theSpeakersChair

I'd love to see the Greens become a legitimate third major party in Australia, but I fear there is a stigma that many people have that prohibits them from voting Green.

One such example is my home state of Tasmania. The 2010 state election delivered a hung parliament which saw Labor and the Greens form minority government. Many people blamed the failures of the government and the economy on the Greens, and both Labor and the Greens were voted out at the last election (however, I think it was inevitable that the Liberals would win in 2014, regardless of what Labor/the Greens could do/achieve).

My question relates to this. Obviously the increase in the Greens vote will be slow over time, to the determent to the other parties. How do you plan on avoiding situations like 2010-2014 in Tasmania and 2010-2013 Federally, where the general public view any deals with the Greens as a negative?

Is a Labor/Green coalition (similar to the LNP) a solution to this?

I have two questions:

1) what's up with the beard?! Trying a new look?

2) more seriously, I apologise in advance for not reading your book, but what do you think the future of Australia's media landscape should look like?

I personally think that smaller, regional news outlets could be of better benefit to our community, especially if they took a digital angle (and ditched newspapers), but how do you fund journalism when sites like the ABC give it away for free? (and that's not a dig at the ABC, while they excel at national news, I find they report 1 in maybe 7 or 8 articles I'd read in the local paper)