A quick editorial note on the subtext that I detect in the post we published yesterday by Anna Reynolds, international adviser to Greens leader Bob Brown.
Anna was defending Greens foreign policy against criticisms made by Shearer, Cook and to some degree myself (you can read every post in the debate here). But Anna declares early in her piece that the '750 or so words that have been allocated to me' are insufficient to rebut the arguments made in those posts, and she focuses instead on the Greens' parliamentary activism on foreign affairs.
It's not clear to me why 750 words is insufficient to even make a start at a rebuttal (Shearer's initial post was just over 600 words). And remember, this was Anna's second opportunity to address the criticisms — I also published her email last week, and on that occasion too, she chose to focus on the Greens parliamentary performance, an issue that was not raised in any of the critiques we published.
Personally, I congratulate the Greens on their parliamentary activism, and on securing Julia Gillard's agreement for a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan. But what Cook and Shearer criticised was the substance of Greens foreign policy. Those criticisms have still not been addressed.
