Opinion: Former Greens leader Bob Brown keeping close watch over his luminous legacy
FORMER Greens leader Bob Brown has been flitting around Australia during this election campaign, shoring up support for a party which will be his legacy.
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THEY are like grandfathers at family weddings these old political stagers, gazing benevolently at empires they have built while the up-and-coming youngsters gently edge them aside.
The fountain of eternal youth still appears to be bubbling away for Bob Brown, “Green Grandad”.
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Aged 71, he is still flitting around Australia during this election campaign, shoring up support for a party which will be his legacy.
The Tasmanian doctor-turned-politician – standing in Ann St, Brisbane, this week and enthusiastically greeting voters at a pre-poll – has a perspective enjoyed by no other post-war Australian politician since another Bob (Menzies) helped create the Liberals.
Bob was present at both the conception and birth of the Australian Greens and, unlike Pauline Hanson or even Don Chipp of the Australian Democrats, has watched it blossom into an enduring political force.
He doesn’t appear too intent on romanticising the Greens’ founding legends, even if they need little rewriting to serve as an “eco-warrior’’ movie script.
Bob was actually there in the Tasmanian wilderness in 1972 when he and a handful of confederates in the United Tasmania Group laid foundations for the world’s first green party by fighting dam construction (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) at Lake Pedder.
Instead of mythologising the past Bob, like most proud parents gazing at their healthy progeny, is intent on looking forward to a luminous future.
“The green movement is just beginning globally, and I just hope I can stay alive a while longer to watch it all grow,” he says.
By the look of him, Bob may be with us for several decades – his “retirement’’ a bustling series of engagements across the country.
Even suggestions he’s now an elder statesman raise a quizzical eyebrow.
“I’m not as old as Bob Hawke,” he says with a grin.
Originally published as Opinion: Former Greens leader Bob Brown keeping close watch over his luminous legacy
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