Probably not.

The Greens are the party of racial and social justice, after all.

But in the upside-down world of ACT politics - where the Liberals, the supposed friend of big business, use what airtime they get to advocate for the poor and vulnerable - this is what transpired inside the Legislative Assembly earlier this week.

On Tuesday, Shane Rattenbury's gang of six Greens joined with their Labor coalition partners to shoot down the Liberals' calls to commission an independent investigation into the prevalence of racism at the Alexander McConnachie Centre.

On Thursday, the Greens did the same to sink the Opposition's plans to establish a taskforce to examine the causes and symptoms of poverty in Canberra.

The Greens (and Labor) defended their rejection of the two ideas - which casual political observers might assume progressive parties would enthusiastically support - in similar ways.

Whether it was Indigenous incarceration, racism or poverty, the Greens affirmed their deep and undivided commitment to addressing the very real and serious problems.

But on each, they refused to accept the Liberals had put forward the right solution.

Want to address poverty in Canberra? You don't need a taskforce, the Greens say, you need an increase to the JobSeeker rate.

There is truth to that argument.

It's also important to note the motivations behind the two Liberals motions weren't all pure. Though there is sincerity behind Elizabeth Lee's offer to find common ground with her opponents, the motions put forward this week were classic wedge politics, designed to divide or embarrass - or both.

If the Greens had supported the Liberals' proposals, Lee's team would have held it up as proof of cracks in the Labor-Greens coalition.

If the Greens opposed the ideas - as they did this week - Lee's team would cry hypocrisy. "Aren't you the party of racial and social justice", they would mock from the opposition benches.

The Greens' positions were, for reasons political and practical, not surprising.

Nor were they politically harmful.

Not yet at least.

Given this genuine Labor-Greens coalition is just four months old, it's not unexpected that Rattenbury's new colleagues - particularly the two who sit with him in Andrew Barr's cabinet, Emma Davidson and Rebecca Vassarotti - aren't straying far from the government line.

The Greens are backing in policies developed by Labor - and influenced by Rattenbury - to fix some of Canberra's most complex social problems.

That is, in the long term, a political risk because it is under the watch of this long-serving Labor government that so many problems have either emerged, or not been adequately addressed.

Only last month figures from the Productivity Commission showed that Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children were being locked up in Canberra at 18 times the rate of non-Indigenous children - the highest in the nation.

What happens if four years from now, the rates of Indigenous incarnation, prevalence of racism inside the prison and number of Canberrans in poverty remains the same?

And in that time the Greens had voted against, time and again, policies aimed to fix those problems? Policies which, far from being partisan stunts, might have actually helped?

If that proves true, the many Canberra voters who swung in behind the Greens on October 17 might choose to swing another way in 2024.

Worse still, the Greens would have failed the very people they claim to represent.

So much for the party of racial and social justice.

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