Global Green Bob

Bob Brown Speech by Senator Bob Brown to the Global Grens conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, May 2008

We Greens are the best hope, not just for democracy, but for this one green planet in the Universe. So far as we know, Earth is the only planet which supports life, and it is the only planet on which we can survive. The wonderful indigenous spirit we have just heard reminds us that we are all created for this wild and natural planet. Our bodies and our minds are fashioned by it. Our hearts resonate with it. There will be little joy for the human spirit if we destroy the natural fabric of Earth with nothing left to do but go shopping.
BOA TARDE todo mundo e otimo estar aqui eng Sao Paulo,

I join the hundreds of people here, and delegates from 87 countries, in saying to our Brazilian hosts and the hard-working organisers of this Second Global Greens Congress – `thankyou!`, `congratulations`, `you have done a brilliant job for all of us`.

And I want to thank Sao Paulo for this weather – it is just like the weather in my home island of Tasmania – raining yesterday, sunny today, and, if it is really the same, it will be snowing tomorrow.

For our fellow Greens in London, watching this via the web, congratulations on your electoral success in local government from London to Norwich to Edinburgh.

When we look to the way forward for the Global Greens we must let our imagination fly. The Twenty First Century must see global democracy. I do not mean George Bush’s idea of spreading democracy by armed invasion. We Greens, with our Global Charter committed to `one person, one value, one vote`, see the spread of democracy through peacefully building global equality.

The United Nations is not a halfway house. Perhaps it can be. But the ideal would be a global parliament for which every adult on the planet had an equal vote. For every ultra-nationalist, multi-national corporation, this is something to oppose. But for the Greens, it is something to work for and look forward to.

So true global democracy may be years away. But we are in an age when one trillion US dollars is being spent on armaments each year (and just 6% of that would give every child on the planet enough food, clean water and a school to go to) and the spreading of nuclear weapons, including handbag sized nuclear bombs, and potentially disastrous global heating, global democracy is essential to resolving the world’s differences and for peace.

However, don’t hold your breath. After the Global Greens Conference in Canberra established our charter, I moved a motion in the Australian Senate supporting the concept of a global democracy and parliament. After all, our Prime Minister John Howard, who likened himself to a deputy sheriff for George W Bush, had just agreed to help invade Iraq in the name of spreading democracy.

Well, our motion for global democracy was not only defeated. Every other party in the parliament, including the Democrats, voted against it. `Bob!` said one of them `don’t you know how many voters there are in China?` So, in one of the oldest democracies in the world, democracy got voted down.

We Greens are the best hope, not just for democracy, but for this one green planet in the Universe. So far as we know, Earth is the only planet which supports life, and it is the only planet on which we can survive. The wonderful indigenous spirit we have just heard reminds us that we are all created for this wild and natural planet. Our bodies and our minds are fashioned by it. Our hearts resonate with it. There will be little joy for the human spirit if we destroy the natural fabric of Earth with nothing left to do but go shopping.

This is where we Greens differ from the old, materialist parties. In all we do we ask this radical question, taken from the indigenous wisdom of respecting past and future generations, ‘will people 50 or 500 years from now thank us for doing this?’ If the answer to this question is “no” or “we don’t know”, we should not proceed.

And that leads to the smile factor which underlies the optimism of the Greens. When we imagine the world a century from now, when we look our great grandchildren in the eye and see them smiling back at us because they know we cared for them, we smile too! It is a wonderful dividend for the Greens

We are setting out to recreate the future and to banish the miseries of the present.

When it comes to global governance, democracy has been usurped. Corporations have stolen the march on us with quite the opposite ideals to the Greens. Their ideals are profit, division and winner take all. Samsung, Coca-Cola, McDonalds Mobil-Exxon have global power that we can only dream of – but let us not dream. Let us take action, out of this congress of Greens in Sao Paulo to strengthen the Global Greens into global focus and global reality.

Maybe our Third Congress can have building global democracy on the agenda.

Meantime we can take action to improve the flow of information between us Greens all around the world. As Ralph Nader asserted, information is the currency of democracy. Information empowers democracy.

So there is a motion before this congress in Sao Paulo to set up a fulltime global secretariat to ensure global linkups not every seven years but every day, seven days a week. We Australians are offering to host such a secretariat and there is good work being done here to establish good governance and funding which would be required.

The aims of this Global Greens office could include –

· to uphold our Charter

· to build Greens parties in every region and country around the world concentrating in less developed regions

· to communicate with every Greens party with an up-to-date register of parties, elected representatives and news and events

· to collate policies, legislation and good ideas, and make these readily available to Greens around the world

· to hold ‘schools’ for political skilling

· to break down the barrier of language for those who do not speak English

· to use the new media, such as the internet, to reach the millions of people who share our ideals but do not yet know that we Greens exist

· to consolidate our 2001 commitment to a Green Shield to come to the aid of Greens in danger

· to ensure that by our next Global Greens Congress we can see the Global Greens growing. That Global Greens tree is so important because it can provide shade and oxygen and greater happiness for the whole world.

This proposal fits in with the ideal of Ingrid Betancourt – and she inspires me and so many of us every day – that we should act to take on the power structures which misrule the world. Our secretariat can be one major step towards empowering the Greens around the world though, clearly, it is not the whole path.

Here are Ingrid’s own words:

“ Do not let us think of what we have not achieved, but of what we can do and what we must achieve. Let us not list our weaknesses but rather claim our strengths. What links us as the Green leaders’ generation is to give battle and to win it. What we want is not justification for ‘not to make’, but leadership to change the course of history.

We are not entitled to be a marginal political option. Neither can we satisfy ourselves with being support forces for the construction of temporary political majorities. We should aim for power and obtain it”.

Thank you Ingrid. Wherever you are, I hope you can see the flowers. Your words from Canberra are inspiring us here in Sao Paulo today.

Bob Brown (Senator)

Australian Greens Leader

Second Global Greens Conference, Sao Paulo, Brazil

May 2008