Who is to blame if Andrew Ferguson is not elected?

March 19, 2011
Issue 
Andrew Ferguson.

Having now come across several leaflets, statements and interviews arguing that the NSW Greens have put former NSW Construction Forestry Mining Energy secretary Andrew Ferguson’s election at risk on March 26 and urging people to therefore vote 1 ALP, I feel compelled to write the following.

Many people know Andrew as a committed campaigner for just causes.

However, if Andrew is not elected on March 26, the blame will lie with the current right-wing, anti-worker ALP government. Worse, it will be Labor’s fault that after 16 years the Liberals could return to government.

If the ALP fails to get enough votes to win a mere six of the 26 seats in the upper house, the principle reason will be the fact that many ordinary workers — including some that have voted ALP their entire lives — are fed up with the privatisations and corruption of the NSW ALP government.

Many will not vote 1 ALP, because it would be a vote for a government that has gone against everything they stand for. It would be a vote for those responsible for putting Andrew's election at risk — through their policies and for pushing him so far down their list.

The ALP deserves to be punished. The best way to do that, while trying to keep the Liberals out, is by giving our first vote to left-wing parties like the Socialist Alliance and Greens, then preferencing the ALP.

The NSW Greens are wrong to not preference the ALP: we know any future Liberal government with far-right parties in the upper house will be a disaster for workers.

We know this from experience when the federal ALP helped get a Family First senator elected with its dirty right-wing deals.

The Greens should reverse this decision and do as SA is doing, calling on voters to preference the ALP.

Similarly, the ALP should never again do deals with the far right and preference the Greens and SA.

But I repeat, those responsible for Andrew's situation reside within the ALP, not the Greens, and much less the socialists who are preferencing the ALP.

Comments

While Ferguson is right, in my opinion, that the Greens should have preferenced terrible Labor over even-more-terrible Coalition, it hardly rates in the "bad preferencing" stakes when compared with Labor's record. Let's not forget that Labor preferences gave us the far right Family First party's first senator in Victoria! Labor shows nothing but pure opportunism, willing to do deals with the far-right if it will garner them a few more preferences. So yes, the Greens are wrong to indicate no preference between Labor and Liberal - but they are not even in the same ballpark as Labor's rotten record.

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