Friends of Israel

From: The Australian, February 01, 2012, by: Matthew Franklin, Chief political correspondent

GREENS MPs and activists have complained that the party's NSW branch is run by a small "cadre" of Leninist-style ideologues whose activities are making it appear to be populated by "lunatics".

And the NSW branch is attempting to censure, gag or even expel MPs critical of its policies, including last year's controversial move to back a ban on Israel and blockades of Israeli-owned chocolate retailer Max Brenner.

The revelations come in an extensive article in Friday's edition of The Monthly, which explores deep divisions among the Greens, including those between leader Bob Brown and NSW senator Lee Rhiannon.

The article, written by journalist Sally Neighbour, says Senator Brown is derided as a "megalomaniac" by some NSW branch members and is prohibited from writing to his party's members without permission from states.

Publication of the expose comes just days after The Australian revealed declassified ASIO files showing a secret meeting was set up between now Senator Rhiannon and the man identified as the KGB station chief in Australia ahead of a lengthy 1970 overseas trip seen as a milestone in her ideological development. Senator Rhiannon dismissed the report as Cold War delusions, but did not deny the claim.

The Greens have been under increasing public scrutiny since they won the balance of power in the 2010 federal election.

Neighbour's article contends the increased profile has coincided with an internal battle between the party's NSW-based left-wing and its more pragmatic wing, led by the Tasmanian Senator Brown.

Much of the NSW tension surrounds the the NSW Greens' support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, through Sydney's Marrickville Council, and its support for attacks on the Brenner chain.

Neighbour details a "toxic" meeting of the NSW State Delegates Council in Darlington in Sydney in December, where delegates discussed sanctions against NSW MPs Cate Faehrmann, Jan Barham and Jeremy Buckingham for publicly rejecting the anti-Israeli action strategy.

Among the proposals was that the MPs should be forced to quit parliament if they could not support the NSW Greens policies on Israel. "Tempers erupt as the motion is moved, its backers arguing the renegade MPs should be punished for splitting the party, opponents condemning it as an outrageous bid to deny the MPs a conscience vote," she writes.

One member described the motion as leaving her speechless. "That there are people in the NSW Greens that think this sort of pettiness is OK really does suggest that we are far from doing politics differently," the delegate said.

Neighbour quotes an unnamed source in the party as describing those in control in NSW as anti-democratic. "They operate like Leninists, democratic centralists . . . a small cadre of tightly bound, ideologically attuned people controlling the committee and decision-making structure of the party."

Another is reported as having said: "They are stuck in an old rut which is all about running the show, controlling the structure, maintaining a code of silence.

"This old guard, this control clique, has done a lot of damage to the Greens branch in NSW."

Neighbour says the dominant clique is jokingly described as "the eastern bloc" because its members live in Sydney's eastern suburbs "and they're all communists".

Despite the attempts to gag them, Ms Faehrmann, Ms Barham and Mr Buckingham all spoke to Neighbour. Ms Faehrmann warned that voters become suspicious if they believe MPs are being treated as puppets of a party machine.

Mr Buckingham said the party needed to achieve outcomes rather than being "a force that drags politics to the Left". "We've got to mature and stop hectoring people," he told The Monthly.

Fellow MP Ian Cohen went further, accusing party leaders of providing ammunition for an attack by Transport Minister Anthony Albanese, whose wife Carmel Tebbutt held the state seat of Marrickville that became the centre of the BDS storm.

"It made us look like lunatics, dealing with an international issue on a local and state government level," Mr Cohen said of the Marrickville Council push on Israel. "It made a very paranoid and powerful enemy of the Jewish community and they reacted very strongly."

Marrickville Greens councillor Max Phillips, who led the push to overturn the Israel ban, told of his attempt to convince colleagues the ban was "tearing the party apart and damaging its electoral prospects" in last year's NSW election. But he says: "There was a bunker mentality and just an unsophisticated attitude to the media and politics -- you can't back down, stand your ground, don't give in to the Murdoch press -- rather than a realistic assessment of how it was being received . . . There's been no discussion of whether it hurt us politically."

The article says the Greens' NSW hierarchy had angered some members by failing to conduct exit polling after the NSW election to assess the effect of the Israel ban.

It also notes that the party has no single membership form, with rolls controlled by the states despite Senator Brown's push to create a centralised administration.

While the Greens leader had been given limited access to party databases, the arrangement was "so restrictive" he could not even send a letter to all Greens members with permission from the states. "They're into that fortress mentality," Neighbour quotes a party member as saying.