UTG Response to Greens ’50th Anniversary’

Statement – United Tasmania Group, 24 February 2022

United Tasmania Group’s official response to the Tasmanian Greens so-called 50th celebration

Key issues concerning the Greens ‘50th’ (actually 30th) celebration

1.     UTG members have been consulted and they have expressed extreme concern through to hostility to the so-called ‘50th’ – particularly as it is not the 50th but the 30th for the Greens. To call this a 50th year celebration is a distortion of green history in Tasmania (which I and others have commented on many times before, going back to 2010).  As the Greens’ function is less than four weeks away, as Secretary I cannot follow the normal process of holding a general meeting and then conducting a survey of all members. After a seven-day survey of UTG people, some people I have spoken to have wondered why UTG was not invited from the beginning of this proposed celebration.

2.     This celebration is seen by many people as a clear attempt to co-opt UTG support for the Greens by suggesting or implying that the Greens were, in some shape or form, a continuation of UTG’s legacy, which is historically and policy-wise not the case (as outlined clearly in the UTG Journal No. 6[1]).

3.     Also, there is no continuity of the two organisations historically in fact, and there has been no continued use of UTG’s statement of ethical principles from A New Ethic (which we modified slightly in 2018 following extensive consultations).

4.     UTG and the Greens are poles apart on many major policies, including ecocentrism[2], steady-state economics, population growth, prostitution and transgendering children to mention just a few (see again, UTG Journal No. 6).  On the last-mentioned, UTG has been calling for a national inquiry into transgendering children and adolescents since 2019 as against the Greens opposition to such an inquiry (see report linked below[3]). On steady-state economics and zero population growth, the Greens officially abandoned these policies in 1995.

5.     UTG is a signatory to several international declarations/conventions which are at odds with policies of the Greens (as listed in Appendix 3 of UTG Journal No. 6). We do not want to be seen as supporting, implicitly or explicitly, the Greens’ positions vis-à-vis these declarations/conventions.

6.     UTG and the Greens do not have a similar support base – as pointed out on page 3 of the UTG Journal No. 6. It is probably true that UTG people used to end up voting for the Greens but at least a third (it could be much higher than that) of UTG’s present supporters do not vote for the Greens.

Under the circumstances UTG will not be supporting the Greens 30th Anniversary.  It may have been different if we had been given longer notice. I wish you well with your celebration but please ask you to call it the 30th, not 50th, and that there is no attempt to imply UTG support or claim continuity with UTG’s history/legacy.

UTG’s 50th Year Anniversary celebration, 21 March 2021. Image courtesy Chris Cowles.