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

This week the grandest trees now targeted by the loggers in Tasmania’s Upper Florentine Valley have been dynamited by the logging industry, and with them the habitat of a great range of wildlife in this World Heritage value forest. It is a forest that, instead of being celebrated by this nation, made a national park by the Labor government in Tasmania and nominated for its World Heritage value by the Howard coalition government, is being destroyed in what is nothing other than an environmental obscenity against Australians and their future.

Look at the Stern report and do the figures. Sir Nicholas Stern, in warning about climate change, said that the fastest thing we can do is to turn around the logging of forests in the world. That would have a better effect than stopping all the transport systems of the world in helping to save the world from the onrush of catastrophe from climate change. According to his figures, by stopping the destruction of the forests by Labor and the Liberals, Tasmania would get somewhere between $6,000 and $24,000 per hectare for keeping the forest standing in an age of carbon trading. As it is, we are getting much less than half the lower of that figure from destroying the trees and sending the woodchips, through Gunns, to the rubbish dumps of the Northern Hemisphere. So it is not only an environmental obscenity; it is an economic absurdity.

But there is not one Labor or coalition member of this parliament who speaks out against it—not one. That includes the Labor shadow minister for the environment and it includes my old friend Peter Garrett. I would have expected that Peter would be at the forefront in this parliament in bringing to book in the House of Representatives government policies that are so catastrophic for this nation’s future. After all, the Midnight Oil anthem says: ‘Oh, the power and the passion. Sometimes you’ve got to take the hardest line.’ That is, you have to stand up and be counted, even among your peers, when such a travesty of political judgement is being carried out against the interests of the nation. I raise this matter because of Peter’s intervention in the Victorian elections last week. I was there when he came, and went, to lobby for the Labor Party in the marginal seat of Melbourne. What Peter did—

Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Brown, you must refer to him as Mr Garrett.

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

What the member for Kingsford Smith, Peter Garrett, did was to deceive the voters of Victoria by an onslaught which included letterboxing a personally written letter to all the voters of Melbourne, and indeed Northcote, implying that the Greens had made a favourable deal with the Liberal Party, particularly in relation to preferences, against the interests of the Labor Party and that inter alia the Greens were letting down the environment. Indeed, he called it a Liberal-Green alliance.

The outcome of the election shows that Labor will have a big majority. In some 25 of the seats it has won which have gone to preferences, that majority will come in on Greens or other preferences. In other words, Labor has received a huge boost from Greens preferences in Victoria. The Greens in no seat preferenced the Liberals. Peter was very careful about not stating that directly, but his letter to the voters, which was so deceptive, said that the Greens were helping the Victorian Liberal Party. It talked about the Liberal-Green alliance and about the fact that there was a Greens preference deal which was assisting the Liberals. In fact, the Greens preference arrangements were mightily assisting Labor, and he knew it.

The point was to stop the Greens from winning in the seat of Melbourne, which was marginal, and I think he was successful. Effectively, he has stopped a passionate Green voice for the environment in the lower house of Victoria as against a Labor voice, which is another proponent of Labor policy for logging the water catchments of Victoria, for failing to tackle climate change, for boosting the burning of coal and for putting a tollway through Royal Park—a whole range of policies which the environmental groups made clear in their assessment of policies when going to the election when they gave the Greens nine out of nine but the ALP only 4½ out of nine. The point is that Peter went in to bat against the environment and the environmental advocates.

The question is: what is going to happen now? How is this powerful personality going to affect politics? I refer to Laurie Oakes’s column in the current Bulletin magazine. Mr Oakes said:

Victoria also provided a lesson for Beazley, exposing the stupidity of his refusal to revamp his shadow cabinet. On election day, the Greens underperformed—

due, I might add, to Mr Garrett’s appearance, amongst other things—

but in the final week of the campaign they—

that is, the Greens—

had Labor running scared. Polling suggested they would defeat Health Minister Bronwyn Pike and stood a chance of winning three other inner-city seats. Labor’s response was to rush Peter Garrett into the campaign. Personalised letters from Garrett were also mailed to voters in the threatened electorates. The Green challenge was seen off. What further proof does Beazley need that Garrett should be on the frontbench in a role that properly uses his profile and talent?

I have no quibble with Laurie Oakes’s assessment of the profile, nor of Peter’s talent, but the question is: talent for what? Talent for ending uranium mining in this country? No, he has changed his policy on that. Talent for preventing nuclear ships coming into the ports of Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Perth, Brisbane and other cities of Australia? No, he has changed his mind on that. Talent for ending the spy agency facility at Pine Gap, which, amongst other things, mightily upset our neighbours? No, he sang about that once but he has now changed his mind on it. Talent for protecting Australia’s old growth forests and beleaguered wildlife? No. As I explained, he has gone quiet on that. Talent for preventing tollways and instead getting behind Greens policies on public transport—fast, efficient, clean—and helping to turn around climate change? No, he supports tollways, including now the east-west link being in a private-public partnership, perhaps in the wake of this election, through Victoria’s Royal Park. Peter has said that—

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Brown, please remember that it is Mr Garrett or the member for Kingsford Smith.

Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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)