Drew Hutton ousting: Expulsion of Greens co-founder shows party is unashamedly at odds with men who raise concerns about biological realities and the trans agenda
It is bigger than trashing the legacy of a thoughtful 78-year-old who has dedicated his life to environmental causes.
It is, I would argue, about every rational and reasonable man watching this circus and realising he could be next.
Young decent Australian men, in particular, have been crucified over the past decade for the crime of being male, forced to routinely defend themselves from the toxic masculinity label.
Now the Greens have declared war on men and they are not even hiding it.
Men like Mr Hutton who built movements and stood for free speech are now rebranded as bigots and silenced as liabilities.
And the male 'crime' is daring to raise concerns about biological reality and more broadly issues like parents' consent for puberty blockers and fairness in women's sport when females are being injured.
Mr Hutton lost his life membership of the very party he helped build because he wouldn't toe the line on censoring alleged transphobic remarks made by other people on his Facebook page post from 2022.
Exiled not for what he wrote but for 'failing' to censor what others wrote.
This is not about discriminating against trans people either.
In fact in those posts he said, amongst other things, that he of course supported their full human rights.
But now in modern Australia, defending biological sex is seen as an act of hate.
The new Greens believe you are what you say you are and if a man, especially an older one, dares to question that, he is dangerous.
Yes, the irony here is suffocating.
Mr Hutton said the party stymied open discussion about its transgender policy which declares that individuals have 'the right to their self-identified gender'.
He called their beliefs 'a closed language, which they understand but nobody else does'.
In an interview with ABC's 7.30 after his expulsion, Mr Hutton said: 'The main things they think are important are we get rid of the notion of biological sex and replace it with gender identity…
'What I disagree with vehemently is the way that anybody who actually voices any dissent with that policy and does so from a credible position, that there is such a thing as biological sex and there are two sexes, is forced out of the party.'
That is correct.
In this ideological revolution, men do not get a say. They effectively get told to shut up and go away.
He also told Sky News host Chris Kenny that a 'transgender and queer cult' were at the wheel and driving the Greens off a cliff, effectively taking any environment-focussed party faithful with them.
'Their vision is one where particular identities prevail and the rights of those particular identities are far more important than any other issue that the party addresses,' Mr Hutton said.
What was also very telling in this mess was the reluctance of Larissa Waters, the woman who replaced Adam Bandt as leader, to defend Mr Hutton.
Ms Waters washed her hands of the whole episode except to say the result showed 'good governance' and claimed she had not read the documents that engineered her former party colleague's exile because she was busy preparing for Parliament with a focus on climate and tax.
She added that any future decision about Mr Hutton's potential return to the party was 'not up to me'.
In other words, defending him would mean challenging the mob.
The Greens' purge of Mr Hutton sets a dangerously low bar of how Australian men are treated and ultimately silenced.
The message to men is that your history, contributions and your view are null and void if you dare to question, even factually and politely, the new order.
And that is not progress.
Louise Roberts is a journalist and editor who has worked as a TV and radio commentator in Australia, the UK and the US. Louise is a winner of the Peter Ruehl Award for Outstanding Columnist in the NRMA Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism and has been shortlisted in other awards for her opinion work.
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