Positive comments on the Greens from Canberra Times?

Since the Canberra Times website was overhauled this week and morphed into a mirror of the uber-clutter of the Sydney Morning Herald site, finding local ACT news has become a lot harder.Particularly through the RSS feed, which seems swarmed by hundreds of global and national items every day. They don't even offer an ACT news RSS feed.

It was surprising then to find this uncredited piece that looks like it's an editorial, not that it says so. It makes good points about people basing all their projections for the upcoming ACT election on what happened last time. Curious though, given so much of what the Times itself writes about the ACT Greens (or certain of its journalists anyway) takes the same approach.

So it was surprising to see this observation about the Greens:

It's really only the Greens who talk like they're facing a new election with a new set of circumstances this year, the only outfit that you talk to without hearing endless re-runs of 2008.

Going into this ACT election, I think that Molonglo electorate voters will be thinking about how great a job Caroline le Couteur  has been doing with policy and legislation - particularly on planning. And how she gets out and listens to people in the community. Just like an old fashioned local government councillor.

Or the absence of the oft-predicted catastrophe with Shane Rattenbury in the Speaker's role - another Green MLA who is everywhere in the Molonglo electorate and to the fore on sustainability and environment issues. He was spearheading investigations into the disastrous Mitchell chemical factory fire before the fire had even been put out.

And ABC Radio 666 listeners would reflect on the weekly political panels with their farcical bickering between MLAs from the old parties, compared to the calm and reasoned input from Meredith Hunter as convenor of the Greens. She's been in the unique position of having to negotiate the agreement that allowed the government to be formed and then keeping them to their promises despite the frequent charades about budget disasters.

I see less of Amanda Bresnan from an electoral context, but she has also done the hard yards on policy and legislative development, consulting with community groups and experts - particularly on the transport issues that bedevil Canberra and Gungahlin.

So perhaps while some commentators continue with their eyes fastened on the 2008-rear-view mirrors, voters will actually be more concerned with what has happened in the meantime. What they'll see is a minority government whose worst excesses and arrogance from a term with a majority are now held in check by the Greens.

Governments and Oppositions of the old parties (whichever way around) seem to only ever see negatives. Everything the other mob does was always the wrong way - even if it is precisely what the complainant was themselves proposing. One of the things I like about the Greens is that they are definitely "glass-half-full" people. They can see and acknowledge the good things, but also seek to build on them.

There's much more room for improvement in the ACT. Returning to the previous situation of a majority government is the last thing the ACT needs.