I've read a number of political stories over the last year or so that have categorised the Greens as a bunch of childless, Mercedes driving rich people. How close is that perception to reality?
One indicator is the sort of people they elect to represent them.
Here's the current list of Greens MPs in NSW and their known family status:
Greens
David Shoebridge lives in Sydney with his partner Patricia and their two daughters.
John Kaye - n/a
Cate Faehrmann - n/a
Jan Barham - n/a
Jeremy Buckingham lives in the beautiful provincial city of Orange in central western NSW with his wife Sarah and two boys, Eden and James.
Jamie Parker -n/a
Lee Rhiannon - has three adult children and lives with her partner in Sydney.
Summary - 7 reps with 7 kids between them. That's a pretty simple average to calculate - one child per rep.
How about the Labor party? Rather than grind through the whole lot, I just looked at the Shadow Cabinet:
Labor
In case you don't want to read through the whole list, there are 16 of them and they have 34 kids between them - an average of over double what the Greens have. The Greens have two kids max - some of these MPs have 4 or 5. One who didn't have kids of her own has fostered kids. Only two out of the 16 have never had kids, whereas 4 out of 7 Greens appear to have never had kids.
Does the stereotype fit? You decide. (And Jamie Parker certainly drove a big Mercedes before the election. He used to park it some distance from political meetings and walk so that he wouldn't be photographed arriving in a huge lump of luxury German metal. Got no idea what he drives now).
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John Robertson has lived in Western Sydney for over 20 years, and he is raising his three children there with wife Julie.
Linda Burney has a son and a daughter. Her partner for a number of years until his death was Rick Farley.
Michael Daley lives in Maroubra and is married with four children.
Barbara Perry - A mother of five young boys
Paul Gerard Lynch - n/a
Robert Furolo has lived locally for many years and is the proud father of two beautiful children
Sophie Cotsis is married with two children.
Andrew McDonald and Jenny have lived and worked in South West Sydney since 1990. They have two sons.
Penny Sharpe has been a foster carer for young women aged 15 – 17
Luke Foley is married to Edel and has three children
Nathan Rees - n/a
Mick Veitch is married to Adrienne and has four children, and one granddaughter. He and his wife are foster parents.
Carmel Tebbutt has lived in Newtown, Stanmore and Marrickville. She currently lives in Marrickville with her husband and her son
Steve Whan lives in Queanbeyan with his wife and two children.
Adam Searle lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner and their three children.
Tania Mihailuk - My husband Alex and I live in Bankstown with our young children Larissa, Matthew and baby son Daniel.
1 comment:
Given that Greens membership is derived from students (aged up to early/mid 30s), it is very probable they are still childless. The other big source of Greens, aging leftists, have likely already bred and there's nothing they can do about that now, except commission studies about the expense of child-rearing, prevalence of autism, dangers of vaccinations, etc etc...
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