Vic: Greens MP promises to give 'em curry

AAP General News (Australia)
12-14-2006
Vic: Greens MP promises to give 'em curry

By Nick Lenaghan

MELBOURNE, Dec 14 AAP - Colleen Hartland once served it up to MPs as a kitchenhand
in the Victorian parliamentary restaurant.

From next week, she'll have a chance to dish it out to them in her new role as one
of the state's first batch of Greens parliamentarians.

A recount of upper house votes overnight gave Ms Hartland a Legislative Council seat
along with two other newly-elected Greens.

Ms Hartland's last job in parliament, more than 15 years ago, was as a kitchenhand
during the previous Labor Cain-Kirner government.

And she clearly relishes the opportunity to "give `em curry" on her return to parliament.

"Green curry, yes definitely," she told reporters outside the public housing estate
where she works as a community worker.

"I know where the cups and saucers are and I know where the kettle is. This is going
to be a really different role for me.

"I served probably a number of members who are still there or who were parliamentary officers."

It was during her earlier role at parliament that Ms Hartland was propelled into environmental
activism when Melbourne's Coode Island chemical storage facility went up in flames in
1991.

She became a prominent campaigner on pollution issues and later a Greens councillor
in the inner western suburb of Maribyrnong.

The daughter of a working class Catholic Labor family, Ms Hartland has devoted herself
to social justice and welfare issues in the city's less prosperous west.

She has vowed to give voice to those struggles as a Greens MP.

"There's going to be someone who will actually stand up to government and say (that)
what gets dished out here is not good enough," she said.

She was once a card-carrying ALP member but left the party and finally stopped voting
for them, disgusted by their weak position over the Tampa refugee issue.

With their three MPs, the Greens share the balance of power in the upper house with
two Nationals and one Democratic Labor Party MP.

During the election campaign, Labor accused the Greens of doing grubby deals with the
Liberals to win lower house seats.

But since then, Labor's own preference swap with the socially conservative DLP have
come under scrutiny after the deal helped knock out a Greens candidate.

"They do these deals and I don't really understand why. They did it with (Family First's)
Senator Fielding. They put him in. They choose to preference incredibly conservative people.

"I think sometimes we embarrass the ALP because our views are probably the views of
many of their members."

But while Ms Hartland promises spice, she won't be wasting her time on revenge.

"We're not about vengeance. It's about working cooperatively. Vengeance is too time-consuming.

We want to get on with the job."

AAP nl/ce/evt/de

KEYWORD: POLLVIC HARTLAND (PIX AVAILABLE)

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