Greens v Family First

Aha! I’ve caught those dastardly Greens lying!

They accused Family First of 'coming to their senses', and being ‘soft on drugs’, and dropping their zero-tolerance drug policy.

Here’s there latest policy:

"Family First believes a balanced and comprehensive strategy is needed to combat the increasing problem of substance misuse and abuse. The Party believes Australia’s response to illegal drugs and health in general should primarily be preventative through educating the public as well as supporting rehabilitation services.

Family First rejects harm minimisation as the primary strategy for combating substance abuse. The Party favours prevention, rehabilitation and avoidance as more acceptable primary strategies."

And here’s there policy from 2005 (according to archive.org, this seems to be their first drugs policy since the site opened in 2001.)

"Family First believes a balanced and comprehensive strategy is needed to combat the increasing problem of substance use and abuse. Family First believes Australia’s response to drugs and health should primarily be preventative through educating the public as well as supporting rehabilitation services.

Family First rejects harm minimisation as the primary strategy for combating substance abuse. It favours prevention, rehabilitation and avoidance as more acceptable primary strategies."

The changes are clerical. There is no reference to zero-tolerance in Family First previous policy statements at all. Fielding has pushed a zero-tolerance platform a few times (including today – for alcohol-induced “drunkenness”), but the Greens media release specifically claims the 2007 policy has "softened".

In fact, the Family First drug policy hasn’t even changed. The old text is STILL under their Health policy, they’ve just created a slightly edited one under “Illegal Drugs including Marijuana”. Doubling-up policy. Tre professional.

But, if I’m going to slag off the Greens, I should probably try and find deception in Family First. Oh look, here’s one, from Friday:

"Yet the extreme Greens have NO policies for families or small business, which shows how out of touch they really are."

Was that carefully worded? They have no policies FOR families/small business? Is that no policies that apply to them, or no policies that actively support them? I am intrigued, best investigate.

15. provide incentives to workplaces which offer not-for-profit childcare in house and flexible childcare, including ‘childcare credits’, where workplaces assist parents to place children in childcare close to home.

I like that one, it provides support FOR business and ACTIVELY SUPPORTS families all in one hit. Everyone’s a winner. Except Fielding. In fact, while I'm on a tangent already, here’s some of the things from the press release he claims FF has supported thus far:

Voted against WorkChoices.
Voted against Telstra privatisation
Voted against “unjust” asylum seeker processing
Voted for anti-terror laws
Voted for welfare changes
Voted for new laws to “protect small business”
Voted for cutting petrol tax
Voted against Qantas sale
Voted for stopping tax rorts

"The question for families is: Which party do they want holding the Balance of Power in the Senate? Do they want a party like FAMILY FIRST that supports family values or a party like the Greens that promotes extremism?"

I’m sorry, didn’t they vote the same way as you on at least half of those issues? Wouldn’t that mean that Greens support family values too? Does it mean they’re not extreme, or that both FF & Greens are extreme?