Enigma who will never be replaced

IT has been a 30-year career without precedent - from grassroots activist, Bob Brown engineered the success of the Greens as a political party and then ruined Labor's majority position by dividing the progressive vote.

Whether you admire him or detest him, Brown's achievements are remarkable. More recently, he refined a dual identity as conviction politician for radical ideas and reassuring benign uncle disguising Green extremism. Sadly for the Greens, Brown and his special skill set is irreplaceable.

Brown has changed Australia by transforming the politics of the Left.

His legacy is unmistakable, though its ultimate meaning is still unknown.

Brown is Labor's saviour, but Labor's enemy - he fashioned a historic alliance that salvaged Julia Gillard, but became the kiss of political death for Labor's electoral standing.

Improvising as he went, Brown took the Greens from being a bunch of angry Tasmanian anti-dam protesters on the Franklin River to the genuine third force in politics with 10 federal parliamentarians, helping to deliver the carbon price and the mining tax and standing for same-sex marriage, an open door for boatpeople, radical steps to achieve equality, closing down the coal industry and rejecting the orthodoxy of pro-market economics.

His legacy is complex and contested. Brown is an authentic, an idealist and an ideologue whose values have generated schisms across Australia. He inspired a new generation of political activists, gave fresh traction to the anti-development cause and fashioned the Greens as an ideological party transcending just environmental issues and located to the left of the Labor Party.

This alters the traditional structure and nature of Australian politics. Its immediate result is to leave Labor crippled and confused and gift Tony Abbott a rallying cry that unites the conservative forces in a crusade against Green ideology.

Brown's departure with the Greens at their maximum influence invites the question: is the party now over? Have the Greens peaked at a healthy 12 per cent of the primary vote or can they catch another wind under new leader, Christine Milne, and steal even more of the progressive vote?

Elected to Tasmania's parliament in 1983 and the Senate in 1996, Brown has an ambitious final vision: the Greens as a party of government. That dictates a struggle for Australia's political soul and this is the contest he bequeaths. Brown believes the Greens ride the tide of history. His genius was to conceal Green vulnerability, market their distinctive idealism and outsmart Gillard Labor in office. It is an impressive political feat.

The truth is there were limits to Brown's influence with the Greens, a group stranded halfway between being a real party and a protest movement mired in dysfunction and conspiracies.

The paradox of the Greens is that they are formidable yet more fragile than people grasp. Their strength lies in their ideological stance and grassroots activism tied to a range of special interest groups.

Brown has established the beachhead. The Greens, no question, will survive without uncle Bob. Whether they they can prosper in the post-Brown era is their critical test.