BOB BROWN is one of the country's best known environmentalists, and the leader of the Australian Greens. He spoke to JEN CROTHERS in Hobart last month, one day after a successful public meeting in defence of Tasmania's wilderness forests.
What is your assessment of the green/ environment movement at the moment?
Those two things are separate. The green movement encompasses social justice as well as the environment. Green, in my parlance, means social justice, the environment, democracy and peace; those things are interwoven.
The public meeting, which filled the Town Hall, was very important because there has been a really hard time for the environment during the recession. Not just the economists, but the political commentators, particularly the Canberra press gallery, decided that if you have an economic recession, you have to have an environmental depression, even though opinion polls throughout have shown the environment rated right at the top of concerns of the Australian people.
The politicians were able to take it off the agenda. It's forcing its way back on the agenda. That is probably a bit to do with the recession having lifted somewhat, but it's also got to do with the fact that there is this enormous public anxiety about the environment.
Meanwhile they're still measuring the GNP in terms of dollars and car accidents. It will be a long while before we get out of this way of thinking.
We've now got a new environment minister in John Faulkner who comes from the left. He has accepted that the hard immediate environmental issues can't be ignored, and that the forests are a litmus test.
The meeting yesterday was to raise public attention as the environment movement builds up to the crunch period, which is the end of October. First the federal government will be reissuing export woodchip licences. They failed totally last December as to whether they are going to break their own forest policy, which Paul Keating and Ros Kelly announced in December 1992 and which was to protect forests that are likely to have a wilderness or high conservation value until we've adequately assessed them. At the moment there are studies being done in all states to provide a list of forests which shouldn't be cut.
The second thing is the urgent test in Tasmania, that is, the Huon and the Picton forests and the Great Western Tiers. There is a submission from the Wilderness Society to have those added to existing World Heritage area this year, and that means in October. If it's not there, it means the federal government has failed on the most urgent of the forest crises. My real concern is that they will be tempted to leave it to next year. Everything will tend to be put off to next year because it's election year, and they like to be showing that they are doing good things in an election year. These forests won't wait.
Do you think Keating is going to honour the policy if there isn't firm social pressure?
No. The logging companies have huge pressure over the Labour government in Canberra. The sad thing is the Australian Conservation Foundation and TWS don't have a lobbyist in Canberra at the moment. They fly in to do what lobbying they can, whereas the National Association of Forest Industries has a building, has offices, it's got paid executives there.
Governments aren't renowned for carrying out the wishes of the people unless there is a physical display of their anger. The environmental lobbyists have the support of the people, but is that enough?
That's where the environment movement has a big job in front of it, galvanising an expression of public concern so the politicians can't ignore it and nor can the media. The public meeting in Hobart, like the blockading in WA, like the blockade over summer in the Gippsland forests, and like the blockading that's occurring in northern New South Wales are all ultimately means of galvanising public support for the forests.
The establishment media have been pitting jobs against the environment, and in logging communities there is a lot of antagonism against greens. Do you think this can be changed?
To a degree it's been turned around by circumstances. In Tasmania the Green-ALP Accord ended when Labor broke it and said, "We're giving 1.7 million hectares of forest to the logging companies because we want to enhance jobs". The very first thing that happened after the election was the sacking and downgrading of work conditions at North Broken Hill's paper mill in Burnie. In the first year they shed 1000 jobs.
There is a recognition that it is automation and the need to protect the profit line that is shedding jobs throughout the industry. NBH and the other logging companies would find it impossible now to get 5000 people out on the Hobart Domain as they did in 1988.
Mining and logging are job-shedding industries and the environment is a job-creating industry.
At the last federal election Green and other alternative parties' votes were quite significantly down. Yet recently, individual Green candidates, right around the country, have won record percentages. Do you think people are not so convinced by the two party system any more?
Yes, and people are getting very used to the idea that there is a great advantage in having a wide spectrum of political parties, and even in having minority governments.
The age of modern information means that community groups and minority parties can get their message out to some degree — they don't have the budgets and they can't get the television advertising and the big ticket items, but they can still get their message out. People are looking for something different to what the two big parties are dishing up — it's almost a one party system with variations on a theme.
You were saying before that the ALP can't assume green support. Does this mean you think that green parties can get significant percentages against Labor and Liberal?
In the recent Northern Territory elections in the seat of Millner, the Greens candidate polled 10%. They didn't give preferences because the sitting Labor member had not performed well. In the seat next door, Port Darwin, the Greens got 7% and they did allocate their preferences to Labor, because there was an incumbent National Party person and the Labor candidate was very much better. Against a swing to Labor in Darwin, in general, in Millner the Labor candidate lost his seat. The message to the Labor Party is that they can not take the Greens for granted.
I reckon there will be a big effort by Labor to show off its environmental and social justice credentials at the next elections. However, a pre-election grab bag, speaking as an individual, I don't think we can allow ourselves to fall for that. Their performance in the '90s has been abysmal.
What role do you see the left in the ALP playing?
I don't see what role they have in the ALP. They can be as anguished as they will, but the ALP is no longer the party of social justice. You can't have a country with a record rate of growth of the gap between rich and poor, and as a prime agent in the record growth in the gap between rich countries and poor countries, after a record period of Labor government in Canberra and say that the left has an influential role.
We do have people like John Faulkner, who I do respect greatly, and John Devereaux, who's a living example of somebody who has decided to put principles before the direction that the party is going. He is fighting for the party to implement its policies, because they're not doing it.
People who are in the left have a very great challenge in front of them. Are they going to stay as a rump to a party that has moved to service materialism or are they going to become part of the alternative, wherever it is in the green spectrum, where they can at least be part of a growing force?
What role do you see parliament playing in achieving environmental justice?
I think that parliament has about 20 or 30% of power in the community, and community groups about 10% and the corporate sectors have got at least the rest of it. That's not how it should be.
So it's part of our job to make parliament relevant and to take it out of the hands of the sectional interests. The test for the Greens as they hopefully win more seats in parliament, is going to be their retention of their connections with community organisations.