic and it appears to be the only possible economic and social order available to us. It is natural and inevitable. Democracy is an encumbrance.
It is the Australian Greens who challenge and question this economic model. Hence the ideological attacks from those commentators in the mainstream media who support the neo-liberal agenda of flexible labour markets, deregulation of financial markets, removal of protective tariffs and subsidies on essential goods, privatisation of state-owned industries and utilities, commodification of services once provided free at the point of use, and the shift from direct and progressive to indirect and regressive taxation.
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The lack of comments says it all.
Bob who?