By Janet Parker
Ian Cohen is perhaps best known for surfing at the bow of a warship in the quest for peace, scaling the chimney of a polluting incinerator to demand its closure and diving into murky waters to protest ocean outfalls. Today he is NSW's first Green member of parliament.
Cohen was a Greens candidate for the Senate in 1987, 1990 and 1993. In the 1991 NSW election, he was narrowly beaten to the last upper house seat by Fred Nile in what became known as the "battle between heaven and earth."
Ironically, a reshuffle of parliamentary offices has put him in Fred Nile's old Call to Australia rooms. Here, he has spent his first few days as a parliamentarian trying to come to grips with what he describes as a "new kind of wilderness".
It's not his scene at all: full of the pomp and ceremony of the Westminster system, lots of suited and solemn-looking (mainly) men and unrelenting security systems. He describes it as a very challenging and daunting environment to work in — one he says he wouldn't recommend at the moment. "Having said that though", he says, " I hope that as an individual I'll have a small impact and aim to direct the significant powers that exist in this place to address some of the burning issues".
Cohen anticipates that his role in parliament will be above all as a "conduit" for community-based organisations. "We've got a lot of liaison with groups such as the North East Forest Alliance, the Nature Conservation Council and a range of environment groups. We're supporting the M2 [tollway] protests and we are already talking to the relevant Labor Party ministers and staffers regarding this issue."
The Greens have also been involved in the campaign against the third runway at Kingsford Smith Airport, and Cohen is intent on the establishment of a Legislative Council committee to look into the effects of the runway on the lives of those living under it. He believes that the alternative proposed — a second airport at Badgerys Creek — is a "big if". There's no point in "fast-tracking" our way to another set of problems out west, he insists.
Prior to the March 25 elections, the Greens were also involved in discussions with the Labor Party about a package to save the old-growth forests. "We forced them to make certain concessions, which was very productive. We tied that up over preference deals before the NSW elections. We weren't prepared to let our preferences go without some of the major issues being addressed."
The forest package is still in the negotiation stage. It involves a $60 million restructuring package over five years aimed at preserving the jobs of timber workers and ensuring the protection of high conservation value forests.
"We want to look after the workers in the industry", Cohen explains, "but we also have to make that step to a sustainable industry. The work must stop in the areas of high conservation significance — that's non-negotiable. If that means groups of people travelling around the state blockading, pushing them to the limit, then we'll do it."
While these are all priority issues on the Greens agenda, they have made a point of explaining that they are much more than a party of the environment. "We took in a complete social justice agenda", Cohen emphasises. "We're very concerned, for example, about the 'law and order' auction held by the major parties, and we're going to be standing firm on justice issues, working in whatever way we can with the progressive legal establishment and the left wing of the Labor Party to ameliorate the effects of that."
I asked Cohen if there were any circumstances under which the Greens would consider entering into an accord-style arrangement with the NSW Labor government, in the same way the Tasmanian Green Independents did in 1989. "We've got no plans of that", he answered. "I think we can have an amicable working relationship with the Labor Party and still maintain our integrity, and that's what's really important.
"The Tasmanian accord was pretty disastrous for Green and Labor relations, and I don't see why we need to lock ourselves into anything. Everything is uncertain. There are seven members on the cross-benches not necessarily aligned. That's one-sixth of the upper house! I think it's important that we emerge with a high degree of independence."
In recent years, discussions have taken place between the Greens and the Democrats about the possibility of a merger. Cohen feels that this is even less likely than it may have been in the past. "We feel it's important to give credit to the Democrats for the role they've played and are still playing, yet we believe the Greens are the party of the future. So while we want to maintain a good working relationship, we don't see it as appropriate to amalgamate our parties. It's hard enough to work within the Greens, with the positions that different groups and members take, let alone add another dynamic of an established party and the power plays that would go on there."
However, the Greens NSW have become a member group of the Australian Greens. Cohen explains that Bob Brown was very instrumental in pushing towards amalgamating the Greens nationally with a view to acting as a federal force and thereby achieving a greater impact.
"The NSW Greens sends delegates and has positions on the executive. The national Greens are currently made up of people from the ACT, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania. In Western Australia, there's already an established Green party, and they've maintained a fraternal, but strictly speaking separate, relationship with the Australian Greens."
In NSW, the Greens have experienced considerable growth in recent months. "We've got groups growing up all over the place", Cohen enthuses. "It's really quite inspiring. We've now got groups in Goulburn, Mittagong and the central west areas. We had the first ever woman candidate in the Albury electorate, and we've had people coming out of the woodwork running on the M2 campaign and others — so there's been a real development at a grassroots level."
The Greens NSW plan to run in both the local council elections in September and the next federal election. "We'll be running a team of at least four people in the Senate at the federal election. Our preselection process has already begun.
"Twenty-seven parties contested the upper house in the recent election and despite that, we still improved our vote by some 20,000, so we'll be working on consolidating that. Our next aim, and what is critical for us in the federal election, will be to break that 4% that means funding and go beyond struggling from one election to another. I think there's a distinct possibility we'll get a senator in next time round."
The resources available through Cohen's office will aid future electoral efforts. The last meeting of Green state delegates agreed to tithe Cohen, and he has written an official letter acknowledging his willingness to abide by this process. He explained that they may also fund more Green staff and possibly some consultancies from his wage. "My priority is to have a high-impact, efficient working unit in this area, so we'll allocate funds accordingly", Cohen said.
I asked him whether the Greens would be rotating their members of parliament as the German Greens once had. There had been ongoing debate on this issue, he said, but the German Greens' experience had warned them off.
"We learned from Petra Kelly that there was a terrible backlash when people elected one person and then found themselves represented by another. It just didn't work so there's been a certain sobering up on the benefits of that process. The proposal may arise again in the future and we'll deal with it then, but at the present time there's no condition on me to rotate."