Where is Dr Bob Brown when Australia needs him? | David Penberthy
Fast forward to 2024 and those triangular stickers now stand for something quite different from hugging trees, writes David Penberthy.
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For a long time there was a likeable purity to the Australian Greens, reflected by their affectionate nickname as the “tree-huggers”.
As a kid who cared about the environment I remember being enthralled by the No Dams dispute in 1982 where the Franklin River in Tasmania was threatened with destruction by the creation of a new dam.
It was a pivotal moment in Australian politics which helped catapult Bob Hawke into office as he defeated Malcolm Fraser the following year, with Hawke correctly reading the national mood in defence of the river.
It also helped lead to the creation of the Australian Greens with its charismatic former leader Dr Bob Brown becoming something of a national environmental hero thanks to his lead role in the Franklin River blockade.
Those triangular Greens stickers you see today on the back of old Volvos and on inner-city house windows are a directly reworked design of the 1982 “NO DAMS” stickers.
Since the Australian Democrats fell apart in the early 2000s, mugged by the demands of having to make some real decisions over whether to back the GST, the Greens have established and expanded their status as the dominant third force in Australian politics.
But fast forward to 2024 and those triangular Greens stickers now stand for something quite different from hugging trees and saving majestic waterways.
Like taxing businesses to the point where they will be unable to operate, going after hardworking people who have saved for an investment property and contributed to the availability of rentable housing, and worst of all, excusing or defending the actions of proscribed terrorist organisations as some act of anti-colonial resistance.
Where’s Dr Bob Brown when you need him?
I know a few people in the Greens Party who have lamented the organisation’s drift from its environmentally-focused roots to something more akin to Antifa or Occupy Wall Street.
There are a couple of more level-headed Greens in the parliament today who worry about the party’s increasingly hard edge, or its preparedness to accommodate the demands of some of its nuttier supporters, such as hinterland anti-vaxxers, to maintain its electoral base.
Years ago in NSW I knew a bloke called Ian Cohen who was a Greens MLC.
He was a genuinely lovely guy.
Prior to entering politics Cohen took part in the 1982 Franklin blockade as well as other campaigns to save native forests in northern NSW and Queensland.
Cohen was also a surfie who was a passionate anti-nuclear and anti-war activist.
He appeared in one of the great Australian news photographs when he paddled his surfboard into Sydney Harbour and clung to the bow of the American warship USS Oldendorf as it entered the harbour in 1986.
Cohen was a level-headed parliamentarian who worked constructively with both sides of politics while remaining true to his anti-war, anti-nuke, pro-environment convictions.
He drifted from the Greens in the early 2010s as the party became captured by its more militant base in inner-western Sydney.
He was particularly troubled by the NSW branch’s enthusiasm for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, where businesses in the inner west were put onto a putative “black list” on the basis of their Israeli/Jewish links.
It’s a practice with an obvious standout historic parallel in 1930s Germany. Apparently it’s what passes for being enlightened in more radical Greens circles these days.
Why not just go the whole hog and affix yellow stars to the front of these Australian businesses?
As Australia faces the prospect of a hung parliament, the Greens deserve to face the fullest scrutiny on all their policies, from taxation, crime and drugs, to housing, the economy and foreign affairs. Voters need to think whether they’re embracing the environmentally-friendly Greens of the 1990s or something more radical, possibly even sinister.
There have been a couple of telling stories out of the ACT this past fortnight which go to the Green Party’s Pollyanna insistence that it deserves less scrutiny and rigour than the major parties, on account of somehow being a third party made up of passionate, doe-eyed amateurs.
These stories have involved the vetting process for candidates, where a couple of people with extreme and odd views have snuck through the cracks and secured preselection as Green candidates.
One of the candidates, Harini Rangarajan, wrote a post under a pseudonym on her personal blog comparing the late al-Qaeda leader and September 11 conspirator Osama bin Laden to Jesus Christ.
The ACT Greens downplayed the revelation, saying the candidate’s post was a “creative writing exercise” and that she would still be running for the party at this Saturday’s ACT election.
Then there’s Greens candidate James Cruz, who in addition to admitting to taking MDMA has also said in social media comments he wants to “f**king kill politicians” and “send them to The Hague and hang them in the street” over the government’s treatment of asylum seekers.
He wrote “f**k Israel” on a post condemning casualties in Gaza and said “I don’t give a s**t how many of their occupying forces die when they couldn’t care less about indiscriminately slaughtering civilians”.
The Greens are apparently comfortable with all this and the people of Canberra will still have their chance to vote for Mr Cruz on Saturday.
“The social media posts all relate to issues of concern to the Greens: violence against civilians, corporate accountability, drug harm reduction and people seeking asylum,” an ACT Greens spokesman said.
“The tone of the posts is impassioned and will be confronting to some, as are the issues themselves.
“Mr Cruz disavows violence and made those comments over deep pain at deaths of innocent civilians and the treatment of the refugee community of which he has family and friends.”
Impassioned it certainly is, and a very long way from the Bob Browns and Ian Cohens of this world.
Originally published as Where is Dr Bob Brown when Australia needs him? | David Penberthy
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