The greens have irrevocably shown their ties to Labor

The Greens leader Bob Brown has been in the media telling of his abhorrence for preference deals, and almost in the same sentence announcing a broad base deal to give preferences to Labor.

It's no secret that the greater majority of voters also believe there is no difference between Labor and the Greens as far as policy or ideology.

There is also a school of thought that the Greens are a product of the Labor brand as a tool to position radical policy elements in front of the community and a marketing bonanza to capture the widely growing environmental awareness among voters.

Personally I believe that Green candidates stand with all good intentions, they are more that likely environmentally aware, proactive and work in their various communities on real solutions to issues at a local level.

The real issue is that the Greens are a cast net designed to grab the votes of people who don't want to vote for a continuation of what the two major parties offer and would like to see real change to government that is for the betterment of Australia as a whole and in turn our planet, they want a government perhaps that can be an example of lower impact environmentally to governments across the world.

Unfortunately that's never going to happen whilst the current crop of leaders in the Greens continue to tie themselves to Labor nationally, because it does very little to give them credibility as a true independent party.

Of course the idea of the vote deal is to try to gain the balance of power in the senate, and to that end we see some now, very confident Greens candidates getting about the place telling us all sorts of radical policies.

So getting to the point, In the seat of Hinkler around Harvey Bay, the Greens candidate appears to have quit the party over the recent preference deal, and seems intent on running as an independent.

Adrian Wone, is probably not alone among candidates who may prefer to allow voters to chose their own preference choice, in fact I know there are others but the party structure and the Australian system does not reward individuals who stand up for their principles they are marginalised with "not a team player", "radical" and "loner" tags by a system that pays Parties very well for votes.

I commend Adrian Wone for his action, I'm not against a candidate giving preferences in a certain direction, but to make a national deal is certainly not in the best interests of people where they are suffering under the pressure of labor policy.

In my opinion, if the Greens want seats, get real policy. If they want the balance of power do it on their own , campaign hard on local issues and campaign all the time not just 5 weeks before the election. Consider the majority, not the minority in general policy, e.g. the Greens claim it's unfair for the federal government to fund Private schools, they have nothing to back that up and ignore some very compelling evidence to continue. Private schools take a huge number of kids out of the state funded system (yes, all schools are funded, and private schools get ZERO funding from the states,)and that means they don't have to build more and more schools, pay more and more teachers, supply more and more facilities. The fact is that this is a policy from the Greens that is illconcieved, uninformed, socialist and detrimental to peoples freedom of choice to school their children in the manner they wish.

A Greens senator, who gets the seat on the back of Labor preferences is beholding to Labor, they owe Labor, they are effectively part of Labor. Giving the Greens the balance of power in the senate is giving Labor control of the senate.