Bob Brown has just announced his retirement from politics. It comes as a shock, but such announcements usually do. I can’t do justice to Bob’s thirty or more years of activism in a blog post, but there have been few people in political life who’ve achieved as much while not compromising their integrity to secure political support. The Green Party which Bob effectively founded and has largely embodied for many years, has made a big positive contribution to Australian political life
Given the rubbish in the comments threads recently, I’m going to be ruthless in moderating this one. There will be plenty of time for critical thoughts on Bob Brown’s political career and on the Green Party. If you can’t wait for a more appropriate occasion, take such comments to the sandpit. Anything in this post that crosses my subjective line will be deleted with prejudice.
John Quiggin 
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the Greens have peaked federally and will struggle without Bob.
Although I am not a member of the Greens, I do respect Brown for his commitment to his principles, particularly environmental, but also on equity and social justice. The challenge will be to see if the Greens can grow further after him.
That being said, I think this is a sensible decision on Brown’s part. He has probably achieved all he can. It gives Milne as successor time to establish herself clearly as the new leader. Handled well, the change gives them an opportunity to do a little rebranding, which may be of benefit. The Greens have a considerable opportunity given Labor’s disarray. They also have a good chance of holding the balance of power in the Senate again after the next election, with only 3 of 9 up for re-election, and the prospect of further gains.
I hope The Greens will continue to grow and develop without Bob. More than ever we need a progressive party to challenge the increasingly hollow, rootless and right-wing electoral machine that the ALP has become.
Have a long and happy retirement Bob.
Thanks John … well said.
As I’ve said in a number of places, Bob Brown’s contribution to The Greens is hard to overstate. He set a standard in reason, ethics, compassion and political courage that honours not only our polity but humanity more generally. The world has been a measurably better place for his contribution.
By an odd coincidence, I was reflecting just yesterday on when he might retire — “Mel” on the other thread reminded me of an April 2011 post I’d made at LP — which said nothing of the sort, but mentioned the obvious — that one day he would retire and that he would recognise that the party was for all the membership. That got me thinking about what he would do next.
Today, in the manner of his departure, he has affirmed my point about his selflessness. There was no ego, or drama or spin or wailing and gnashing of teeth. There was nothing like a whiff of anything attending him but the respect and amity of all of us who’d ever had anything positive to do with The Greens.
I feel very happy for Bob, and hope that he continues to find his life with his partner Paul rewarding, but on this day I confess to more than a little sadness that he has felt the need to move on when he was still at the top of his game.
I just hope he makes it to Sydney so people like me can thank him personally.
Bob Brown’s made an immense contribution to the nation and been I think the most honourable and considerable politician of his time. Missing him already.
I can’t think of anyone in Oz politics who would match Bob for integrity. He was forthright but generous to his enemies, gave considered public statements and abstained from the lower side of the process.
this news has all the makings of a monster LP thread! nice timing folks.
Agreed with all the praising comments made about Bob and I too wish him the very best of luck and happiness with the new chapter of his life.
Question for the forum: what’s your view on Scott Ludlam? My view for a while now it that he appears like one of the sharpest people involved in federal politics on an intellectual sense – I appreciate that doesn’t always translate to ambition. Is he potential future leadership material?
…and please excuse my usual myriad of typos…
Sad that Bob Brown is going. The right decision because one doesn’t live for ever, and he will be around to help with the transition. Better to hand the reins over early than too late. Just once more speaks to the integrity of the man that he leaves early, thinking of the well being of the party he has done so much for.
Too many politicians need to be pryed from a whiff of power with a crowbar. Thinking of Howard,Rudd,and others.
@Fran Barlow
With due respect, the part about Bob Brown being selfless might be a little exaggerated. Although I cannot speak on his behalf, I doubt that he doesn’t have even just a little self ambitions on politics. However I do not doubt his integrity and I agree with you that he had done the Australia society a bigger favour than any politician had done in the past 30 odd years. It’s difficult to imagine how hard it was for him to build a social democratic party in a country with such a biased media. I too feel sad about him resigning and I hope Milne can keep the party the way it is (unlike ALP), advance the party and achieve more than Bob achieved.
Bob Brown’s Letter of Resignation to The Greens
@Tom said:
Well plainly, whatever “ambition” he had, he set it aside today. There was no ego-based reason for him to leave. While nobody who enters politics and succeeds is a shrinking violet, never once did I see him put himself ahead of principle. He was without doubt the most admirable political figure in Australian parliamentary politics since World War 2, and probably of all time.
@Tom
Tom… Tom…
Oh, come on, Tom… The man is a saint! A secular saint! You certainly can’t speak on his behalf.
Bob Brown… Secular Saint.
I am sure if Catholics prayed to him we would quickly see a couple of miracles!
He’d be a more effective intermediary than Pell, in any case.
@Tim Macknay
Obviously Pell can’t perform miracles, but he does speak for god.
@Fran Barlow
Nicely put; I wasn’t doubting his integrity at all, he’s resignation did show he puts the interest of the party first. However saying someone is selfless is another story and I personally dislike things or people’s integrity being exaggerated. I wish to stop here so flaming doesn’t start in this thread and if I did in anyway offend you, I apologise.
One thing that the Greens do have with or without Bob is a real constituency, albeit a political minority. They won’t go away.
It’s a bit hard to work out who the Labor or Liberals constituency is at present. Which is probably why they expend so much energy trying to white ant the Greens.
Nope. That’s the Archbishop of Canterbury’s job. Or maybe the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Or is it the High Priest of the Temple of Kali on the banks of the Hooghly? I get so confused. *sigh* Things were so much easier when you just went to Delphi, paid your money and a crazy woman sat on a tripod, inhaled some mephitic vapours, babbled the words of god and then the priest wrote them down for you. Simple.
Bob Brown’s hardly some sort of populist demagogue. People liked the policies, and disliked the major parties first and foremost.
Massive loss. I’m in China and heard this through normal channels, so quite some news from Aus.
The big problem is that this has dems ex-Don Chipp written all over it. The Greens will maintain (for a while at least) but are unlikely to grow.
Milne suffers from similar challenges as Gillard — competent, but completely unsuited to a representative democracy leadership position.
Even leaving the environment and civil rights out of it, The Greens under Bob have been much more sensible economically than the major parties. They have been consistently against middle (and upper) class welfare, and have valiantly resisted US efforts to dictate our trade and IP laws.
I just wish he wasn’t so remarkable. He has shown how poor or mediocre most elected reps sadly are.
@David Allen
Very true!!
I became a member of the Greens shortly after Rudd was elected although had voted for them as a non-member in a couple of state and one federal election previously.
I wasn’t drawn to the Greens by policy or personality. I was pushed to them by the major parties’ economic rationalist policies first and environmental concerns second.
Now I am very much concerned about the environment first but know that it is threatened by Growth economics and all its poisonous tendrils which are entwined with the politics of the major parties.
I do have some concerns about Bob leaving but I joined for the Greens policy, not for Bob Brown. The policy is still there. I think Christine could be even better at communicating Greens policy than Bob – she will have to if they are to make progress.
I would love to meet Bob personally. That’s no small thing for me as I’m not a people person but I rank him at the top of the heap of admirable people with the likes of David Suzuki and Richard Attenborough.
@Troy Prideaux
Firstly, I agree with PrQ’s very well put post.
Re: Scott Ludlum, a very intelligent, honest, principled and decent senator who would easily be a future leader. The same goes for every single one of their senators.
Unlike the other parties the greens are “cursed” with nothing but talent from which to choose.
Try, without cheating, to name the 12 senators representing your state.
Queenslanders might ask themselves what they know of, or think about, the achievements and principles of, say, Sue Boyce, Mark Furner, Jan McLucas, Claire Moore or Brett Mason.
Bob Brown has been a huge asset to our democracy.
@Salient Green
He is a warm, regular guy. Just a nice, thoughtful, warm fella.
@megan
If you live in a democracy deprived territory, your task is a lot easier. Personally, I could name several Green senators who I could do without but of course that certainly didn’t include Bob Brown.
@iain
I think you’re right. Without Bob Brown, the watermelon tag is going to be hard to shake, rightly in some cases and wrongly in others. But a lot of them seem to be style over substance which is what killed the Dems.
Hope I’m wrong.
@2 tanners
Please do, with reasoning.
@2 tanners
Hope you are too. As Christine Milne said tonight on Lateline though – many wrote the Tasmanian Greens off when Bob Brown left and Christine took the reigns. They subsequently went from strength to strength.
The Greens need to take an effective cure for dandruff and get rid of the flakes once and for all. If they do that they might be a force and replace the Labor party. Otherwise it will always be for them “I could’a been a contend’a”.
I’d like to join everyone in their praise for Bob Brown, his achievements, his policies, his character and principles.
I just have a contrary thought for those suggesting the decline of the Greens from here. (apologies in advance if the following is the kind of thing JQ wanted in the sandpit)
I can only see the Greens moving upward and onwards. I think in every election to come they will make gains, chipping away at disaffected labor voters, but also continue to gain support from newly registered voters as they have been already. Young voters represent 30% of the electorate. In the 18-24 demographic, the Greens are particularly serious players – abc put them only 3% behind the Coalition in voters intentions in this bracket (not sure how scientific this polling was though). Their support base will only keep growing, especially if the two major parties keep driving policy to achieve votes rather than outcomes.
The greens look to be the only party standing by their most core beliefs with consistency, but without dogma (they’re willing to compromise some things to achieve the goals consistent with their core. ALP and LNP are willing to compromise anything to win the next election, or news cycle. I think this has been one of The Greens’ greatest strength, and should they continue this I cannot see them becoming irrelevant any time soon.
I hope moving forward the Greens party start becoming more vocal and their policies better known/understood on industry/infrastructure/the economy etc rather than just on, what are seen to be, fringe issues like gay rights/gender equality/the environment. I think the greater Australian population will be pleasantly surprised.
On ya Bob!
@Adit
YoU might be right. Labor is so on the nose something has to replace them. Maybe the Greens with or without flakes.
Re your moderation comment. Fully support that, moderating all unworthy comments out is something that should be done much more often.
You have to hand it to Bob Brown as a man. He has proven that personal and political integrity go hand in hand, something of a surprise for hardened cynic Machiavellians. Although I sometimes wish he would dismount from his high moral horse and give the stern and lugubrious Presbyterian sermonizer look a bit of a rest.
I respect and applaud Bob Brown’s policies on the environment. He and the Greens were ahead of their time on AGW the major environmental issue of the day. They have even made a sizeable dent in the nuclear industry, something that it pains me to say.
I don’t have any respect for Bob Brown’s non-Green policies, especially his moral cowardice on the immigration issue, which is the single biggest destructive influence on both ecologic and economic externalities. He has let the Green issue down by kow-towing to political correctness and the Business Council lobby.
My loathing for Green Left liberalism on cultural issues (drug liberalisaiton, multiculturalism, asylum seekers) is known well enough so no need to bore readers or wear out Pr Q’s comment delete button with another long-winded rant. They are on the wrong side of History on those issues, I am content to let Clio’s harsh judgement stand.
@Peter Franklin
Self-reflexive?
When considering the future of the Greens, we need to consider whether they will now lose voters. I am not convinced that they will – their vote has increased steadily and most Greens supporters I speak to are firm in their support (and disdain for the major parties). It is probably safe to assume that absent any major problems they can hold their current support, give or take a couple of percentage points. The bigger challenge I think is for them to continue attracting new supporters. Bob Brown was charismatic, in a sort of folksy way, and Milne is not.
More generally, my view is that the Greens need to inch to the right and focus on presenting themselves as rational, considered and driven by logic. The MSM and major parties like to portray them as radicals – and some of their Senators, MPs, MHRs and councillors are (and certainly some of their branch members). The point is that at present the Greens are not going to lose their radical, left-wing base. But to grow, they need to move in on the ALP (as an aside, I also wonder about moving in on the Nationals, using CSG and protection of the land – Jeremy Buckingham is an interesting Greens figure in this regard).
As to Bob Brown himself, I don’t think he was as principled or saintly as many would have it. Some of his stunts were opportunistic. There were times he said truly bizarre things. And my personal view is that he was wooden in his presentations. I think though that most people could see that he was an ordinary, decent bloke. Sometimes I like to compare him to Barnaby Joyce – another unpolished politician (ain’t that part of the charm?).
@CJ
Moving to the right, defiance of their members and supporters, has worked so well for the ALP I wonder the Greens have not thought of it before.
@Jack Strocchi
Thanks for not banging on much on this occasion, Jack, it’s appreciated.
Given that Australia now has a cabinet minister on very, very public record as saying the war on drugs is a failure, I am afraid you might find that history is on the wrong side of history here.
@Dan
The war on murder and the war on crime more generally have been failures.
And don’t get me started on the war on jay-walkng, or the war on death!
@Alan
Sure, they need to do it carefully. Hence, I wrote “inch to the right”. If they wait for the populace to come to them, then they’ll be waiting a very long time. If they stay right where they are, they will never achieve Brown’s stated aim of forming a government in their own right.
@CJ
I think it also has a huge amount to do with sensible-looking and -sounding people (eg. Ludlum, Bandt), explaining their policies clearly and repeatedly with an emphasis on how unsustainable and, uh, specially-interested the major parties’ policy positions are.
I was handing out Greens how-to-votes near Sydney Park (background: on the radar for CSG; also densely populated!) during the last NSW election and a woman said to me and the two other candidates’ how-to-vote people: does your candidate oppose CSG mining? Simultaneously, they dithered and I said yes. So, she took my how-to-vote.
@Alan
It’s difficult. There is a wide ideological spectrum in The Greens, from Socialist Alliance types to social democrats that Chris Warren likes to call capitalists (like me); working out a coherent and marketable political-economic stance under such circumstances is tough. But everyone else has it worse: the Liberals’ inability to reconcile their neoliberalism with the fact that it bleeds their coalition partner’s constituency dry should be made more of; the vested interests and complete lack of principle in the Labor party should be made more of (Tanya, how do you sleep at night?).
Also to be considered is the fact that everyone claims to be in favour of equality of opportunity (from Michelle Bachmann all the way to the Australian left!) but The Greens are the only ones in the Australian political sphere with the maneuverability and humanism to follow through on that.
Dan @ #38 said:
Oooh…a former cabinet minister said something that is different from what I said. Well I guess that settles it. Emeritus disease has now leapt the academic species boundary.
Just for that I am going to unleash my inner=ranter. Brown backed the wrong horse on drug liberalisation.
The War on Drugs is something of a success, given the low-status accorded to chronic drug users. Heed the way young people look down on stoners and junkies. Do we really need the next generation of young people to sink further into bong-sucking, cable tv surfing couch-potatoe land? Its not like they are already over-motivated to get up off their lard-arses and explore the world, as things stand now.
Walk down Venice Beach sometime soon to see the results of two generations of drug dudes shuffling along the board walk. What a bunch of pathetic losers.
And then there is mandatory drug testing by employers and RBTs. No manager or public officials want to wear a law suit or criminal conviction under new “chain of responsibility” laws.
Face it Greenies, on drug laws you have had your chance and you blew it.
I’ve got a lot of time for Bob Brown and Greens on ecological policy where they proved that adherence to principle is good practice. But on extra-ecological policy their influence has been baneful.
Brown, for all his doleful moralising on asylum seekers et al, was fundamentally a Green at heart. But his successors, in their heart of hearts, have a much Redder hue on the inside. Fran Barlow being a pardigmatic case of a Watermelon Green.
I predict that, assuming ALP gets the Carbon Tax up and running and wins the next election, the GREENs penetration into Broad Left wing voting pool will have peaked.
Oops. Moderator!
And whats up with Sarah “Accidents Happen” Hanson-Young? When Brown got up to give his resignation speech she was emanating a weird kind of vibe, very shifty eye movements, like when Nixon was on the spot during Watergate.
My advice to her is to get married again and lose the roving eye. Women pick up on it and it is not a vote winner.
The Greens should make it a matter of policy to only elect very old people into positions of authority. She looks way too young to be in a position to have a large say in running the country.
@Dan
Yes, they need to focus on the sensible sounding and looking people, and they have plenty of these. I wrote that they need to present themselves as rational, considered and driven by logic. In my view, these two points are crucial to the long-term viability of the Greens. Having a sensible figure speak clearly and rationally about issues will appeal to voters slightly to their right, who are hesitant because of the radical, hard-left image of some prominent Greens.
CSG is one issue that I think they can focus on – not by chaining themselves to mine equipment, but by explaining repeatedly and clearly what the risks and potential impacts are. Who knows, they might even cut through to farmers – equally interested in sustainability and custodianship of the land.
Personally, I’d also like to see them hammer former Nationals such as Mark Vaile and John Anderson, who professed to be acting in the interests of their constituents, but after leaving politics joined major coal or CSG companies doing serious damage to prime farmland, ground water and the broader environment.
Whilst I’m far from unbiased where the Greens are concerned, I think there a sound political science grounds for believing that Bob’s departure isn’t the beginning of the end for the Greens.
Firstly, the evidence internationally is that where Green parties (or parties that might as well be called Green, as in Denmark) make the breakthrough to significant parliamentary and other elected representation and a share of the vote that supports this, they don’t go away, notwithstanding changes in leading personnel and fluctuations of electoral fortune on particular occasions.
Secondly, the trend, since the 1990s, of steady growth in Greens support in Australia in elections at all three levels of government is explicable in terms of broader systemic political, social and historical factors which would have come to bear with or without Bob.
None of this should be taken as downplaying my great admiration and gratitude for the role that Bob Brown has played in public life.
Since my fellow election maven Jack Strocchi is participating in this discussion, I’ll opine that the Green vote at the 2013 Federal election is most likely to be about the same, or slightly less, than in 2010, but almost certainly more than in 2007, and that therefore the Greens parliamentary representation is most likely to either be maintained or to increase.
Interesting that Bob Brown decided to quit after attending an international Greens conference. Perhaps he saw the writing on the wall. Note in Queensland the long established Greens got a lower total vote than the new Katter party. Next week SBS will air a documentary on the backlash against the Greens in Germany over energy policy.
I think the public’s perception of Brown was that he was genuine as a former medico and hardline protester. Other incumbent Greens seem like political careerists who are shrill without having done the groundwork. I suspect the media will keep returning to him in retirement for hard edged comments. As the Greens decline as a political force perhaps the protest vote will go increasingly to independents.
Here’s some reading about “the backlash against the Greens in Germany”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland-Palatinate_state_election,_2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-W%C3%BCrttemberg_state_election,_2011