http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/brown-is-the-sellout-not-garrett/2007
/12/02/1196530476160.html
 
Brown is the sell-out, not Garrett 
Paul Sheehan
December 3, 2007

  <http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/12/02/mucci_narrowweb__300x342,0.jpg>


Illustration: Michael Mucci

Why is Bob Brown so bitchy about Peter Garrett? Garrett has the strongest
green credentials in the parliamentary Labor Party and was supposedly a
long-standing friend and ally of Brown. Then Garrett stood between Brown and
power, and this is what happened:

"Peter Garrett and Malcolm Turnbull will get together and say more uranium
mines," Brown postulated on ABC Radio's PM on October 15. The previous week,
he told a rally: "Peter Garrett claims he is 'perfectly comfortable' with
the pulp mill . Peter Garrett, we're not perfectly comfortable with you!"
(October 7)

"This is the Labor hierarchy gagging Peter. Labor [including Garrett] .
needs to get a backbone." (Bob Brown media release, September 7.)

"I can't see Peter Garrett at all. Where is he? Peter used to be such a
defender of Tasmania's forests . but he is missing in action," Brown told
ABC Lateline on August 29.

"Senator Bill Heffernan has expressed more alarm about Gunns' pulp mill than
Peter Garrett." (Media release, August 27).

"Peter Garrett must not stand on the sidelines while the environment is
trashed." (Media release, August 23.)

"I am very concerned for Peter Garrett . It is the Little Red Riding Hood
syndrome, which I warned him about, that he is now suffering." (Media
release, July 24)

"How Peter Garrett can support this policy is beyond my comprehension."
(Media release, July, 23)

"He [Garrett] will be advocating the export of uranium and the destruction
of more old growth forests and a lot of things which I find incredible,"
Brown told Meet the Press on April 29.

"He [Garrett] hasn't affected the Labor Party one iota; but the Labor Party
machine has taken him over and turned him into an anti-Green campaigner,"
Brown said on ABC's Background Briefing on March 4.

This is all pretty rich, given Garrett's long track record of effective
environmentalism. Garrett did not respond to Brown's hostility, he just won
the war. As of this morning, Garrett sits in cabinet, as Minister for the
Environment, with the confidence of the Prime Minister.

Brown, in contrast, has squandered one of the greatest political windfalls
given to any political party in Australia since federation. At the 2007
federal election, climate change, global warming and water shortages were
part of the mainstream debate for the first time, along with a prime
minister who appeared incapable of understanding the critical political
importance of these issues to a new generation of voters.

For a true environment party, this represented a perfect alignment of the
political planets. And what did the Greens achieve in the electoral upheaval
of 2007? Not much. With most of the counting done, in the House of
Representatives the Greens have won barely more votes than three years ago,
843,276 (or 7.5 per cent), with a swing of just 0.3 per cent. They did
better in the Senate, thanks to the final collapse of the Democrats, and can
expect more than 1 million votes, or 9 per cent of the vote, when counting
is concluded in two weeks. The Senate result is a good one, but the swing to
the Greens was tepid compared with the larger general swing against the
government.

This a far cry from the momentum the Greens built over the previous four
elections, when they ran their Senate vote up from 180,000 (1.66 per cent)
in 1996, to 916,000 (7.67 per cent) in 2004. In 2007 they will finish short
of the vote the Democrats achieved in 1996, when they won 1.179 million
votes in the Senate, a 10.82 per cent share, and with it the balance of
power in federal politics.

Had it not been for Brown's propensity for ideological intransigence - a
quality the great majority of Australians voters abhors in its politicians -
the Greens would almost certainly have control of the Senate now, and a far
larger primary vote in both the House and the Senate.

I would have voted Green in a heartbeat if it was a truly environmental
party. Instead, it is a sly party which uses the green brand to expend the
bulk of its political capital on George Bush, East Timor, West Papua, gays'
rights, drug laws, refugees and numerous issues that have little to do with
climate change, global warming and water shortages.

This is not to question the obvious reality that Brown has done more than
most people on behalf of the environment, or that the Greens take the
environment more seriously than the major parties. Brown has been fighting
the good fight for 35 years. He has been the formal leader of the Greens for
just two years, but has been the party's de facto leader since 1989, when he
was in the Tasmanian Parliament. This is far longer than John Howard
maintained his grip on the Liberal leadership.

At 62, Brown has just been elected for another six-year Senate term. He has
been in the business of accumulating power for a very long time. When
Garrett emerged as a threat to Brown's power base, he was subject to a
steady stream of claims that he had "sold out". Brown dismissed him as
Little Red Riding Hood. Now, just three years after entering Parliament,
Garrett sits in federal cabinet with his hands on the machinery of policy
and power. He has always practised the art of the possible.

If anyone has sold out in this contest it is Brown, for using the
environment as a screen for other obsessions, and for failing to grasp the
enormous political opportunity presented by the 2007 election.

The Greens should start thinking about a new leader, one more honourable and
less shrill.



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