Richard Di Natale is the danger man

Federal election 2016: Richard Di Natale is the danger man

• THE AUSTRALIAN
• 12:00AM JUNE 2, 2016
• SAVE
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• Sid Maher
  
  National Affairs Editor
  
  

Greens leader Richard Di Natale. Picture: Adam Yip
Richard Di Natale is just a mild-mannered former GP from rural Victoria who loves AC/DC, surfing, AFL footy and hanging out on his farm with his family at the foot of the Otway ranges.
But the Victorian senator and Greens leader also may be the most dangerous threat to the political status quo in Australia.
With the polls showing that a hung parliament is again a possibility, Di Natale may end up at the centre of deciding who will form the next government, despite the major parties insisting there will be no alliances.
Sitting in a cafe in Goulburn at the end of a four-day sweep through rural Victoria and NSW, Di Natale says mounting attacks on the Greens are evidence that political opponents — he calls the Liberal Party and Labor the “Coles and Woolies” of politics — take his party (presumably the plucky independent grocery chain taking on the might of incumbents) seriously.

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They should. Membership is said to be up about 40 per cent during the past two years and the Greens target Labor’s inner-city heartland as they seek to add MPs to sit alongside the seat of Melbourne’s Adam Bandt, which he took from Labor in 2010. Some pundits believe the nearby seat of Batman, held by embattled Labor frontbencher David Feeney, is a goner and neighbouring Wills is also on the party’s radar.
And in NSW, the iconic Labor seats of Grayndler and Sydney, held by frontbenchers Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek, are vulnerable.
While the attack on Labor’s inner-city heartland is driven by a strident pro-asylum seeker agenda, the Greens are busy driving wedges into the Nationals’ rural heartland. “We are equal opportunity opponents,” Di Natale tells The Australian.
It’s a Monday night in Broken Hill and Di Natale is deep in political tiger country. Angry locals in the NSW outback town have packed a function room at the Muso’s Club, a pokie palace more akin to an outer suburban leagues club than inner-city coffee houses where the Greens normally foment their insurgency against Labor and the Coalition.
Di Natale has taken a detour on his election campaign trail into the one of the safest Nationals seats in the country. While the locals are in the mood for political blood, Di Natale is in no danger. The town is nearly out of water and locals blame the NSW Coalition government for draining the Menindee Lakes, leaving them facing life on bore water.
“If this was a suburb of Sydney, they would be lynching politicians. But because you are out here, nobody gives a stuff,” says Di Natale’s wingman, the party’s firebrand NSW upper house MP Jeremy Buckingham. He lays the blame at the feet of Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce.
Di Natale says what is happening in Menindee is an “environmental and cultural tragedy”. He blames state and federal governments and pledges the Greens will “do what we can at a federal level”.
Which, dependent on what happens on July 2, could be a lot.
While the Greens political tide causes concern in political circles, the chance its policies may again be on the table causes concern among the policy elite.
The Greens propose higher taxes for high-income earners, higher deficits, a “conversation” on the US defence alliance and the end of the religious exemption in anti-discrimination law as part of its gender equity policy.
Deloitte Access Economics partner Chris Richardson cautions on policies that would increase debt: “Debt contains risks. While interest rates are at record lows, that means debt can move further than ever before if markets become impatient,” he says.
Despite rising concerns, Di Natale stands by each and every Greens policy. “Yes we have a different world view from some of your readers,” he says.
He defends the policies that involve deeper deficits and higher debt, amid warnings by the heads of Treasury and Finance in the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook that without “considerable effort” to slow government spending, it would not be possible to run the kind of budget surpluses that would give Australia a buffer against adversity.
The Greens’ policy contemplates deficits of 3 per cent of gross domestic product compared with the current deficit of 2.4 per cent and debt peaking at 25 per cent compared with the current projected maximum of 19.2 in 2017-18. This would allow $75 billion in additional borrowings across the next 10 years to fund infrastructure and a transition to a clean energy economy.
Economics, says Di Natale, is a social science and “particular positions are contested and debated”.
“History tells us that economic fashions change over time,” he says. The Greens spent a year in discussions with various economists of all sides of the political spectrum, he adds.
The Greens leader also claims credit for his party moving the economic debate on some key issues. The Greens came out with a call for negative gearing reform 18 months ago and have proposed cuts to the capital gains tax discount. They were the first to call for tackling tax concessions on superannuation for high-income earners, something adopted by both the Coalition and Labor.
But yesterday the Greens’ economic credibility took a hit when its South Australian senator Sarah Hanson-Young stumbled over the party’s superannuation policy on Adelaide radio.
Di Natale’s call in a speech to the Lowy Institute for a reassessment of the US alliance was criticised by defence expert Alan Dupont who warned Australia would be “a vastly more insecure nation without the US alliance”.
“Di Natale has tried to soften the Greens’ barely disguised anti-Americanism by insisting that he is calling only for a ‘conversation’ aimed at ‘redefining’ the alliance, not abolition. But the speech reads more like a repudiation than a redefinition,” Dupont wrote in The Australian.
Self-reliance would require extra defence spending in the absence of US military assets, Dupont argued, “Unless of course the Greens are prepared to sacrifice national security on the altar of social and environmental policy, which appears to be their real agenda.”
Di Natale disagrees. “If you look at what our defence force has been doing over recent years, it’s not a defence force. We’ve been involved in actively committing troops to combat not in the name of defence but in the name of foreign incursions because we are an ally to the US,” Di Natale says.
“Again I just say that a genuine relationship is not one where you follow your major partner into every single conflict since World War II.”
Di Natale is also unrepentant about the Greens’ push to end religious exemptions in anti-discrimination law as part of its gender equity policy, which supports the controversial Safe Schools sex education program. “That’s how change happens,” he says. “There were times when women couldn’t vote. And there would have been institutions that protected that. That’s the history of change.”
Although Feeney’s fight against the Greens in Batman is hamstrung by his failure to declare a $2.3 million house in his electorate and a disastrous appearance on Sky News where he could not answer a question on the baby bonus, Albanese has come out swinging. While Labor “is fighting to defeat Liberals and Nationals, Di Natale leads a divided party committed to fighting Labor. He is all short-term political tactics, rather than political principle,” Albanese says.
Di Natale keeps his options open on whether the Greens will demand a ministry or an agreement on specific policies that guarantees confidence and supply. “With any of these negotiations, they won’t be decisions that I make. They’ll be decisions that we make collectively as a team, our partyroom and our party.”
He won’t put preconditions on any negotiation but it would reflect Greens priorities such as stronger action on climate change, changes to refugee policy, ending unfair tax breaks, more renewable energy.
It hasn’t got much traction in the campaign, but foreign aid is a key issue. While Labor has promised an extra $800m above the government’s foreign aid commitment, Di Natale says the Greens would like to see it boosted closer to the Millennium Development Goals of 0.7 per cent of GDP.
He says it is a “very important issue and we are very committed to it” but there are no preconditions for a power negotiation.
Di Natale will define success at this election only as increasing the party’s primary vote — Newspoll has it at 11 per cent compared with 8.7 per cent at the previous election. But Greens insiders are hoping to add to Bandt’s incumbency in Melbourne by taking adjacent Batman and Wills from Labor.
Di Natale, who took the leadership after Christine Milne’s retirement just more than a year ago in a clinically quick ascension that surprised some pundits, seems an unlikely leader for a party its opponents like to dismiss as a bunch of political ferals.
Dangerously for those who would paint him as a radical, Di Natale has not come out of the protest movement.
He is a farmer, living with his wife Lucy and their two children at the foot of the Otway ranges in Victoria. He grows vegetables and some fruit. He played VFA footy for Oakleigh and Coburg, coincidently when former Wills independent Phil Cleary was coach.
Since taking the Greens leadership he has added an air of pragmatism to the party, showing himself prepared to deal with the Coalition, passing pension reform measures and siding with Malcolm Turnbull on Senate voting reform that in some ways made the present double-dissolution campaign possible.
When he took the leadership he said the Greens represented “progressive mainstream values”. But he says that doesn’t mean significant policy changes from the Greens existing platform.
The son of Italian immigrants, Di Natale has never been arrested at an environmental demonstration and came to politics relatively late. After graduating in medicine at university he worked in the Aboriginal community of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory.
“They had big problems. And I suppose that was one of the things that politicised me,” Di Natale says.
This was about 2000 as the Howard government was confronted by an influx of asylum-seekers and began what was to become the Pacific Solution.
Di Natale says he became disillusioned with Labor as it followed the Coalition’s refugee policies.
About the same time he also read the book on the Greens by former leader Bob Brown and philosopher Peter Singer. It spoke to his values.
“Bob was a former doctor, committed to the environment and social justice,” Di Natale says. “They were things I was personally committed to.
“I reckon logging of state forests was a big one for me, right through the 90s.”
One of his uncles — “sort of the black sheep of the family” — went down to the Franklin River and got arrested. “I sort of gravitated to him a bit,” Di Natale says.
Di Natale accepts that he will never be prime minister. “I’m realistic enough to know that I need to build the foundation for the party and put us in a position where we can achieve it,” Di Natale says.
He concedes the Greens have a different mindset from many in the political and economic debate.
“But let’s remember what’s happening around the world. What we’re saying in many parts of the global debate is smack bang where mainstream thinking is.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...n/news-story/ca355655c87f42138c60437623502ca6