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Comment by stubish | Hacker News Reader

Not really sorry. Climate policy in Australia is going through Parliament right now (and while much more progressive than the previous government, the result still have the Greens stating the targets are not aggressive enough and will doom the reef).

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Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment. Instead of comprising and getting an emissions trading system passed they were stubborn and Australia ended up with a decade of inaction. For me that's inexcusable and the damage it caused was immense.

The legislated 43% target is largely symbolic and is a floor not a ceiling. It is not by itself going to change anything. What will change things are concrete steps like our Environment Minister stating that she will stop the Palmer coal mine from going ahead.

The Greens are not your enemy in this fight, the Liberal and Labor parties are - as demonstrated by their decades of long-standing policies which resulted in this mess in the first place.

The Green party certainly have their issues - subjugation and subversion most of all - but to lump the damage on the Greens is an inexcusable farce.

Until Australians realize that their political system is beholden to Big Coal, nothing will change. Australia has a long history, as a nation, of being run by the corporations that provide food to the populace, and Big Coal know this better than most, with their billion-dollar social engineering programs.

> Greens have little credibility when it comes to the environment.

Hum, compared to whom?

Credibility is not a competition nor is it defined in relation to others.

It is legitimate to be critical of the position they took as well as the other parties.

If you must choose from a limited pool of options, yes, how the others behave matter.

This election really renewed my fucking optimism, at least locally for Australia, though globally it still feels dire.

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