Everything the Australian Greens do starts well enough, before descending into farce.

Caring for the environment ends with farmers having to offset their cattle’s flatulence. Helping the poor morphs into a universal basic wage costing the nation $400 billion a year. And promoting women’s health winds up as a plan for the national distribution of taxpayer-funded tampons.

So, it was entirely predictable that Adam Bandt’s encouragement to school leavers this week would – like everything else the Greens do – devolve into idiocy.

The Greens leader tweeted:

‘To everyone who’s just wrapping up Year 12: today, it doesn’t matter what your ATAR is, or what your next plans are. Whether you want to be a lawyer, artist, miner, or just smoke weed for a year or two: I’m proud of you. This has been a bloody tough year. Props for making it.’

To everyone who’s just wrapping up Year 12: today, it doesn’t matter what your ATAR is, or what your next plans are. Whether you want to be a lawyer, artist, miner, or just smoke weed for a year or two: I’m proud of you. This has been a bloody tough year. Props for making it.

— Adam Bandt (@AdamBandt) December 16, 2021

Mr Bandt forgot to mention that if you fail Year 12 science, you can always advise the Greens on climate policy… And what encouragement does Mr Bandt have for unvaccinated youth who simply want to work at Woolworths?

Telling teenagers he would be ‘proud of them’ if they decided to ‘just smoke weed for a year or two’ is a clue as to why the Greens are stuck on 10 per cent of the vote.

Is Mr Bandt, who wants to hold the balance of power after the next federal election, unaware that possession and use of weed is illegal? Is he ignorant of marijuana’s links to psychosis? And how is it that he is paid by the Australian public to sit in Melbourne tweeting this nonsense?

Speaking of Melbourne, what is one to make of a city in which failure to wear a mask incurs a hefty fine from your state premier, but spending two years choofing in your basement earns you a high five from your federal Greens MP?

Imagine the uproar if Prime Minister Scott Morrison had said such a thing? Or Anthony Albanese?

Adam Bandt should ask himself why he is able to encourage school leavers to get on the wacky tobacky without fear of sanction.

The answer, of course, is that sensible people do not regard Bandt as a sensible politician. You’d need to be on the choongs to do that. Which, come to think of it, might explain Bandt’s tweet.

‘Just smoke weed for a year or two’ may well be a prerequisite for understanding the Greens’ social and economic policies, but it’s hardly sound life advice.

‘Just smoke weed for a year or two’ … and when you open your eyes, you’ll be 42! But don’t worry. When you’re done playing with the devil’s lettuce and looking to blame everyone else for where your life has ended up, the Greens will be there to stroke your grievances.

Sometimes it seems like Mr Bandt, who became leader of the Greens in February 2020, has been on the political equivalent of a two-year bender.

He has described nuclear-powered submarines are ‘floating Chernobyls’, opening new coal mines as a ‘climate crime’, and the Religious Discrimination Bill is ‘a Trojan horse for hate’.

He believes sex-change operations should be free, along with pretty much everything else. And it’s all possible because he will ‘tax the billionaires’.

The Greens are often referred to as the fairies at the bottom of the garden. Now we know what they’ve been doing down there.