Crusading Green is a lantern for tree moths

GREENS Senator Bob Brown announced last year that he might face a "$200,000 to $300,000" legal bill because of court action he'd taken against Forestry Tasmania.

Last week, he told a press conference that unless he could rustle up $239,000 for legal fees, on top of his own personal costs, he faced bankruptcy and expulsion from the Senate. It was a real tear-jerker. Former electronics salesman Dick Smith was among those who raced to the rescue. So did hundreds of other less fortunate souls, to whom Brown is a kind of cult figure standing against Big Business. By the time Smith stepped up to the plate, Brown had already secured the money he needed and the millionaire was able to put his cheque book away. What he and the other sympathetic donors were not told last week was that Brown had actually raised more than $739,000 by October 2008, which he now belatedly admits in his declaration of interests. If you go to Brown's website and follow the links to his cases against Forestry Tasmania, you will be treated to a suitably melancholy fugue but you will be none the wiser about the true nature of his finances. As Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz told Parliament on Tuesday night: "Even then he did not detail donations for May to July 2008, nor has he disclosed donations received in the seven months since October 2008. There are up to 10 months missing. Clearly the Senator does not abide by the same accountability rules he so self-righteously insists be imposed on everybody else." At most it would seem that Brown might still need something in the order of $100,000, a sum not beyond his own borrowing capacity if he were to mortgage the farm he owns or should he retire in 2010 and take a life-time parliamentary pension. In a roundabout fashion, Brown has conceded that his legal costs are covered by indicating that he will bankroll other anti-forestry campaigns, including a group of activists who chained themselves to machinery and blockaded the operations of a number of Tasmanian contractors. Abetz nailed Brown on their plight when he told Parliament: "I wonder how many well-meaning people who gave to save Senator Brown from phantom bankruptcy knew their donations could be used to defend these irresponsible antics?" Abetz went on to point out that Brown had not lost his case on "a technicality" as Brown had whined but "on the law". "It is what everyone else has to abide by unless, it seems, they are a Green crusader," Abetz said. "Regrettably, to Senator Brown and his gullible followers, science, the rule of law, accountability and, above all, truth are often relative concepts. "Sadly it seems that, if you bang on enough about how much you really care about forests, some misguided people will give you money - even if you may not need it." The challenge to Brown, said Abetz, is to be accountable. To immediately disclose to the Senate, as is required, exactly how much was raised before last week's appeal and disclose and substantiate the progressive personal legal costs. There doesn't appear any possibility of fiscal bankruptcy but ethically, Brown remains in real trouble.