Say “Yes” to More Green Hypocrisy

Simon Benson and Gemma Jones, in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, report:

Greens leader Bob Brown is often accused of behaving like the defacto [sic] prime minister but no one expected him to take it seriously.

On Monday MPs were stunned to see he [sic] and his excited entourage commandeer the Prime Minister’s private cabin aboard the RAAF Boeing 737 VIP jet on a flight from Hobart to Canberra.

Several staffers aboard the flight – chartered to collect members stranded [!] in Tasmania due to the volcano ash cloud – claimed to have seen Mr Brown and his deputy Christine Milne make a “bee-line” for the front of the plane. [...]

“They definitely made a point of taking up the PM’s cabin at the front of the plane,” one Labor staffer said.

Another MP’s staffer also confirmed they were walking down the aisle at the front of the plane and looked in to see Mr Brown and Ms Milne in the private cabin. [...]

[The aeroplane] was used on Monday when Qantas cancelled its flights to and from Tasmania.

Nineteen people, made up of MPs and their staff booked on cancelled Qantas flights, had to use the RAAF jet to make it to Canberra for the start of the sitting week.

Other staffers of MPs aboard noted that the Greens leadership made sure, however, that they were the last off the aircraft when it landed in Canberra.

“They made sure they were the last off, so it looked like they had been sitting up the back of the plane. The imagery was that they were up the back among the people, when in fact they were in the PM's private suite.”

The 737 would normally take about 150 people on a commercial flight, sharing the carbon footprint around.

Neither Mr Brown or Ms Milne’s offices would comment yesterday.

These allegations raise many doubts because we here at Say “Yes” to More Taxes remember that, unlike other parties, the Greens have ethics and principles:  the Greens, according to their own Members Handbook, “value trustworthiness, sincerity and truth.”  For the Greens, furthermore, “the journey is as important as the final destination:  the processes [they] use to achieve social change must be consistent with [their] principles.” (p. 4)

The Greens famously oppose both hypocrisy and unnecessary emissions of carbon dioxide; accordingly, we eagerly await their refutation of these astonishing claims from what they pithily term “the hate media”.