Greens founder Drew Hutton lashes party's transformation into 'cult', says he was 'punished ruthlessly' for expressing different views

Sky News AU

2 days ago

Greens co-founder Drew Hutton has claimed the party is now "the definition of a cult" after he was expelled for refusing to delete a social media post criticising the expulsion of a Victorian Greens member who had expressed dissenting views on trans rights.
Mr Hutton was expelled from the party he co-founded last month, despite eventually agreeing to delete the post and comments from others on the issue.
The former Greens member has noted the party committee which oversaw his expulsion at no point accused him of transphobia and he was instead effectively punished for refusing to censure comments made by others.
Mr Hutton was expelled from the party he co-founded last month, despite eventually agreeing to delete the post and comments from others on the issue. Photo: Claudia Baxter
Speaking to Sky News host Chris Kenny on Tuesday, Mr Hutton said fairness and diversity of opinion was non-existent in his former party – which he claimed had lost sight of its original mission of environmental protection.
'I said: 'Well, I'm not here to censor other people's views'."
'I put a couple of posts up and a large number of people responded to it and some of them were arguing that there is such a thing as biological sex… those comments were from people who weren't even members of the Greens for the most part, were regarded as transphobic and they said that I was responsible for that.
'All I did was have a couple of posts which basically agreed with the Greens' policy on gender. I don't agree with it now, but I did at that stage because I was happily in retirement. I was a burned out old Greenie who was retired and didn't know any of all this that was going on,' he said.
Mr Hutton said dissent was 'simply not tolerated' in the Greens after he was booted from the party.
"This is part of the definition of a cult," he said.
"A cult has a closed section of ideas that it understands but nobody else does. They've got some language that they understand, but nobody else does and anybody within their ranks who deviates from the standard set of beliefs that they have is punished ruthlessly.
"Any dissent is just simply not tolerated and that's what's happened here."
'Not on this issue anyway,' he said.
Asked if the he had been treated fairly and whether there was any democracy within the Greens party, Mr Hutton said: 'No.'
'Right around Australia, trans activists and zealots, extremists, have taken over the key committees in the Greens, including and most importantly in the disciplinary committees, so that anybody who says something they disagree with, immediately a complaint goes in.
'The committees themselves are controlled by these trans-activists. As was the case with me, all five members of that committee were activists. They were part of a Facebook site which was called Turf TERFS from the Greens."