In reflecting on the historic retirement of Greens leader Bob Brown, some really important lessons come up about how politics can be conducted, as opposed to how it usually is. Its especially pertinent as Australians soon must choose between a leader they dislike, and a leader they distrust. Its not unreasonable to hold up ones hands in despair and ask – is this the best that our country can offer? Brown and the Green movement offered a different way, and the contrast could not have been more stark.
Brown was someone that most people who knew him, inside politics and outside, including the media, respected, liked, and trusted, regardless of whether they shared his views. Its important that the virulent attempts to rally hatred of Brown and the Greens by the vested interests that control much of our lifespace, don’t distort this truth.
The dynamics of hate and its mobilization in politics continues to be of global importance, and its worth some analysis here. The spleen shown in comments pages following Bob Browns retirement should not be indicative of widespread opinion – people with silly nicknames who post with bad spelling in the middle of the day in the Mercury are not of great account. (Though its certainly a worry how much bullying and ugly speech does occur worldwide on the internet, much of it full of sexual violence and much directed against women. Remember we only get to read whats been moderated.)
Its when this kind of methodology creeps into mainstream politics we should be alarmed. This quote from a recent Australian Magazine feature on Bob Brown pinned it down well. The interviewer sought many views, but none more irrationally splenetic than those of Erik Abetz., as commented on by Alan Ramsay.
“There’s venom in Abetz’s voice when he talks of Brown. The veteran political commentator Alan Ramsay says this is typical, as Brown is widely loathed by politicians from both major parties. ‘He represents everything that they are not,’ Ramsay tells me. ‘He is a man of conviction, a thoroughly honest man, a man of principle. They see in him what they want to be and they hate him for it.’”
Its the psychology of the shadow. The reason drunken men bash babies and women. They hate what they can’t be – loved. People in the major parties, and their handlers in the corporate world, seem to hate Bob Brown in direct proportion to their own perfidy.
Not returning the spleen heaped on you is a real test of a person’s backbone, a refusal to let fear call the shots. Bob is mild, but he’s never meek. Listen to him in parliament, he tells is like it is. He is funny but not sarcastic. Tough but not personal. He just doesn’t give in.
Christine Milne is the same. The Greens have established, probably from the role modelling of these two, a style of politics that is not demeaning or hateful, its barely politics as we know it. Its something that we need to continue – having representatives (of whatever party) who are activists first – caring deeply and giving the time of their lives to what they know matters most – and reluctantly entering the corridors of power because thats what you have to do. Let me emphasize this further – the existence of Greens as a party has meant that the concerns of deeply aroused people about issues that concern our survival as a species, have a channel. Because we have a Sinn Fein, we don’t need an IRA. Violence has been ruled out of the environmental cause, even though it is often arraigned against them. Its in fact to everyone’s credit on every side that we’ve had these long divisions and retained a civil and safe nation. Atticus Finch has faced down the lynch mobs.
Nonviolent action both in and out of politics has a long and profound tradition. Jesus used it, Gandhi used it. Nelson Mandela used it. Wilberforce and the anti slavery movement used it. It isn’t easy and it isn’t fast. Gandhi spent a quarter of his life in British gaols, his wife died in one. Whether its tactical – in boycotts, blockades, and marches or occupations, or personal – in refusing to become a vicious, angry or untruthful smearer of ones enemies in the parliament or out of it, this is the soft-power, mass action gradualism that changes history. It draws warm friends, builds team energy, stirs hearts and wins over the better among ones opponents. Its an unstoppable train.
The media has largely been wrong in their analysis that it was all about Bob. He stepped into a breach because someone had to. He continues a tradition going back thousands of years – and it suffuses the Green organizations worldwide and the wider progressive tradition that stood up to war, slavery, despoliation of nature, women, children and the poor. Love has a power that hate can never touch.
• Michael Gordon, The Age: Exit Bob the builder
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But the most poignant tribute came from Tasmanian novelist Richard Flanagan, who says Brown’s greatest achievement has been to remind Australians ”that power and money are not the only measure of who we truly are”.
Brown won Flanagan’s unflinching regard early when he was bashed, jailed and shot at during the Franklin campaign and targeted after becoming the country’s first politician to openly declare his homosexuality.
When I asked Flanagan whether he suspected Brown’s trademark optimism might have been dulled by the fierce debates in Canberra, he almost scoffed. After the ”bloodhouse” that was Tasmanian politics in the ’70s and ’80s, he said, nothing that followed would have been capable of dulling his positive disposition. ”You have to look at how brutal the political world that launched him was. It didn’t have any of the more progressive voices of Victoria, or New South Wales, or South Australia. They just didn’t exist down here. I remember sitting in the Tasmanian Parliament in the early ’80s and the abuse of his character was unbelievable, just awful.”
Flanagan describes Brown as a builder who was the inspiration of the Greens, the Wilderness Society and Bush Heritage Australia, the organisation that was conceived at the little cottage Brown bought at Liffey, a bike ride from Launceston 38 years ago, with the aim of protecting two nearby properties from logging.
It now owns almost 1 million hectares, helps manage another 2.5 million hectares, employs 80 staff, has hundreds of volunteers and more than 50 partnerships. At a modest ceremony last year, Brown donated the cottage to Bush Heritage.
”I think his biggest contribution has been in making many Australians believe that they still have a place in their own democracy – and that change can still come from individual acts of courage and belief,” says Flanagan.
”That is a necessary precondition for any democracy to continue because democracy isn’t founded in parliaments or parties – it’s founded in the belief in each of us that we can affect our own world for the better. At a very difficult time for our democracy, he was one of the people who kept that belief going. He demonstrated that from the Franklin on – he got wings.”
Doug Humann, the environmentalist who recently stepped down as chief executive of Bush Heritage, describes Brown as a role model, and altruism as his defining quality.
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• Rosslyn Beeby, Canberra Times: Milne steps up in harsh climate
April 14, 2012
Christine Milne, a former Devonport school teacher and daughter of fifth-generation dairy farmers, sharpened her formidable political skills on the world stage.
Long before she was elected to the Senate in 2005 (arriving on a tractor to emphasise her empathy with rural causes), Ms Milne was an influential player in green global politics. She helped broker global conservation deals, gave keynote speeches at United Nations forums and was an adviser to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee.
In 1990, she was named by the United Nations as one of its Global 500 Environmental Laureates. It’s an honour shared with Sir David Attenborough, French marine biologist Jacques-Yves Costeau and former United States president Jimmy Carter. She gained the award for her role in doubling the size of Tasmania’s protected wilderness.
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Just over a decade ago, Ms Milne was elected to the global council of the world’s peak conservation body – the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Four years later, she became its vice-president, a swift ascent for an Australian delegate in a keenly competitive arena.
In that complex political milieu, Ms Milne gained a reputation as an early advocate for climate change action. She addressed a UN climate forum in Montreal shortly after taking up the climate change portfolio for the Australian Greens. She called for urgent action to address climate change at a global level, at a time when the Howard government was refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
It was a speech that was vigorously applauded and widely reported as ”putting the world on notice”.
Yesterday, Ms Milne pledged to fight the ”biggest assault on the environment in Australia we’ve seen in a very long time” by seeking stronger alliances with rural Australia and business. ”Rural and regional Australia has a critical role to play in this century, particularly in terms of food security in a global context, particularly in terms of renewable energy and energy efficiency,” she said.
Ms Milne began her political career as an activist with the Franklin dam blockade in south-west Tasmania in 1983, and was arrested and imprisoned during the protest. She led a campaign by local farmers to stop the Wesley Vale pulp mill in 1988, and was elected to the Tasmanian Parliament as an independent in 1989. Three years later, she became a founding member of the Tasmanian Greens Party with Bob Brown.
Read the rest: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/milne-steps-up-in-harsh-climate-20120413-1wzd4.html#ixzz1s4cGvlHw
• And The Examiner Editor Martin Gilmour leaves readers in no bout where the Ex stands:
Power the reward Brown era
IT is difficult to assess the exit of Senator Bob Brown from federal politics and what it will ultimately mean for the Greens.
So much of what the Greens stand for and their successes have been built around the constant image of Bob Brown.
It is impossible, whatever your politics, not to admire his resolve and ultimately his political power.
Julia Gillard is in power and has control of the Senate thanks to Senator Brown.
We are about to get a carbon tax and more expensive private health cover thanks to Senator Brown.
Some might rejoice at these policies while others despair, but it was Senator Brown’s stranglehold on Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s power that achieved these concessions.
They will probably sink Ms Gillard at the 2013 election but Senator Brown will be long gone and it will be a totally different Greens party fighting that election.
Senator Brown, if nothing else, knew it was time to get out on top.
Some politicians, former prime minister John Howard being the best example, don’t know their use-by date.
Senator Brown’s exit will be interpreted many ways.
After 16 years in the Senate it is doubtful that he could have achieved much more. He has almost single-handedly dragged the Greens from the forest floor to a genuine political force.
Not to acknowledge that would be trite.
Also, not to acknowledge the collateral damage caused by the Greens would also be trite and disrespectful to those who have lost their jobs.
The biggest disappointment is that Senator Brown has been replaced by Senator Christine Milne _ a smart politician no doubt but not in the remotest shadow of Senator Brown in terms of statesmanship.
Senator Milne is a divisive character in Tasmanian politics and the Greens star will dim under her narrow vision.
Senator Milne has never been in the same ball park as Bob Brown in terms of diplomacy and internal bickering will dilute the message as it did with the Australian Democrats.
The great unknown is Senator Brown’s replacement in Tasmania.
It is difficult to believe that someone hasn’t already been identified.
For some time Nick McKim appeared the chosen one but it appears that Senator Brown and Mr McKim drifted apart in recent months and maybe Friday’s announcement was timed to preclude Mr McKim.
The replacement will need to be a high profile Green but we can only hope it isn’t Peg Putt.
The former state Greens leader has, in fact, done the Greens image untold damage with the Markets for Change campaign in Asia.
While Ms Putt will argue it was about saving forests, her group has damaged Tasmania’s brand in general.
However, the people who we should feel really sorry for now is the ABC.
Who are they going to flash up on our screens at 7.10pm every night now that Senator Brown has gone because Senator Milne will do nothing for the ABC’s ratings.
