2015-04-27
Ben Moroney and Eliza June (Australian Young Greens Co-Convenors)
New South Wales has agreed that its next meeting of the State Delegates Council will be a “Young Greens” SDC. The event will be facilitated by Young Greens, groups will be encouraged to send young delegates, and the program will include workshops and discussions of interest both to young people and to older Greens interested in engaging more strongly with us. We're incredibly excited for what this means going forward for the Young Greens in NSW, what ideas will come out of the discussions for us, and how we can encourage real engagement of young people with policy development, campaigning and party governance.
There's no question that the Greens are hugely popular with young people and the best of the Parliamentary parties at crafting policy that is actually appealing and meaningful to young people. On many of the issues which are important to us: education, breaking into the job market, house prices and the state of the world we will be inheriting, the Greens are the only party who offer real solutions, rather than more-of-the-same catch phrases and market-based corporatism. However, the Greens can never take this support for granted. We can no more consider young people “natural green voters” than we can assume that for any voting bloc. For the longest time, the Liberal Party was the natural party of educated, politically motivated youth. The Labor Party usurped that position (and to some extent, the Democrats) and became the party for progressive young people. Just because the Greens occupy that position now is no reason to assume that is how it will stay. Our policies and our campaigns need to always remain meaningful and relevant and we need to stay active on the ground, not just in Parliament.
The best way of doing that is to ensure that young people are not just voting Green or joining the party, but are actively involved in our coordination and governance. The old parties made the mistake of seeing their youth wings as separate from the party, a playground for the youth to have pretend politics games until they were needed to be deployed as a massive volunteer labour force during election times, while the caucus and party leadership skimmed off the cream as potential backbenchers. The Greens need to stay vigilant that their approach to the Young Greens is one of genuine respect and consultation, and that the Young Greens hold a seat at the table of discussion as equals in deciding the direction of the party.
NSW has not decided how exactly that will play out — ideas mooted informally include Young Green members of important committees and working groups, adjunct positions for Young Green office bearers to work with Greens NSW office bearers, or even a delegates seat at the SDC. Whatever comes out of the workshop, though, will hopefully be of clear benefit to everybody involved, and we encourage other state parties to give their relationship with their youth wing the same thought. Young Greens are passionate and talented campaigners, and our voice in the party will ensure that Greens policy and Greens campaigns are the best they can possibly be, for us, for Australia and, in the end, for the planet.