With Christine Milne gone, it's wall-to-wall blue ties in Canberra
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Version 0 of 1. Australia has just lost the only current female leader of a political party in the federal parliament. After Christine Milne’s resignation as leader of the Greens yesterday, and her replacement by Richard Di Natale, all our leaders are now blokes. For those of us who care about women in positions of power, all I can say is thank goodness for Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland. Without her it’d be wall-to-wall blue ties. Of course, the gender of our leaders really shouldn’t matter, but given there was only one federal woman leader and only one in the states, it is hard not to think it does. Imagine how men would feel if the ratios were the other way around? So it is with real regret that I bid farewell to Christine Milne who has also declared she will not contest the next election, after 10 years as a Greens senator and three years leading the party. Her predecessor Bob Brown was the ultimate tree hugger – the saviour of the wild Tasmanian rivers – and accordingly garnered real respect among voters. Milne is harder to stereotype – she is clearly neither a loony nor someone who you can imagine wrapping their arms around a tree. Less hippie than middle class matron, (an ex-dairy farmer, for God’s sake) her conservative presentation has made it difficult to convincingly paint her as some kind of lefty nutjob. The response from the other parties has been to ignore Milne and concentrate on senators they find easier to lampoon, such as Sarah Hanson-Young and Larissa Waters. It is my observation that older women in power attract less vitriol than young women. That may have been Milne’s advantage. Being a good looking young man in politics – think Scott Ludlam and Barack Obama – is an advantage. Being a good looking young woman is the opposite – we find them easier to trivialise. It is a tribute to the Greens and an unspoken (but no less glaring for that) criticism of their opponents that the transitions from Brown to Milne, and from Milne to Di Natale, have been achieved calmly, graciously and without controversy. There was no factional fighting, no public counting of numbers, no weeks of speculation, no dramatic leadership spills, no dead men or women walking. This in and of itself builds the Greens brand. Di Natale, a relative unknown in the political landscape, has some leeway to decide what sort of impression he wants to make and what policies he wishes to emphasise. But he must not stay relatively unknown for long. He needs to stamp his personality on the party fairly quickly and help the voters get a feel for him. Related: The Australia Institute is out to get Christine Milne. That's a fool's strategy | Tim Hollo The Greens feel like a party of the future while both the Coalition and Labor look increasingly like parties of the past. As Elon Musk launches the Tesla home battery to worldwide acclaim and coal-fired power looks like the 21st century equivalent of blacksmithing, the Greens are already ahead of the game. Integrity of purpose, foresight and principle will matter a great deal in the difficult times ahead of us. If Di Natale grasps the nettle as calmly and sensibly as his predecessors have done, his party has a great opportunity in front of it. |