Great! Patricia McKenna just called around, canvassing our area — and just got a serious telling off from the wife ;)
Catherine — unsurprisingly, given that she’s a zoology Ph.D — was fantastic, hitting every key point of the issue: that we’re both long-time Green voters who’ve been forced to not vote Green this time around, due to this MMR issue and the anti-science/pro-hokum angle it represents.
Interestingly, she claimed that her stance on MMR was always her own point of view, and that it wasn’t party policy — and that it was mentioned on the party website was a rumour put about by the PDs.
While it turns out that Dr. Ruairi Hanley, the author of this letter to the Indo is indeed a PD (didn’t realise that!), Treasa at Winds and Breezes also noted it appearing on the Green Party site, as follows:
Questioning the Benefits of ImmunisationThere are significant question marks about the effectiveness of mass immunisation programs. We would launch a major study of the benefits of these programs looking at all aspects of health
So Treasa — are you a stealth PD rumour-monger? ;)
Worth noting that at no time did McKenna reassure C that her policy would not become government policy if the Greens were elected… as an elected representative, surely her own policies would influence the government’s thinking?