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 
No Norman, that’s not how it works.
YOU made an assertion and a statement that your assertion was easily verifiable by reference to the appropriate Hansard.
The Hansard in question is not available online.
You now go ‘Harrummph’ and suggest that a friend of a friend assured you that something like that might exist!??
Sorry old mate, YOU go and copy the exact and entire speech you referred to. And if it proves that Bob Brown is a hypocritical warmonger then we’ll all be so much the wiser. If you can’t do that, then we’ll all see you as a simple-minded and easily lead blowhard.
So much for “acolytes”.
There is a difference between backing certain moves to remove Saddam and supporting invading Iraq even after Saddam agreed to leave. But Norman is yet to provide evidence for his Bob claims anyway.
Jack Strocchi
If you want drug policy based on medical ignorance, cultural prejudice and the Daily Telegraph editorial page, you already have the ALP and Coalition to choose from.
Many Greens supporters appreciate a party willing to consider alternative policies based on medical evidence and what can be learned from other countries’ experiences.
Norman said “Up until 1975, for example I accepted their unambiguous nation-wide claims that Lake Pedder Dam would produce far more electricity than Tasmania could possibly use”
Is this something else a friend of a friend told you? Because it’s crap.
The campaign against the flooding of Lake Peddar was never about the power the “Lake Peddar Dam” would produce because it hardly produces any. It is simply used as backing storage for The Gordon Dam which is where most of the power comes from. The contribution of the Lake Peddar Dam is less than 10% of the whole scheme. Even so, there were options for capturing most of that 10% without destroying Lake Peddar but they weren’t even considered.
You have fundamentally misunderstand one of the most important environmental battles in Australian history. I suspect the rest of your stories are as similarly clouded with ignorance.
Apologies, ladies, I assumed you’d be able to find something which wasn’t on the internet; but clearly I under-estimated the extent to which we nowadays find whatever’s not on the net a bridge too far. I’ve recently (as part of a house move) given a school most of my source documents; but if I haven’t tracked the item down by the time school re-opens I shall let you have the exact quote then. The Head History Teacher at the school was sufficiently surprised by it to make me confident it won’t have been lost.
Megan,
Denny, you either weren’t around at the time, didn’t follow issue carefully, or have memory problems. I was living in remote Sebastopol but having pushed conservation issues for decades (without the internet) took a keen interest in what was being said. I was even naïve enough to take the claims seriously at that stage. It was painful to discover the ‘greens’ claims were, to use your term, crap so I understand why you’re so protective of your hero.
I’m unaware of a campaign re the Lake Peddar you mention, but the propaganda used against flooding Lake Pedder included the false allegation that it would produce more power than could be used. If you followed the Pedder campaign you’d know Whitlam came up with a proposal to modify the plan and produce less power? You’re wrong about Pedder’s role too, which is to produce peak load only, not base load power. Not an especially complex distinction?
It’s interesting, by the way, to find you accusing someone else is “clouded with ignorance.”
Freelander, your misconceptions about Bob’s speech being about “after Saddam agreed to leave” will be explained when you read Bob’s speech, so be patient.
Norman,
Yes, I too would like sources, please.
Gerard,
Quite so.
Sounds to me like Norman Hanscombe is just making shit up – none of what he’s said so far accords with my recollections (which are quite clear: I’m only 61 so not yet senile).
Gerard @ #3 said:
I would rather follow the drug policy advice of 1000 names selected at random from the Melbourne phone book rather than heed the whackier fringe of the Greens, so-called informed opinion and especially you. The with-it push are so far gone into the solipsist, hedonist morass of post-modern liberalism that they have completely lost their moral compass.
Drug policy should start from sound moral premises, which can largely be derived from traditional moral wisdom, grounded in man’s nature as a moral animal. Basically, the local parson, maiden great aunts or retired army officers should be our guide in these matters.
It is self-evident that addictive intoxicants disable the three legs of human moral ontology: Cognition, Affection and Volition (CAV). They distort consciousness, contract sympathy and hobble free-will. Only a willing and able CAV man is capable of moral action. Drug addicts have their moral faculties disabled or at least diminished.
The War on Drugs in Australia has largely been a success. Chronic drug addiction is limited to a tiny fraction of the total population, lethal drug overdoses are down and total drug usage (alcohol, nicotine and illicits) is down, largely in response to professional drug testing.
God only knows why one would want to throw away victory now, especially when massive risks are visible not to far down the track (caste society on the demand side, neuro-pharmagenomics on the supply side)
Thankfully, when seeking guidance on drug policy, the common folk take more notice of “Daily Telegraph” editorials et al rather than the discredited post-modern nonsense pumped out on auto-pilot by the media-academia complex.
speaking of “discredited post-modern nonsense pumped out on auto-pilot by the media-academia complex”, as if by synchronicity, or serendipity, or ‘pataphysics, reports just at hand inform that infamous post-modern wanker & authoritarian “prime minister stephen harper took canadian journalists at the summit of the americas by surprise sunday when he conceded the war on drugs is a failure.”
alfred venison
The war on other crimes, for example, the war on murder, have been complete failures. Lets simply legalise everything. The crime stats will really fall then.
@Jack Strocchi
Yeah, all that. Or we could look at the experiences of the countries that have just gone ahead and legalised and regulated drugs. And indeed the experiences that we here have had in NSW with making the lives of hard drug users safer.
@Freelander
Uhm. Victimless crime? Categorically different?
Drug abuse is hardly a victimless crime. There are the activities of the abusers while on drugs, the damage to their unborn children, or to their children with drug using parents, and the crimes committed while on and to pay for drugs. In addition, there are burdens on other taxpayers from their health problems, paying sickness benefits and so on. Not to mention that the drug user is also a victim of the crime.
Drug policy should start from sound moral premises, which can largely be derived from traditional moral wisdom, grounded in man’s nature as a moral animal. Basically, the local parson, maiden great aunts or retired army officers should be our guide in these matters.
They sound more like the guiding lights of the temperance movement, circa one hundred years ago. Unfortunately their failure is evident in the fact that you have been drinking and posting again, probably another one of those fine reds. I can only conclude that you’re on a path to diminished moral faculties and need the the Law to step in and save you from yourself. Alcohol is a physically addictive substance; alcoholism is responsible for thousands of death from chronic disease, overdose or vehicle accidents, as well as public and domestic violence and rape. It kills people, ruins families and stunts lives. For some reason though, lawmakers have decided against banning alcohol and criminalizing alcohol-users (or, should I say, non-aboriginal alcohol users). Instead its manufacture and supply is regulated and taxed.
It seems crazy that alcohol is legal when two-thirds of the “War on Drugs” effort – millions of dollars and thousands of police-hours – is being devoted to marijuana – a humble, unprocessed plant, which all scientific evidence agrees is not anywhere near alcohol’s league in terms of negative health and behavioral effects – but in fact has well recognized medicinal uses. Personally I would prefer policy-making advice not from some idiot parson, but maybe people who actually know something about what modern medical and policy research looks like after decades of evidence, people who actually know what they’re talking about – like the authors of the Australia21 report, which you should read if you want to know what rational people think.
To some extent, rational people have had some input into policy – which is why Australian drug laws aren’t as bad as Singapore’s, for example. Since the 80s Australia has moved state by state towards a harm-minimization strategy rather than a criminal-punishment strategy, but this process has been slow and has not been taken to its rational conclusion (which would be something like Portugal’s system) due to the political strength of the anti-rational “moral police”. Fortunately this crowd have their greatest support from the Baby Boomer generation that make up the talkback radio audience – after they die out everyone expects drug law reform to be completed in pretty short order. It’s just a waiting game really.
As for getting your policy advice from 1000 people at random, according to the 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey report, “about two-thirds of people aged 14 years or older supported the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes (68.8%), or did not think possession of cannabis should be a criminal offence (66.0%)” (unfortunately this was not broken down by age as far as I can tell, but I think it’s safe to assume that most of the opposition came from older demographics). However you said 1000 people in Melbourne (of all places), so I expect those numbers would be higher.
@Freelander
Even to the extent that you’re correct, suicide isn’t a crime.
@Dan
It isn’t, but it is not without cost to others. But as a taxpayer we have to pay for self harm and the harm as I have indicated is not limited to the self.
I think on purely economic grounds you should take another look at decriminalisation, then.
The right way to go is to make drug enforcement a revenue earner. Put those ankle bracelets on the drug users and only let them out to work during the day with a big chunk of their income going to the state. That way rather than a drain on the state they can become a revenue source.
Norman Hanscombe @43 wrote:
I guess Norman means the words noted on page two of this, and I quote:
Norman, it didn’t shock me at all.
And is anyone surprised that Bob would call for protection of the Kurds? I think not.
Norman’s disappeared; no conquests here.
No more ethnic hobbyhorses, please Jack
As ever, with Cassandra, DNFTT.
@alfred venison
meanwhile canadian prime minister stephen harper says the war on drugs is a failure.
a.v.
David Irving @ 7:
Dementia praecox isn’t your problem. Just be more patient.
Zoot @ 19:
Instead of a partial reference to the item (which omits what Bob actually said in the Tassie Parliament) you too might try to be more patient. I could give a far more accurate picture than yours from memory, but suspect a verbatim report is what’s needed when responding to ‘True Believgers’ favourite shibboleths.
Freelander @ 20:
Unfortunately for your comforting assumptions Norman (like his reasonably reliable memory) hasn’t yet ‘disappeared’, so just enjoy the wait — which may well be spoilt when I obtain the document? Still, since you snipe from anonymity, it at least won’t be too embarrassing for you.
I’m not the one embarrassed by your return, Norm.
Please, people, DNFTT
When I think of Bob Brown I always wonder how Australian political history may have been different if he had accepted Don Chipp’s invitation to join the Australian Democrats. Would Brown have led the Democrats? Could he have been the same force within a different party? The Democrats’ environmental policies have always ranked by the ACF almost as highly as the Greens, but green voters were obviously captured by the Greens brand – would the environmental movement have come so far in Australia without a green party, or would the Democrats have been the the green party?
The other question now is what will the future of the Greens be? The word from the party is that they expect to build and one day hold government in their own right. I’ve always thought that in order to do that, they would need to compromise their environmental agenda to capture a broader vote. It’s easy to be pure when the buck doesn’t stop with you. If that’s the case, then why would you go with the Greens rather than the ALP? The only reason I can think of would be if the Greens found a position somewhere between where they and the ALP are at present. Striking the right balance is very difficult.
I thought I remembered Norman’s name, and Google reminds me that he is one of longest-standing trolls in Ozplogistan, having been widely banned as early as 2003. I was going to ban him here, but I’m feeling nostalgic, so I’ll leave his silly posts up. But nostalgia only goes so far, so please Do Not Feed.
@Brad
sigh … this is an old truism with an embedded strawman. The Greens have never claimed to be ‘pure’ whatever that may mean. We’ve claimed that we consistently favour social justice, human rights, equity and environmental sustainability in public policy. How we translate that in practice has always been the subject of some debate. Those are complex things and nobody has troubled t work out what is pure in all of that.
This ‘purity’ claim is really a manifestation of a broader reality — that the vast majority of the population (i.e. including those who vote for the ALP and LNP) recognise that their parties are lying all the time, filled with people who don’t necessarily believe the things they say and lack attachment to any coherent vision of a better world. They are seen as purely reactive or at times the vehicles of the least uplifting sentiments of sections of the electorate or the business class or poll-driven. The major parties can scarcely deny this so they’ve hit upon the idea of turning vice into virtue.
Sure we are a bunch of shifty clueless hucksters and shills, but that makes us just like most people — non-ideological, impure and therefore human. Those Greens are zealots — ideological and pious elitists who are out of touch with the real world where dirty deals in smoke-filled rooms need to be made. In the real world, politicians are just like us and you.
There’s no arguing against this. An ugly world in which there is no hope of reason and equity winning is ideal for adaptive behaviour, picking your preferred scoundrel and otherwise disengaging so that the scoundrels can arrange the benefits of power out of sight in smoke-filled rooms.
Of course, those of us who say it can be otherwise and better are scandalised at such breathtaking con-artistry and bullying. We insist that humanity is capable of far better thn that.
Be assured — if we ever did find ourselves leading a government we would be evrry bit as committed as we are now to the principles I outlined above. We’d have some tough choices to make that are not ours now, but no part of how we responded to these decisions would reflect the desire to hold onto power in the face of rightwing animus. On the contrary, whether we struck the best balance between competing legitimate interests or not, our principles would have been explicit and foundational. That’s what makes us different from all the others.
Being right in principle and process is a starting point for good governance. It makes it possible to identify errors and correct them quickly. It is empowering and fosters inclusion. If you can’t manage that, then being in power is at best of only short-term benefit, and often enough, even that benefit goes to the wrong people. Rudd 2007-10 and Obama 2008-12 in their own ways powerfully demonstrate why that is so.
Brad, why would I go with the Greens rather than the ALP?
Well, I haven’t voted ALP since Hawke’s first term. I know that they’ll get my vote eventually (in lower house elections), but it’s strained through the Greens. That may influence them to be more environmentally responsible, although I concede that’s a triumph of hope over experience.
I’m sorry Jack’s comment was deleted – the ethnic thing was only mentioned in passing and was not particularly bad by Jack’s standards.
Jack was mainly disagreeing with my argument that the main obstacle to sensible drug law reform is the older generation, who make up the bulk of the talk-back radio audience, who have the least contact with recreational drug-use, the lowest levels of information regarding the topic, but the strongest support for prohibition.
Jack points out that my take on “Boomers” is wrong, contrasting them with the even older, more conservative so-called “Doomers”. He’s probably correct – I was lumping them all together; maybe I should have just said “over-55s” or something like that. In any case, I’m talking about that older cohort of the population containing the bulk of the country’s politically-active “moral conservatives”. It seems fairly obvious that the bulk of the opposition to further drug law reform will fade as this wowser demographic gradually passes, as will the bulk of the opposition to gay marriage. The younger generations, including young conservatives, are far more libertarian when it comes to the right of the government to legislate individual “moral” behaviour.
Although Jack bizarrely claims that the War on Drugs is a “success”, a recent Lancet study found that Australia and NZ today have the highest rates of cannabis use on Earth, accounting for 15% of the world’s total use despite our small population. And although Jack (on the basis of being old enough to have attended Woodstock) believes that Generation X/Y/Z thinks drugs are “uncool”, support for full legalisation of cannabis is more than twice as high for under-60s than over-60s, and regular cannabis-use by far the highest in the 18-39 age-group (varying little across socioeconomic class and education level) according to the 2010 National Drug Strategy Household Survey Report.
I should point out that although the prohibitionists are a well-organised group with a lot of sway over the major parties, their numbers are smaller than their noise would suggest. Jack no doubt believes that he is with the “silent majority” on this issue; actually the opposite is true. According to the National Drug Strategy Household Survey Report, only 34% of people believe possession of cannabis should be a criminal offense. A huge majority (74%) support clinical trials of medical marijuana. Even Jack’s favourite paper, the Daily Telegraph, has a majority favouring legalisation in its online poll!
Nobody ever attempts to defend the logic of alcohol being legal and cannabis illegal, because it’s so plainly ridiculous. Alcohol is clearly worse in every possible way; ask police if they’d rather be dealing with drunks or stoners. Logically, if alcohol is legal then there is no reason why cannabis shouldn’t be – and if cannabis is illegal then there is no reason why alcohol shouldn’t be.
Of course, there is very little support for alcohol prohibition in this country – it may be one of the worst drugs around, but society still approves of its regular use. It would seem that many are even able to distinguish between having the odd drink and being an alcoholic!
Hopefully Jack understands that while addiction to alcohol is a bad thing, it doesn’t follow that alcohol should be criminalised and pursued by the criminal justice system at the expense of our civil liberties and hundreds of millions of dollars. The same logic extends to cannabis (although more so, since unlike alcohol, marijuana is not a physically addictive poison, but instead has actual medical uses). It may extend to other drugs as well, but I am focusing on marijuana rather than other drugs because two-thirds of the “War on Drugs” is devoted to it, and its prohibition is so obviously absurd.
Pretty much everybody who knows anything understands this. Nobody from the federal or state governments have even bothered attempting to refute the arguments in the Australia21 report, because they know they can’t.
@gerard
Hear hear. It’s not even an issue that I greatly care about, but the law as it stands is bizarre and defective.
@gerard
I won’t be voting for dope to be legalized based on personal bias. I know too many people who have suffered very acute mental illnesses from using it. Any quality of their lives has been completely destroyed. Saying that, the war on drugs is probably a failure.
John:
Rob Corr’s site banned me for a while until he was reminded by his fellow-bloggers that contrarian positions should be answered, not simply labelled pejoratively. As for “silly posts”, like Feelander you might consider waiting until I supply the quote my current ‘critics’ believe to be imaginary simply because they’re in trouble when it comes to finding something which doesn’t automatically pop up for them on the internet?). Freelander may have had difficulty understanding it was the presentation of that quote I felt he’d find embarrassing; but I’m inclined to think that you know better than that?
@Norman hanscombe
You’re on a losing wicket Norm. You have been trying to slight Saint Bob by claiming numerous public statements made by him that cast him in a bad light. Well, we have heard plenty of statements from Bob and have formed our own opinions. Given how many are against Bob, the idea that you have all these secret public statements that will change our minds is simply absurd.
Why not give up while you are behind, given that you can only get further behind?
@Troy Prideaux
It may well be Troy that people with pre-existing psychosis ought not to take dope, but AIUI there’s simply no evidence at all that people without a family history of psychosis are any more likely to get it after smoking than without. Of course, in a non-authenticated drug supply chain, one should never say never.
The broader point is feasibility. Rational folk know that the world is full of risks — both the risk you will be harmed and the risk that you will be happy and fullfilled, and you can’t have the latter without having the former. It’s a package.
The state, wisely in my view, seeks to nudge people to avoid poor risk trades. Sometimes (but not always) it makes the worst risk trades unlawful, because some of the harm is externalised to non-consenting others. Think of those solo round the world yacht race fools. We send people out to rescue them even though it is really expensive and might not work.
Yet the attempt to criminalise resort to some classes of mood-altering drugs is in a whole new ballpark of unfeasibility. On balance, it does almost no good for those seeking to use them and massively ratchets up the harm to the non-consenting and non-drug-using community. About the only beneficiaries are police (corrupt and non-corrupt) and criminals, along with some intangible benefits to moralistic busybodies.
I don’t want to smoke cannabis, just as I don’t want to smoke tobacco. If it is legal I will end up smoking even more than I do at the moment due to second hand smoke.
Cannabis is not the safe drug many think it is. Heroin is relatively safe. Cannabis is not.
Ankle bracelets for drug users. Solve drug use from the demand side rather than making futile attempts to solve it from the supply side.
@Fran Barlow
Once again, you’ve made a very rational and convincing argument Fran. I should have qualified my post with (a) these people likely took heavier drugs but didn’t admit it to friends and loved ones and (b) were likely exposed to some form of external trauma given the environment they were subjected to during the period of use.
@Fran Barlow
Again, hear hear.
Dear anonymous freelander, you’ve summed up the basis of your faith system quite well— and honestly. I’m sure no evidence could change it, so I’m not naïvely assuming anything would change the mind of emotively rusted-on True Believers such as yourself. It’s odd, however, that you refer to the Tasmanian Hansard as a “secret” document — unless, of course, you mean a document you’d like kept secret?
On the other hand, it would be unkind of me to act as if you were totally incapable of modifying your devotedly-assumed preconceptions, and when I finally track down the relevant (non-internet) Hansard quote, it will be interesting to see how you go about trying to ‘harmonise’ Bob’s statements.
But I’m off now on more pressing matters, so if I don’t repond for a while, you will try not to miss me too much, won’t you?
I rely on evidence Norm. You claim you have secret public statement evidence which you won’t release. That type of evidence sounds somewhat oxymoronic.
As for you, you’re simply moronic.
As
@Freelander
1. There’s no reason not to prohibit smoking dope in all the places where smoking tobacco is currently prohibited. The question here is not smoking but possession
2. I would favour THC being available as patches or perhaps a nasal spray or something like those nebulisers. This would lower the health costs — smoking is bad for your lungs — and make it easier to control provenance and dosage quality and consistency, while cutting out DIY industrial scale suppliers.
This would also help address your concern over second hand smoke.
I don’t favour your gratuitously punitive approach, obviously. Putting aside the ethical questions about freedom, it would in short order become as unwieldy and expensive as the current system and as open to corruption.
@Fran Barlow
Becoming eligible for an ankle bracelet would simply be a matter of choice. Call it a life style choice.
Firstly, there’s no evidence that cannabis use causes mental illness. Secondly, there’s no evidence that decriminalisation leads to increased use in general. We all know many people have had lives ruined by alcohol – but that doesn’t mean that the situation would be improved by prohibition. There are issues with substance abuse and mental illness, but these are health issues, not criminal issues.
You could hardly be more wrong. The ratio of lethal dose to effective dose in heroin is 5, in alcohol it is 10, in aspirin it is 15, in cannabis it has been estimated as something like 40,000 (but is actually too high to measure). In other words, Cannabis is around eight thousand times safer than heroin and four thousand times safer than alcohol, and furthermore it is not physically addictive, unlike alcohol or heroin. How many people have died of a cannabis overdose? Zero, ever.
There is plenty of evidence mmentthat use of cannabis results in a vastly increased likelihood of suffering a psychotic mental illness.
@gerard
Of course, heroin could still be made safer to use …
I believe that evidence is disputed, Freelander (not that I have much interest either way). AIUI, there’s no difference in psychosis rates between, say, the Netherlands and Australia (to pick two examples more-or-less at random). It’s at least possible that psychosis, if not cannabis related, would be triggered by some other stressor anyway.
There’s a wide gap between a libertarian drugs policy and decriminalisation of use. The Portugese model – which aims to actively aid and reform addicts – might be a more reasonable starting point for discussion rather than some Ayn Rand was a serious philosopher triumph of the individual thing.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization
With heroin it’s simply a matter of not being silly. Most ODs are due to boozing to try to amplify the effect. But other than ODs due to stupidity and a bit of diarrhea, heroin is relatively harmless. In fact professionals have managed to live there whole lives while addicted to it with no one the wiser.
Might as well put ankle bracelets onthem. As well.
Just to be evenhanded!