2026-01-22
Passionate Politics: A History of the Greens in WA
Review by Stewart Jackson
Writing a party history is always going to be a contentious project, given the many opinions and varied memories they will contain. Will it be ‘official history’, a sort of sanitised version to be made public, or a ‘warts-and-all’ expose, where the story and message is lost in apparent scandal?
Luckily for us, Salmon has taken a disparate group of recordings, remembrances and recollections to shape a story of early Green pioneers in a unlikely corner or Australia (Western Australia) that does not shy from the problems, awkward questions or missteps, yet treats the participants with dignity and respect.
What we end up with is a fascinating tale, less formal ‘history’ and more acknowledgement of a still emerging story.
And that story is something! The story begins with the slow emergence of groups from the primordial 1960’s counter-cultural ooze. Some are part of it, others a product of it, some even a product of the New Left revolution coming out of Europe, but all espouse post-material values centred on care for planet and people.
The slow (and at times sputtering) congealing of these groups around the perceived need for parliamentary action formed a cohesive singularity on January 1, 1990, as The Greens (WA).
As the book makes clear, this was a time of emergent public consciousness around the importance of the bigger environmental issues highlighted in the 1960s by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the writings of Murray Bookchin amongst others. The people bringing the party to life were influenced by these and other writers in searching for a new way of living.
At the same times as green parties were emerging around the world, so were The Greens (WA), but in an organic and cognitive way.
The party had early success with the 1990 re-election of Jo Vallentine (former Nuclear Disarmament Party, then Green Senator), followed by further success at the state level from 1993. The progression of the party grew from the marriage of disparate but related groups, to one focussed on becoming a coherent party organisation, one capable of promoting ideas that would capture electors’ imagination and build political credibility. This is all well mapped out here, as we see the party go through both highs and lows to where it is now as a firmly established part of the family of Green parties – and since 2003, a member-party of the Australian Greens.
As we journey through the book and its story we are also engaged in the topics that the Greens have for so long debated. What role should members play? Are factions good or bad? What’s the role of personality and leaders? Should MPs have a greater or lesser role in the party or setting party policy? Where do party and MP staff fit?
Throughout, a better sense of the evolution of the party can be found in these debates, reflected upon by current and past party members.
This, perhaps most importantly, is the critical aspect of the project that has led to the book. The chance for reflection accorded to the various interviewees – whose memories form the basis for this book – provides for some fascinating insights into the important debates that have shaped the Greens (WA).
In reflecting back upon the party’s formation and growth it is easy to see the highlights (and low-lights) that party-building brings. Amongst that is also the growth and understanding that comes from experience, not least of which is that the party is both a parliamentary party trying to effect change in the parliamentary arena, and an activist party fighting to keep its roots in the various campaigns and movements that first generated it – and then kept it going strong.
This, then, is not a book to read as a purist party history; nor is it just a series of anecdotes, or a catalogue of campaigning techniques.
Rather, it is the story of the people (the high profile and the less well-known) who put forward competing ideas in a new-politics framework to attempt the impossible. Shifting the entrenched and dominant ideas on defence, resource extraction, wealth distribution, and social cohesion to directly challenge the notion that, as Marx and Engels so eloquently expounded, "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas" should be the norm.
That, of course, is the challenge that all green and progressive parties face: how to shift those dominant ideas to shape a better world?