The last two state elections held here in the Ballina electorate indicate clearly it’s a mathematical impossibility for the Nationals to win the seat. This is owing to the fact that the Labor and Green primary votes together easily overwhelm the vote of the Nationals. It is only the Labor Party, by running third and preferencing the Greens, that has enabled the Greens to claim victory.
At the state election to be held on 25 March next year, Ballina voters will be once again faced with the prospect of an underwhelming Green candidate retaining the seat on the back of Labor party preferences.
The Greens, hidebound in radical ideology, with no clear policies on the issues that face the state in health, education, and in particular energy, will never be in a position to form government. This undisciplined rabble simply want to ‘switch off the lights’ – today if not sooner, with no viable plan for the transition to renewables, putting hundreds of miners out of work along with all those other workers dependent on an ongoing coal industry at least until the market decides otherwise.
And now we have a Green MLC, Abigail Boyd, with not much better to do but to attempt to do away with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer prior to a sitting of the NSW Upper House. Ms Boyd seems to forget there are most probably Christians amongst the MLCs serving in the NSW Upper House who are not particularly keen on meditating. Perhaps Ms Boyd could go and meditate in a corner somewhere.
The political party with the wherewithal to replace a Green with a representative for Ballina who can serve in the government is the Nationals. Not by voting National but by engaging in what is termed ‘tactical voting’. ‘Tactical voting’ was used to great effect in those Victorian federal seats lost to the Teals in May this year. Here an elector casts a vote against the party they would normally support and for the party with the best chance of defeating an incumbent. So Labor and Green voters voted for Teal candidates in order to defeat the sitting Liberal. And so if National supporters ‘tactically voted’ for the Labor candidate then bye-bye Green and we would have true representation here in Ballina.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
