Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will remember it is Mr Garrett. I have forgotten in my long-term familiarity with him. Mr Garrett has said that he wanted to join mainstream politics because he thought from there he could effect change. We have seen the change effected. He has not affected the Labor Party one iota; the Labor Party machine has taken him over and turned him into an anti-Green campaigner. One has to say that it would be a smart thing for the Labor Party to have Peter Garrett of old as an environmental campaigner, but this new Peter Garrett is an anti-Green campaigner who supports Labor policies which are destructive to the environment and which go nowhere near fostering this nation’s environmental amenity, its wildlife, its rivers, its seashores, its interior, its snow-capped mountains and its wild forests—as the Greens will do whenever we get the opportunity.

I remind you again that sometimes ‘you’ve got to take the hardest line’. We get vilified for being hardliners. I am proud of it, because I do not want to be a weak-kneed party functionary who caves in to party dictates against conscience. Worse still, I do not want to be used as an Exocet against my former friends, against my former beliefs, against a lifelong held philosophy of doing everything possible and of standing tall and strong against those who maraud this planet and its environment, and against our obligation to future generations to stand up for it. We are going to hear a lot more of Peter Garrett in the coming year in the run-up to the federal election. Let me say at the outset that I welcome taking him on. It is not a joust between the man and the man; it is a joust between a philosophy and a philosophy; it is a joust between Labor and the Greens. The Greens are here because Labor has failed, and Peter Garrett has not made one iota of difference to that; in fact, he has made it worse. He has made it worse because he has sold out on key environmental issues on which he was such a grand advocate.

I note that the first thing that he did during the last federal election was go to my friend Michael Organ’s seat to advocate against the Greens there. In this election he was parachuted into Melbourne to campaign against the Greens there. If it was done on the basis of, ‘Our policies are better than the Greens policies on the environment,’ one would have to accede to it. But it is not. It is done on the basis of trying to trash the Greens and our strong environmental policies as in some way or other being supportive of the very people whom we oppose—the coalition in office here and the Labor Party in several states. Letter writer Stephen Kress from North Carlton perhaps put it most succinctly in yesterday’s Herald Sun. I will read from that letter:

Analysis shows that Labor won many seats on Greens preferences alone. So much for the Labor lies during the campaign of a ‘Green-Liberal alliance’. But it appears that the Labor smear campaign against the Greens scared enough of their wavering inner-city voters to save Bronwyn Pike and neighbouring seats for the ALP. How such a well-educated and supposedly savvy demographic could fall for such a blatant Labor con job is mind-boggling. The tens of thousands of letters to inner Melbourne from Peter Garrett may have saved Ms Pike, but for me they trashed his reputation as an honest politician. Perhaps next time inner-city folk won’t be such suckers. To quote a Midnight Oil song: ‘Just another ridiculous steal/ain’t no doubt about it’.

What we are seeing here is a tragedy. We need young people inspired. We need people looking up to leaders who are consistent, particularly when the going gets tough and who, in the words of that anthem, take the hardest line. But instead of that they have a transformed Peter Garrett. (Time expired)