The Teals and the Greens are the flip side of the same coin chasing the opposite ends of the Green spectrum. Hard Green at one end and a softer shade of green (teal) at the other.
In fact I predict that because of their image problems, the Greens will eventually be swallowed and subsumed by the more marketable, less aggressive, more softer gentler, more mainstream palatable and friendly female Teals wihtour the hard edge of the Greens but it’ll be the same wolf in sheep’s clothing. Greens 2.0.
Maybe that’s been the plan all along. A sort of political reverse takeover.
They’re not even trying to disguise who they are and the image below of their voting pattern graphically makes the point.
One end of the spectrum is your mainly young, typical inner city, sandal wearing, hemp bag toting, social justice warrior, dreadlocks cohort.
At the other end of the Green/Teal spectrum is the more mature, retired, virtue signalling, eastern suburbs/northern beaches Malcolm Turnbull voting, SMH subscriber type, fire-walled by their wealth from the typical day to day travails of ordinary people. Think, the Mr and Mrs Mike Carlton’s and the Mr and Mrs Peter Fitzsimons.
These are the socially progressive, hipster type also known as known as the “Dr Wives“ once described by industrial economist, Nick Economou as “a truly irritating demographic of voters”
As the former Labor leader Mark Latham remarked about this particular cohort of Turnbull supporters upon his election to Parliament as the member for the Eastern Suburbs seat of Wentworth in 2004: “Perhaps instead of applause they should just jangle their jewellery.
A sub group of the Drs Wives, is the short grey haired, no nonsense, sensible shoe wearing, retired school teacher, osteporotic cohort with lots of time on their hands for landcare and generally interfering in other people lives and raising annoying points of order at your local council meetings like some latter day Madame De Farge sitting by the guillotine in Tale of Two Cities and volunteering at the local library to help fill the void in their own empty lives.
This latter cohort is to be condemned because despite their life experience they’ve learnt nothing about life itself.
These are the useful idiots I see deployed and swarming the major intersections and bus stops at peak hour with their corflutes, in the current by election here in Pittwater and I have to admit, just like the lead up to the last Federal election they’re very well organised with an admirable ground game. Their marketing and promotion is way ahead of the Libs and Labor. They’re committed and they have Holmes a Court money.
Some teal minded types are difficult to pigeon hole but as a US Supreme Court Justice once remarked when asked to describe his test for pornography in 1964, he responded: “𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐢𝐭”.