The controversial broadcaster Alan Jones thought he was amongst friends last Saturday at the Sydney University Liberal Club’s fundraiser. And he was. Jones is, after all, a hero to many of them.

So understandably, he thought he would be able to get away with, well, the usual.

Jones knew perfectly well what he was doing when he told his audience of young political hopefuls and supporters that Julia Gillard’s father ‘died of shame’.

That’s why his comment drew laughter from the crowd. That’s why his speech contained the requisite bagging of the Prime Minister. That’s why he expressed his disappointment over the Opposition’s apparent winding down of their relentless attacks on Gillard because “they’ve been brainwashed by the media to ‘oh back off, she’s a woman, go easy’.”

His speech and the response went according to plan. The only part that didn’t was that some pesky News Ltd journalist had recorded every minute of it.

No doubt most members of the young liberals are confused as to what all the fuss is about. Jones’ comments are probably stock standard stuff coming from the men who have helped shape their political views over the last decade or so.

Alan Jones along with Tony Abbott, John Howard and Corey Bernardi are the heroes of an emerging generation of young liberals. These men are some of the key influencers of a movement that has recently gained strength and numbers through hate speech and extreme and irrational views.

The young people there last Saturday night were no doubt hanging off Jones’ every word. Just like they no doubt cheered and slapped each other on the back when Jones said on his programme last year:

“The woman [Gillard] is off her tree – and quite frankly they should shove her and Bob Brown in a chaff bag and take them as far out to sea as they can – and tell her to swim home.”

Unfortunately it is those political and thought leaders who make the most extreme and outrageous statements like Jones and Bernardi who are the ones most praised and admired by the next generation of Liberal Party MPs.

And admire it they do. At the Liberal Party fundraiser making the news a chaff bag jacket was auctioned off to the highest bidder. The highest bidders was Jones.

So Jones comments weren’t treated with surprise or disgust by the organisers of the fundraiser. They were exactly what they had hoped for. That’s why @SydneyUniLibs originally tweeted:

“Brilliant speech by Alan Jones last night. It’s no wonder he is the nation’s most influential broadcaster. #presidentsdinner”

They loved it.

It was only after a backlash in the twittersphere, including by conservative commentators like Andrew Bolt and 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, that the congratulatory tweet was removed. It probably killed them to do it.

Now congratulations has been replaced by this:

This particularly thoughtful contribution is from Sydney University Liberal Club president and 2010 candidate for Grayndler, Alex Dore. No doubt it killed him to do this as well.

How Jones’ comments have been taken out of context is anybody’s guess, but I digress.

When initially confronted Dore told The Sunday Telegraph that Jones had not made them.

In other words Alex Dore lied.

Then when told there was a recording of the speech, he said: “it was a very long speech and I did not hear it. I have always found Alan to be respectful”.

Dores went on telling The Sunday Telegraph there was “no need” to “pick apart Alan’s speech. All you are doing is reducing it to a very small thing which distracts from the issues facing Australia”.

Yes, let’s get back to the real issues facing Australia like the Prime Minister lying about the carbon tax shall we?

Perhaps the most telling part of Jones’ contribution is this one, where immediately following his comment on the Prime Minister’s father, he says:

‘No, no look, hang on, this is where we are weak. This is where we are weak. Can you believe that they have gone, the federal party, because they’ve been brainwashed by the media to ‘oh back off, she’s a woman, go easy’.”

I have been to many forums and events with speakers or MCs who are journalists and commentators but I have never heard any of them use a collective ‘we’.

That’s because this wasn’t any journalist speaking to any random audience at any random event.

This was Alan Jones rallying his Liberal Party troops to continue his misogynistic, hate-filled crusade to bring down this country’s first female Prime Minister.

And his hate crusade is being adopted by young Liberals everywhere, most of them men, who are loyally flying the flag of extremism on everything from their views on women to refugees to climate change.

The Young Liberals executive page lists fourteen people, thirteen of them men, with the sole woman being their International Officer. There are no doubt young conservatives reading this now who don’t see what the problem with that is. No doubt old ones too.

The only thing young Liberals like Dore would be regretting this morning is that they didn’t fleece everybody on arrival and remove all recording devices.

Of course that would too impractical and would hardly go down well with a bunch of social media-savvy young things passionate about individual freedom and liberty.

In this day and age when any smartphone can record a conversation with the push of a button, we can expect to hear plenty more outrageous statements like these made within what were once trusted walls.

Particularly when you have the next generation of Liberal Party MP wannabes hanging off every hate-filled word, urging their heroes on. It’s just a pity about those pesky journalists.

It should be no surprise to Victorian Labor strategists that their recent attempts to muddy the reputation of the Greens’ candidate for the state seat of Melbourne – the well respected Brian Walters SC – back-fired in a spectacular own-goal. The brazenly false allegations of anti-Semitism and hypocrisy on climate change aside, there should have been lessons learnt from across the Bass Strait earlier in the year.

In March, when the Labor party stooped to attacking the Greens with misleading leaflets and the now infamous ‘robo-calls’ during the Tasmanian election campaign, there was revolt. The electorate saw through clearly distorted claims and made their disgust well known.

Of course, there is no doubt this kind of campaigning still works in some sectors. The Greens bled too. Greens MP Paul O’Halloran only narrowly secured his hard-fought seat in the traditionally conservative north-west electorate of Braddon.

Some argue that attempts to marginalise the Greens will only succeed in pushing cynical voters, fed up with bullying tactics, away from the bigger parties. This may be true in many cases, but we need to be careful not to underestimate the role fear and misinformation continues to play in Australian politics.

My colleague, Greens Leader Bob Brown, has moved time and again for truth in political advertising in the Federal Parliament, but the old parties repeatedly vote it down. It beggars belief that parliamentarians would actively oppose something so simple and seemingly fundamental as laws requiring politicians to tell the truth during election campaigns.

Much of the recent commentary has centred on the need for the Greens to be subject to the “same scrutiny as the major parties”. And we Greens welcome this. But with criticism, there must also be a healthy respect for common ground, policy achievement and the constructive role we play in parliaments across the country.

The ‘extreme Green’ label has proven absurd to many voters, Green and non-Green, because they recognise the positive contributions we’ve made over many years.

But in NSW, with our state election fast approaching, we are likely to see a repeat of this kind of mudslinging.  I was troubled by Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell’s recent slur, labelling the Greens in NSW as ‘purely evil’. This came after the Greens engaged in constructive negotiations with the government over electoral funding reform.  An important step towards ending the corrupting influence of donations to political parties was achieved.

The compromise between Labor and the Greens is not perfect, but it is a promising start that would not have been achieved without the work of my colleagues Lee Rhiannon, John Kaye and others. The result was a significant dividend for democracy in this state.

If the old parties want intelligible media and public scrutiny applied to the Greens policies, they must reject the alarmist extreme tag and accept the Greens as the third and still-fastest growing force in Australian politics.

I hope that Mr O’Farrell and Ms Keneally can move into the 2011 campaign with a healthy respect for Greens voters. The ugly scare tactics seen in Tasmania and Victoria demean our parliament, our democracy and detract from the important policy debates which truly deserve attention.

I’m now a Member of the Legislative Council. At a special joint-sitting of NSW Parliament which took place earlier this afternoon, David Shoebridge  and I became Australia’s newest Green MPs at a time of renewal and great excitement in Green politics.

Topping my priority list for parliament are: the protection of threatened ecosystems, making our cities and communities more sustainable, and driving action on climate change.

And as the Greens’ spokesperson on transport, I’m planning on holding a series of meetings in the coming months to hear the community’s ideas on how to fix the state’s public transport system.

I’ll also have responsibility for the mining portfolio and will continue Lee Rhiannon’s work with communities affected by proposed and existing mines, particularly in the Hunter. I am committed to protecting valuable water and agricultural resources from some of the worst impacts of mining activities.

Leading the Greens campaign on healthy communities, I will push for better preventative and mental health services including those aimed at young people and suicide prevention. As spokesperson for women, I want to work to reduce the still unacceptable levels of domestic and sexual violence in the community.

I’m really looking forward to working with you all. Check back here for regular updates on my work as an MP. And stay tuned for a new look blog with more features and new ways of keeping in touch.

News out today is that Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is wanting a post-2012 international climate change agreement “to include forests in some way”.

Trouble is that the Australian Government will be lobbying hard for the inclusion of forests in ‘developing countries like Indonesia’, while continuing to turn a blind eye to the deforestation of some of our most precious natural native forests back home.

Some research has indicated that if all scheduled logging of Australia’s natural forests (as opposed to plantation native forests) ceased and instead these forests were conserved, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions could fall by around 10%. Now must be the time for a real cost/benefit analysis of logging Australia’s natural forests. Continue Reading

On 3 February this year, I attended an action organised by Climate Action Groups around Australia for the day after their three-day long Climate Action Summit at which more than 550 people attended.

The action was incredibly inspiring with enough people from all across the country attending to be able link arms around the entire Parliament House perimeter – that’s a long way. I appear alongside some very inspiring climate activists as well as NSW Greens MLC John Kaye on this video we made and posted on youtube.

Check out some photos from the action below:

Great Image for a critical message

Taking part in the Protest

Passionate people demanding real action on climate

On Message

How heartbreaking the Victorian bushfires have been, the terrible loss of life with so many people grieving lost loved ones in such incomprehensibly horrific conditions. I am so sad too for the wildlife affected and the suffering that must have occurred.

During all of this it has been disappointing and frankly irresponsible to see some commentators literally blaming conservationists for the fires. (Wasn’t there mention of arsonists at one stage?) Miranda Devine is one of the worst, with her tiresome anti-green crusade.

Check out my opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald last week in response here This was particularly in response to Ms Devine statement re the bushfires: “So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.”

Unbelieveable.