Please note that this post doesn’t imply any endorsement by LP of The Greens in a partisan sense, though a number of us are sympathetic! As pointed out in our election year statement, we come from a variety of different traditions on the left, and we’d be more than happy to publish anything from other progressive parties seeking to engage citizens online.
The recent birth of GreensBlog has already been noted by a couple of LP regulars, and now Mark has very kindly given me the space to, in a sense, launch the new blog here. Since it was LP that opened my eyes to the potential of pollieblogging, this is a tremendously exciting opportunity. Thanks, Mark!
GreensBlog, the official group blog of the four Australian Greens Senators and their staff, is born of the natural match between web communication and the Greens’ fundamental principle of grassroots, participatory democracy. Blogging is the ideal medium for the Greens. As the only party currently allowing critical comments on our YouTube videos, for example, (although we do delete outright abuse and irrelevant attacks), we aim to see debates as lively on the blog as we have in our council meetings! Other than Andrew Bartlett’s admirable personal role model, none of the other parties are willing to open themselves up in this fashion.
GreensBlog also, frankly, comes from a growing frustration with the mainstream media’s failure to seriously grapple with and analyse the issues we campaign on. The image of the Greens as media tarts with superficial, tele-friendly messages could not be further from the truth. In reality, the 5 second grab is terribly unfair to us – more often than not, we come out looking like we’re always saying “stop”, when in fact we’re saying “let’s think about this differently”, putting forward a carefully reasoned position that may only make sense when properly explained in context. The old parties’ positions are steeped in the existing culture and framing, so short grabs are enough for them to get their message across. We want to create a paradigm shift. It’s hard to get that across in 5 seconds…
Now, as the mainstream media becomes more superficial, web 2.0 begins to offer greater opportunities for in depth discussion and analysis. We’d love to see GreensBlog become a vibrant hub for discussion of Greens-related issues, what’s been going on in Parliament and our constituencies, and how the Greens might address issues of the day.
But our ultimate, and most exciting aim is to go beyond discussion, way beyond message dissemination, and use the blog to develop something new: open source democracy. We want ideas – suggestions for parliamentary motions, for amendments to bills. We want to post policies in development so that the hivemind can help us develop them. If, as we believe is possible, we achieve balance of power in the Senate after this election, GreensBlog as envisaged could have a real impact on the choices Australia’s Parliament makes in the coming years.
For this to become a reality, of course, we need a critical mass. So far, the comments we’re getting tend to be from appreciative members, grateful for the information about what we’re doing and the space to comment. If GreensBlog is to grow to the point where we can develop open source democracy, we need much more than that.
Please, everyone, come and look around GreensBlog, check out the posts that are there already, and help trigger some discussions in your inimitable LP style! If you want to get more involved, please consider joining the Facebook group to suggest topics for posts and make constructive criticism. We’re also calling out for techie people to offer help developing widgets, screensavers and anything else that can help build GreensBlog’s profile.
Thanks to the LP collective for your support. Onward to open source democracy!
if you haven’t already found it, I suggest you get an rss feed from this site:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/
Very comprehensive blog with multiple updates a day on the green car industry. Tremendous resource.
Huzzah for Tim!
My favourite part about Greensblog is that when a post is listed as written by one of the Senators, you know it’s actually written by them and not the staff because the staff have their own accounts.
I’ve already visited the Greens blog a few times, and it is a welcome addition to a website which otherwise feels rather anodyne and overly focussed on the Senators (how about a whole host of educational link to major issues-related sites like Global Warming? Or even links to eco-friendly businesses? If they are there, I couldn’t find them).
So the blog is a welcome addition, but certainly it would be good to see a lot more discussion in the Greens blog comments section too. I was actually surprised that the comments were so quiet – aren’t Greens supposed to be a vociferous bunch of angry zealots who can’t agree on anything? I guess they are all busy campaigning out on the streets, or chained to a tree! LOL!
BTW, Tim – has anyone done a survey asking specifically how many Australians would like to see the Greens hold the balance of power in the Senate (irrespective of which party wins)? Given the importance of Climate Change in this election, I’m thinking that question could elicit an interesting response.
Gandhi, I’m not aware of any such polling, although it certainly would be interesting. We rarely do internal polling, due to its high cost, but I might run the idea past some people who might.
Re the quiet comments section, I suspect the main problem is that I haven’t publicised the blog sufficientlyyet
Greens are indeed a vociferous and opinionated bunch, so once it gets rolling, I have little doubt that the comments will be vibrant! Or maybe we just haven’t been being controversial enough, yet, or maybe we need to start posting questions rather than diaries. I tried to rectify that a little last night.
Ronald, ta for lovely comment. The next challenge, of course, is to get the Senators to find the time to come back and engage in the comments threads… I think that’ll start to happen once we can get more activity in those threads…
Great stuff Tim, and I’m enjoying the You Tube submissions as well.
Mumble has interesting take today on preferences in HoR and Senate.
Maybe you should hire Janet Albrechtsen. Today she labelled Rudd a “girly boy” and a “princess”, even as she insisted there is no smear campaign.
I think this blog (LP), the new Greens blog, and Andrew Bartlett’s are excellent examples of a paradigm shift in political and issues discourse. I am impressed by the level of discourse and information flow across a wide range of topics. Good to see some debates too – it always handy to look at all sides of an issue.
This is refereshing and encouraging after the opiniated crap often pushed out by much of the MSM that is masquerading as “news” or even “the truth”.
It was a real shock to me when wel-educated professional people I worked with who read the Heraldsun’s strident attack on the Greens in 2004 (which was clearly politically motivated) accepted it. When I queried them about whether it was true and correct some said “well its in the paper so it must be true”. I jest not.
The MSM more often than not shuts down comment by Greens – even the Senators – or just plays the “whinging grab” only, never the solutions. They don’t care about balance or even the truth.
So now we have a voice. We can say the emperor has no clothes and Google reports your comments to those who search. We also have a medium for participation – so lacking in the presidential style campaigns run by the major parties and the MSM. The only time you hear from a local House of Reps campaign is when there is a gaffe or there is a whiff of blood (such as Howard in Bennelong or Turnbull in Wentworth).
I think Goverment has recognised the power of the blogging medium – which is why they are floating a “citizens blog” to encourage debate and participation. But the spin meisters will still vet the topics, push their agendas and screen the comments. Vive le democracie.
Gandhi, I saw that from Janet! Christine Milne was fuming at how offensive it was.
Of course it comes on top of the fantasyland story they ran on the CSIRO climate projections being a lowering. Blogged here as an update to last night’s piece.
Tim, some excellent work on the blog.
Just remind your Senators that involving themselves in comments threads is important!
As acknowledged here, Robert. The main thing is getting them to find the time to watch the blog in their schedules as well as posting…
Ta for coming along and commenting at GreensBlog!
The british (labour) foreign and commonwealth office have a bunch of blogs, including ones written by the foreign secretary and the ambassador to Afghanistan
That’s very interesting, Mikey. Thanks!
Wonderful stuff – just dont make it boring. First sign of spin and I’ll shit all over it, metaphorically speaking