The Greens aren’t taking it far enough in Canberra

Our federal MPs need a few more trees to hug, writes Phillip Adams. Picture: AAP

Before turning George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion into My Fair Lady, the US team of Lerner and Loewe wrote Paint Your Wagon. Set in California during the gold rush, it contained a number of songs with odd titles like They Call the Wind Maria and, providing my theme for today, I Talk to the Trees.

At the age of five I was on very intimate terms with a peppercorn tree at Grandpa’s farm (a relationship I’ve written about in the past), though I never actually spoke to it. Spike Milligan’s version of the Lerner and Loewe song seems relevant here. “I talk to the trees,” Spike warbled. “That’s why they put me away.”

Yet perhaps we should talk to trees, if only to express gratitude for their beauty, their shade, their timber, and their important role in carbon capture. Or to apologise for hacking them down in their billions (think of the Amazon basin) or letting them burn in the bushfires that we intensify with climate change.

You may recall that our current king, when Prince of Wales, used to talk to pot plants in the belief that this encouraged their growth. But they didn’t put him away. It was seen as one of his charming eccentricities, like Camilla. And who knows? Perhaps it worked. Whether our newly minted monarch also talks to their larger rellos is unknown; perhaps he converses with the mighty oaks at Windsor or that mournful pile in Scotland. Sneaking out for a quiet chat when nobody’s looking. If so, goodo. Your average tree is probably as skilled a conversationalist as most Homo sapiens.

The Greens don’t take it far enough. I’m on record advocating that trees should not only get the vote but be elected to parliament. I envisage local branches in leafy suburbs meeting to nominate candidates. No branch stacking, though.

And let us remember that tree-hugging has a long history. It was necessary for us when we lived in them, prior to becoming bipedal. And more recently one great statesperson hugged trees all the time. Fun fact. Otto Von Bismarck, that most prominent of Prussians, was known to adjourn meetings on weighty matters for the purposes of rejuvenation. He would wander into the garden, select a suitable tree and embrace it warmly. No hint of eroticism; nothing kinky about our Otto. He just found that tree-hugging gave him the energy to resume the discussion on matters of state.

Which is why I’m asking a leading intellect amongst the eucalypts to introduce a Private Member’s Bill at the next session of our federal parliament. I want to have large trees planted around Parliament for all MPs and Senators to hug, in the confident belief it would improve the quality of government. And the same applies to both the High Court and Yarralumla. Our loftiest judges would obviously benefit in their deliberation – and the current Governor-General clearly needs to hug a tree to make him more firmly rooted. Before we’re all rooted.

By the way, this column was written with the help of a surviving tract of Old Growth Forest in Tasmania. I’d particularly like to thank a mighty Huon Pine that runs rings around any human I’ve encountered. Thanks to Bob Brown for the introduction.

P.S. I’m getting a new app for my iPhone – so I can make trunk calls.