The Tory commentariat has been frothing all week at the thought of the Greens controlling the balance of power in the Senate. The voters have made a frightful mistake in allowing this state of affairs, apparently.

There's particular angst over the new NSW Greens senator, Lee Rhiannon, whose parents, Bill and Freda Brown, were card-carrying members of the Communist Party of Australia yonks ago. She, therefore, must also be a Red.

I find Rhiannon to be a tad dogmatic and apparently devoid of humour, with a voice like a whipper-snipper, but that does not necessarily mean she wants a new five-year plan, the collectivisation of agriculture and a Stalinist extermination of the Kulaks.

You can take parental precedent a bit far. My father was a Catholic priest for 13 years, a Missionary of the Sacred Heart, but that hardly makes me one, as I am sure Cardinal Pell would agree.

If the Tories want to go down the road of guilt by family association, what then would they say of the new opposition leader in the Senate, Eric Abetz, whose great uncle was an SS Standartenführer and Hitler's ambassador to Vichy France?

Please explain.

Mike Carlton