
Issue No 102		13 July 2001

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Interview

Jolly Green Giant

Interview with Peter Lewis

Senator Bob Brown on the upcoming federal poll, balances of power and what the Greens can teach the trade union movement.

What do you see as the biggest single issue for the Green Movement in this election year?

Our aim as a political party is to win more seats, particularly Senate seats which are within reach, so that we can then influence the range of social justice and environment and democratic issues that we are so strong on in the Senate.

In terms of immediate issues, the funding of education, the closing of the gap between rich and poor in the country - which has been accelerated by the GST, which we took the strongest stand against in the parliament - and environmental issues including global warming and the record destruction of old growth forests in the country, are high up there on our agenda.

How will the Greens decide which major party it will preference upcoming Federal Election?

The first thing for us is to get people to Vote 1 Green. Then it is up to voters themselves to make a determination in the House of Reps, but we influence that where voters want assistance, by directing preferences if one of the parties is better than the others and deserves it. We will decide this on a range of issues, including funding of education, industrial relations, wood chipping of native forests and response to the huge need for Australia to take a lead on global warming instead of just lining up with the coal industry and logging industry and so on, and ending up being in the same camp as Saudi Arabia and President Bush.

So do you basically have the view that the major parties are pretty much as bad as each other?

No they are not on all issues, but there is an art form developed by the press gallery and by many people in the community in distinguishing the difference. Acres of news pages are given over to discussing the differences, when in fact they are becoming smaller and smaller.

Both the big parties are captives of the corporate sector. They both depend on the $30 million in donations that come from corporations into their coffers between elections, and they are both subject to lobbyists.

For example, they know that if they don't have either Mr Packer or Mr Murdoch on side they are not going to win an election. If they can get 'em both on side they are almost certain. And so the policy platforms are confined by the need not to be too upsetting to the major media magnates, or the corporate sector, and the public comes second when it comes to that particular alignment of interests.

In recent times the Greens have become almost synonomous with the anti-globalisation movement. Do you have any concerns that it ends up making the Greens look like a new form of conservative?

Well, that is one of the impressions that will be given by opponents to the Greens. The other is that we are some new form of anarchists or radicals. If those epithets are flying around, at least it means that notice is being taken.

Globalisation has not been the problem. It is the globalisation of the economy, but social justice and the environment and democracy being left off the agenda altogether. They are sectionalised while the economy is being globalised and we have a de facto world government, by the multi national corporations, and people feel disempowered. And that is why we are seeing such a strong reaction, particularly by young people around the world to various forums of unelected people, most of them businessmen, making determinations about what goes on in our lives, with people having very little say.

That is where the Greens - way before One Nation was even heard of - were fighting to ensure that in this global arena the issues of social justice, including workers' justice, and the environment, were on the agenda. And Dee Margetts in the Senate fought every clause of the Bill whereby Labor and Liberal together in early 1996 handed a great deal of domestic power - the right of the parliament - across to the World Trade Organisation.

If there is one thing that distinguishes the Greens from the old parties, it is this disapproval we have of Parliament serially handing its powers away to the stock exchange. We are in favour of reversing that process and keeping the democratically elected parliament as the arbiter of what happens on everything from tariffs through to work conditions, and the impact on the environment, of trade.

Do you place the Greens somewhere on a left/right axis, and if so where?

It is somewhat outdated, the left/right axis, but we are on the left of the spectrum in parliamentary politics and One Nation is out to the right, and the others are in the middle.

What about someone like WA Liberals for Forests?

They are environmentally for it, but they support Liberal Party policy, so in that sense they are somewhere between the Democrats and the Liberals.

Where do you see a point of connection between the Greens and the trade union movement? Often there has been conflict over specific issues such as logging, and greenhouse, but where are the points of connection?

They are in workers' rights, and in particular the right of the poorer people, who through poverty are disempowered. It becomes startlingly obvious when you are in Canberra, that the richer people are, the easier it is to lobby. The place is full of lobbyists for well heeled interest groups, and that leaves the rest of the community somewhat disempowered.

I think there is a very clear connection between historic union objectives and those of the Greens, but I think where we clash is where unions tend to line up closer to industry, and wood chipping is a very good example there. We have got in Tasmania the greatest rate of destruction of forest in history for the smallest return to the State for the fewest jobs, and since John Howard signed the Regional Forest Agreement, which is backed to the hilt by the Labor Party and the unions, a thousand people have lost their jobs and the only people who have been fighting against that have been the Greens.

What is your evaluation of the current state of the leadership of the Australian trade union movement?

I can't comment on that, because it is somewhat inscrutable. You can see people like Sharon Burrow, with whom I have got along well in her previous capacity as head of the Education Union and a promoter of education, which, by the way, is another important crossover if you like with unions, because the Greens have the fiercest defence of public education in the political spectrum.

I think that is going to be a growing matter for definition for the unions in the years ahead. Are they going to stick with support for the Labor Party or have the courage to support the Greens who are much stronger when it comes to parliamentary performance on workers' rights and industrial relations and the closing of that gap between rich and poor.

Taxation for example. The GST, which does affect disproportionately, poor people - we remain a party who would abolish the GST if we were in a position to do so.

In Europe most social democratic parties now rely on Green or Left groups to form coalition government. Is that something that you would realistically see happening in Australia at some point?

It happened in Tasmania between 1989 and 1992, and that was the most progressive period of government in Tasmania since the Second World War at least. But Labor hated it because the Greens were pushing them more towards community interests, whereas the Labor Party was pushing very strongly towards the corporate interests in Tasmania.

A simple example of that conflict was Labor moving to close 22 public schools and the Greens put through legislation, although we were in coalition, effectively with the Labor Party, supported by the Liberals to keep those schools open. So, in that it is crunch time when you get the balance of power, but we have shown that we can handle it responsibly.

If the Greens were to hold power, do you think the policies would be different? Does the exercise of power necessitate a more conservative agenda?

Well, in the balance of power you are not in government. I think the exercise of government doesn't, but balance of power forces it, because you can't dictate policy, you have to get what you can, and that is certainly what we did in balance of power in Tasmania, and that is what the Greens in New Zealand are currently doing, and in Europe. But it comes under ferocious criticism because people don't understand that unless you are a single party government, you can't dictate policy, you just have to green up - that means in social terms move to the left - in environmental terms, make sure you have social and environmental accounting in everything that is done, and move it away from the right to which a Labour or modern Democratic Socialist party will take the direction of the policy.

Can you understand that pressure on the party in power though?

To move to the conservative side?

To run a more conservative agenda, yes.

Yes, because it goes right back to my first comment. Because the corporate sector, through the media, runs an agenda which is by and large in the interests of the already powerful and rich, and that circumscribes how the big parties work these days. The Labor Party has certainly lost a lot of the founding principles for which it stood 100 years ago, simply by this need to stay in power, or to stay in the race for government.

Now, the interesting thing is whether the Greens, who are far more radical, and have much stronger social policies for social justice, how they will handle the pressures of being in the balance of power. But I think people like Lee Rhiannon and Ian Cohen have shown in the NSW Upper House, that you can do that very effectively. That you can haul a very conservative Labor Government across to a more socially responsive position, simply by leaving balance of power, even once removed, by being in the balance of power in the Upper House, and I'd hopefully do the same in the Senate.

Finally, what do you think the Greens can teach trade unions about connecting with younger people?

I think to be involved in protests is very important. You can't do everything from the office, you have to be out organising on the streets, and you also have to take it up to both the political parties when they are doing things that are destructive of your members' interests. Delegations are extremely important for clearing the air and people knowing where they stand, but the art of street protest and protest in the workplace and protest on the industrial side, I think has been somewhat lost and needs to return.

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  Issue 102 contents

Interview: Jolly Green Giant
Senator Bob Brown on the upcoming federal poll, balances of power and what the Greens can teach the trade union movement.

Workplace: Call Centre Takeover
Theresa Davison brings us this real-life story from the coal face of the call centre industry.

E-Change: 1.2 Community � The Ultimate Network
Peter Lewis and Michael Gadiel look at the potential for network technologies to reconnect communities.

International: Child's Play
Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA has recently entered a new alliance with the Child Labour Schools Company to support a project for child labourers in India.

History: Flowers to the Rebels Faded
With the departure of our own Wobbly, a look at the development of the Wobblies in Australia and their view of Labor politicians and the work ethic seems timely.

East Timor: A Dirty Little War
In this extract from his new book, John Martinkus recounts the scenes in Dili immediately following the independence ballot.

Satire: Telstra Share Failure Ends City-Bush Divide: Everybody Screwed Equally
Communications Minister Richard Alston today claimed that the government had fulfilled its promise to ensure that the bush was not disproportionately disadvantaged by Telstra's privatisation.

Review: Cheesy Management
Currently climbing Australian best-seller lists is the 'life-changing' motivational book 'Who Moved My Cheese?' Rowan Cahill has a nibble but doesn't like the taste.

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» Activist Notebook