Christine Milne's not a real bushy like me: Barnaby Joyce

BARNABY Joyce has questioned whether new Greens leader Christine Milne can call herself a "country person".

BARNABY Joyce has questioned whether new Greens leader Christine Milne can call herself a "country person" when she lives in the city and her party opposes live cattle exports and building new dams.

The Nationals' Senate leader said he would take Ms Milne more seriously if she were based in the bush, as he was.

His scepticism was echoed by conservative mayors in southern Queensland, an area Senator Milne will be hoping to win over as she moves to forge bonds between the Greens and rural Australia, and step out of the shadow of party founder Bob Brown.

Senator Milne will kick off her tour of the regions within weeks, her office said yesterday.

She is reaching out to country voters in a bid to differentiate herself from Senator Brown, who will retire from politics in July, and broaden the appeal of the Greens.

On taking over as leader last Friday, Senator Milne said she was "going out there as a country person to say to other country people it's time the Greens and rural Australia worked together".

While she is a dairy farmer's daughter who still owns property outside Devonport in northern Tasmania, Senator Milne was educated at a convent boarding school in Hobart and moved to the city after winning a seat in state parliament in 1989. Her principal electorate office is on Hobart's waterfront.

The St George-based Senator Joyce played this up yesterday as he accused the Greens of often standing in the way of regional development.

He cited a list of examples including the party's opposition to live cattle exports and coalmining, rice growing in some areas and its advocacy of increased environmental water allocations in the Murray Darling at the expense of irrigators.

Senator Joyce said the Greens opposed new dams -- a position underlined recently when its Queensland division criticised the damming of the Connors River in central western Queensland, partly to support the booming coal industry.

"Generally I'd say the more the merrier for people who want to put the shoulder to the wheel for regional Australia," Senator Joyce said. "But I will believe it with the Greens if I see it in a real form. And the first challenge if you believe in regional Australia is come and live there. My office is 550km from the coast, and unless I am mistaken I think Senator Milne's is on the coast, in Hobart. If you're serious about a creed, come and live it."

Senator Milne's spokesman rejected Senator Joyce's criticism, pointing out that she spends much of her personal time in northwest Tasmania, where her mother continues to live. In additional to her parliamentary commitments in Canberra, she was out and about in regional areas to the extent she "spends very little time in her actual home, which is in Hobart", the spokesman said.

Senator Milne said the "appalling conflict" within central and southern Queensland regional communities over the spread of coal-seam gas projects, coalmining and the associated expansion of ports and shipping through the Great Barrier Reef pointed to the disaster that would unfold if the Coalition came to power under Tony Abbott.

"I'm hoping that perhaps under my leadership we can go out with a stronger articulation of not only our vision for the country, but how our economic strategy would support it," she told Network Ten's Meet the Press.

Senator Milne has her work cut out in the conservative heartland of southern regional Queensland, which is likely to be high on her list to visit.

In Somerset shire, west of Brisbane, the regional council has voted to declare a moratorium on CSG development. Mayor Graeme Lehmann, who admits to once voting Labor, said Senator Milne was welcome to pitch for his support. "These areas are very conservative-based, but as we get more people moving in, I suppose we might get a few different ideas," he said.

Gympie regional council mayor Ron Dyne, whose shire takes in the site of the scuttled Traveston dam north of Brisbane, said the Greens were seen as a "disruptive party" and had probably left it a "little too late" to woo some regional areas. But he would be open to suggestions from Senator Milne on how to boost the local economy.

"Our area is one of the lowest socioeconomic places in Australia, and the priority is jobs, jobs, jobs as far as I'm concerned," he told The Australian.

"We need education facilities and we need jobs."

And David Carter, of South Burnett Regional Council, northwest of Brisbane, said mounting concerns about the encroachment of coalmining on agricultural land could offset local suspicion of the Greens.

"We tend to think the Greens don't like much like agriculture," he said, citing the impact controls on tree clearing control had on local beef farming.

Asked if he saw Senator Milne as a country person, he said: "Not really, no."