The former prime minister, John Howard, has urged the Liberal Party to avoid doing preference deals with the Greens, even if it puts the Coalition at a tactical disadvantage.

Speaking at the National Press Club yesterday to promote his autobiography, Lazarus Rising, Mr Howard said ultimately the Coalition had nothing to gain by helping the Greens take seats from Labor. This was because the Greens would always support Labor and their agenda was more extreme.

''I think my side of politics has got to be very careful about giving preferences to the Greens. In my view the Greens are worse than Labor,'' Mr Howard said.

''The Greens are fundamentally anti free enterprise. They have terrible foreign policy attitudes and they have a lot of social policy attitudes that a lot of Labor people would find abhorrent.''

Liberal preferences for the Greens in the seat of Melbourne enabled Adam Bandt to snatch the seat from the ALP.

In his first press club appearance since the dying days of the election campaign in November 2007, Mr Howard conceded that as prime minister he had erred in abolishing the generous superannuation scheme for politicians.

He did so in February 2004 under populist pressure from the then Labor leader, Mark Latham.

Mr Latham, who has since retired, gloated recently that he lives off a comfortable parliamentary pension that he helped deny others.

Mr Howard said abolishing the super scheme was a mistake in policy terms but at the time was the right thing to do politically because of the pressure his government was under.

Mr Howard also defended the military justice scheme his government established and the military prosecutor, Brigadier Lyn McDade, whom his government appointed.

Brigadier McDade has been the subject of a vicious personal campaign by the radio broadcaster Alan Jones - who launched Mr Howard's book on Tuesday - and other conservative commentators since she decided to charge three reservist commandos after a botched raid in Afghanistan killed six civilians.

Mr Howard also disagreed with Nick Minchin who revealed this week that he opposed the war in Iraq and wished Mr Howard had tried harder to dissuade the Bush administration from invading Iraq.

Mr Howard said Senator Minchin never expressed any such view at the time and Mr Howard said he never tried to persuade the US against the invasion.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/dont-give-preferences-to-the-greens-says-howard-2...

Didn't Howard stand in front of the Tall Old Growth Forests of Tasmania and lick his (lickspittle) chops at the sight of all that MONEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY   
?

A vote for the greens is a wasted vote, not possible to find a more useless bunch of clowns.