The Australian’s editorial (10/7), describes the Australian Greens as “an extreme party of the radical Left” and of “the fringes”. This is arrant hyperbolic nonsense. The Greens have 15% electoral support. Unless there is some other definition of the word, this makes them more “mainstream” than any other minor party. You seem to be telling the electorate that they don’t know what’s good for them.

The unseemly ongoing campaign against a popular party, from an unholy alliance of News Ltd media and Labor’s “faceless men”, will have a chilling effect on democracy.

To see where this leads, consider the recent tainted Mexican elections, where the hostility and bias of a media duopoly against the popular Left party has contributed to a mass rejection of the results and severe damage to public faith in democratic institutions.