00:00:14
S1: For more than half a century now, Bob Brown has been standing up to powerful interests who had put profit before the planet. The environmental crusader, former senator and founding member of the Wilderness Society has seen it all from the front lines of pivotal battles over everything from the existence of the Franklin River to the survival of the swift parrot. He's the kind of person who practices what he preaches to living sustainably for decades in a one bedroom home. I'm Konrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald and The age. Welcome to the 300th episode of Good Weekend Talks. This podcast was launched in 2020, and since then, we've had amazing conversations with athletes and writers, actors and academics. And today, we take you out of the studio for our first ever live recording at the Melbourne Writers Festival. The following episode takes place on stage, in front of an audience of 300 at the State Library of Victoria, and features a conversation between myself and Bob Brown, looking at everything from the origin of the term tree hugger to how he finds optimism and defiance in the face of massive challenges facing the world. Welcome, everyone, and welcome, Bob.
00:01:27
S2: Hi. Thank you. Conrad.
00:01:34
S1: Now, Bob, I wanted to start with that term tree hugger, which is often used to disparage people. You often refer to them instead as earth savers. Your book is dedicated to Amrita Devi and her daughters. Who were they and what was their connection to this, this term? Tree hugger.
00:01:54
S3: Well, thanks, Conrad, because, uh, it's a little known story, but it comes from India. And in 1720, the Maharaja wanted to build a new palace. So he arrived at the Bishnoi People's Forest and said, I'm going to cut that down. I need the wood for my palace. And Amrita Devi, the scion of the village of Bishnoi people, said, no, you're not. This is we have a spiritual connection with these trees and we cannot allow them to be cut down. So he did what so many people do these days to get their way. He offered her a big bribe and affronted, she said, you don't understand. We have a spiritual relationship with these trees and we're going to defend them. So the Maharajah's men arrived in great numbers, and she and her three daughters hugged the trees to stop them being cut down. Along with the other villages they beheaded. Amrita and her three daughters, and then 250 plus other villages, before the Maharaja decided that he couldn't face the slaughter any longer and backed off and the forest was saved. Amrita was the original tree hugger, and it led to the movement in India in the 60s and 70s, where people became tree huggers and defended their trees. And then that translated across to Terania Creek in northern New South Wales. And it inspired us with the Franklin campaign later on. But there's the original tree hugger. And what an exemplar of standing for our natural environment, which gives us all. We come from the trees, which gives us all we are, uh, which, uh, you know, I love telling kids at school our hand is perfect for holding branches. Our eyes are set back on our heads so that we can move safely through the forest without our vision being endangered. We're creatures of the forest and that applies to our hearts as well as our physique. You know, give your loved one a bunch of artificial flowers. Doesn't matter how good they are. And even if they're centered. And you'll draw a blank. Give them real flowers and they know that means devotion. It's just inculcated into it. That's why we want our kids to watch Attenborough rather than, um, some crime movie from America by preference and put pictures of nature on our wall. And yet, nature is the fastest disappearing. And particularly wild. Nature is the fastest disappearing resource on the planet, both in the oceans and on land. And treehugger has become. Due to the miracle of billionaire corporate spin has become a derogatory term. Well, not for me. I love being a tree hugger. I love being a follower of Amrita. And it's it's a term we should wear with pride. Uh, and I was telling you earlier, Conrad, just as we're meeting here this morning, there are 20 people from my foundation up in the central plateau of Tasmania where it's snowing, blocking a logging road. Uh, carrying on what Amrita was doing 300 years ago because they're getting directly in the way of log trucks going into convert Tasmania's forests and their wildlife into woodchips, going to, um, you know, a quick disposable greenhouse gas emissions effectively in China and Taiwan. And, um, there's the spirit of Amrita alive and going this day and in tree hugging As um derogatory as the the butchers of the environment might make. It is the only future for this planet. If we don't stop the marauding of nature, we're ultimately pulling the rug from under our own feet. And because we can go into some factual matters about that if necessary. But, um, hats off to Amrita.
00:06:24
S1: Let's go to the Franklin River now. Um, I rafted that a few years ago with, uh, terrifying, beautiful, spellbinding, like an amazing experience. And I did it with your old friend Jeff Law. Oh, really? Yeah, he was, um.
00:06:38
S3: I remember now. Yes.
00:06:40
S1: And he was, he was an amazing guide for going down those rapids and understanding the blockade and pointing out where it all happened. And I imagine that looking back on that action now feels really triumphant. But I've also got to imagine that at the time you were involved in it, it would have been, I don't know, in part hopeless or feeling despairing like you were up against it. You didn't know you were going to win. How did you keep going?
00:07:09
S3: Well, basically, while the river kept flowing. While there was life, there was hope. And we did get to a period a year or two before it was saved. In fact, May the 13th, 1982, the Tasmanian elections when, uh, Robyn Gray, the whispering bulldozer, uh, won the election in a landslide. Um, he'd hardly mentioned the Franklin in the campaign, but his first thing was that Franklin Dam will be built. And I stood amongst many others on defending the Franklin and lost, um, not least due to a very, very directly controlled homophobic campaign. People putting things in letterboxes. And I had friends taking older friends who are taking down their posters and so on. But that aside, you know, a real test on that night. Uh, we we had been wiped out was with all the glare of the lights on. Well, Bob Brown, uh, the franklin's gone now. They're going to build the dam, aren't they? And plucking up all the insensible courage I could, I said, no, it's not. There will be no dam. And, uh, one of the liberal senators behind me said, there you are. I told you, he's mad. He's stark raving mad. But it was a case of, uh, understanding that, uh, you mustn't give in to what seems to be a hopeless situation, but, uh, continue to rely on the fact that out there is an electorate that doesn't necessarily want that dam built, but we knew that we had to win that campaign on the mainland, and it was the Melbourne public, Victorian public, but the wider Australian public as well, but in particular the age newspaper, that was critical to that, running very strong editorials in favour of saving the Franklin and continuing to the Sydney Morning Herald with my friend Geraldine Brooks as a young journalist there at the time. Right. She came down and floated down the lower part of the Franklin with Don Chipp back in those days, too. But this feeling that we. If we could get the pictures of the Franklin into the national arena, people might change their votes on it, because the next thing was not the state election, but the federal election. And that was going to be crucial. And as I say in in the book, Conrad, Bob Hawke was central to that. He was not interested much, but at the National Conference of the Labour Party at the Lakeside Hotel in Canberra a few months before that election, he was contesting with Bill Hayden, who was the leader, to try and take over the leadership. And to cut a long story short, he decided to go with the no dam side. That was labor policy to support the dam. And when he got in, he he stuck with that. And we had a protest here in the Treasury Gardens with 15,000 people, at which he got up and said. And Hazel was wearing her no dam earrings. And he got up and said, uh, this dam will not go ahead. And on election night we were at the Windsor Hotel. Don't tell them this, but, uh, we had a book to room with a king size bed, and we were jumping up and down when Bob Hawke said, the dam will not go ahead and, uh, just through the power of the voting public. At that stage, the Franklin was saved, which was unthinkable just 18 months earlier when the Tasmanian election result came through. So thank you, Melbourne.
00:11:10
S1: I want to zoom back even further, if I can, to your parents, Jack and Marge, who you touched on in the book. Um, you mentioned upstairs to me earlier you come from, uh, regional conservative stock, uh, liberal voters, but they sound in the words within the book also like environmentalists in their own way. What did they pass down to you that led to the man that you've become?
00:11:36
S3: Well, I'm very indebted to my parents because I was pretty shy and, uh, a dreamer. And, uh, it seemed to me right back then, I wasn't as interested as other, uh, Boys were in particular in shooting the parrots and everything that was around the place. And, uh, but my parents, my mother didn't know it, but she wasn't environmentalist. And I tell that story of, with my twin sister bringing home a bunch of flowers for her to put in a vase out of the bush and her saying, you know, that's beautiful. And I will put them in the vase. But if you'd left them in the bush, they'd be even more beautiful and would have lasted longer. I remembered that much later, Conrad, when I was with, uh, a wonderful woman called Woody Labiner up in the Cape Country, and she took us out to her woodland savanna and picked some native plums and said her mother had told her, when you pick the plum, take it very carefully. Don't break the branch. Don't break the finger of the mother who feeds you. And it was the same philosophy there from two different, very different quarters. My dad, on the other hand, was a police constable. He was very had a. Looking back, he had a great deal of common sense. We were at. I came to life and went to school with my brothers and sisters up at Trunkey Creek on the old coaching road between Bathurst and Goulburn. 23 kids at the school and it was pretty rough, I can tell you. But he, um, you know, had the common sense. If somebody got into trouble to rouse on them and say, don't do that again or I'll you, you'll be locked up. But occasionally I was just reading a story that the Bathurst library sent me about my father, where he was put upon by three men down at the Black Stump Hotel in Trunkey. If you're ever there, stop in at the Black Stump Hotel. Um, and he was at one stage down on the ground, and they'd stolen his baton, and he was being having the daylights beaten out of him, but somehow managed one after the other to get them into the wooden cells up at the back of the police station before the reinforcements arrived on the gravel road 36 miles from Bathurst. But he he just inculcated me with the idea that you're not better, but nor are you worse than anybody else. We're all equal on this planet. And don't dip your lid to big bigwigs and potentates. Just take them on as they are on the same plane. Don't look down on other people because they're in bad luck, or they're in some way or other are not. You're not comfortable with them. And he did say, come home one time and say, oh, I booked somebody down the street today, which was very unusual and somebody must have done something out of the ordinary. But the car window was wound down and said to my father, Constable, do you know who I am? And my father said no. And he said, I'm the Bishop of Bathurst. And my father said, well, Bishop, it's lovely to see you. Here's your ticket. And that stayed with me down the line. I must also say this. I put my parents through tough times, both because I was gay and they wondered what was wrong. I got physically ill with it and. And then mentally distressed enough to go to London to get away from things and try and sort myself out as a youngster. And then I was involved in in, you know, from early on in um being active. My mother said, don't get involved. Well I, she was later on very pleased I did. But you know, uh, mothers want their, their children to be safe and it seemed like I wasn't going to be, but, um, through all of that, they never backed off. And I tell this story. Um, I've told this when the Franklin campaign came, my parents had been liberal voters all their life, but there was being arrested on TV. My father kept saying, when are you going back to the surgery to get on with your medical job? When are you going to go back to. But anyway, here I was being arrested and taken off to jail in Tasmania and my mother said he. He just quietly got up, went to the locker, got out the writing pad and wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who got to know quite well later on in life and said, Prime Minister, I voted Liberal all my life, but nobody puts a hand on a son of mine. I'll never vote for you again.
00:16:37
S1: That's.
00:16:39
S3: The blood's thicker than water.
00:16:41
S1: I want to get to the guts of the, uh, the book title now, which, as I mentioned, is defiance. Uh, in it, you quote Howard Zinn in saying civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. So are we. Are we too obsequious these days? Are we too apathetic? What do you think? Is the the problem?
00:17:02
S3: Yeah. It's us. We are here. We are in the wealthiest, uh, freest country on the planet. And apathy rules. And, um, a wonderful fellow writer last night, just out of the blue, said to me, if there's one thing that terrifies me, it's apathy, because we can be making a stand. We, as a middle order, ordinary and very well off country, ought to be taking a lead in, uh, addressing the world's real problems, including standing up to Donald Trump and President XI and Putin and the whole lot of these out of control. Uh, misanthropes who are always billionaires and always, uh, putting down other people, locking them up if they don't agree with what we say. I mean, we would be in that situation. I wouldn't be sitting here if any of those people was in control of this country. And yet we have this position like Canada, but we're failing to make a stand. Failing to make a stand on on the, uh, murder of tens of thousands of children in the Middle East failing to make a stand on. Well, here's the UK Council of Actuaries, the wisest looker's analysis of what's going to happen in the future, telling us that if we keep going with on the climate change directory we're on at the moment. Go and look them up along with Exeter University by 2050. That's 24 years from now. There'll be a 25% collapse in global produce and 2 billion people dead. Didn't get a rating anywhere in the Australian media. And, uh, this is, you know, that's actuaries. These are the best risk assessors in the world. And it's as if we're all mullets, you know, we're all oblivious to this. And, uh, we keep trying to work out who's the best between one nation and, and, um, liberals and national party and labor, all captured by the corporate greed, which wants to extract more fossil fuels, burn more forests, uh, keep compromising. And just this week, we've got the minister for the just two days ago the Minister for. Well. Friday afternoon. Is that yesterday releasing late in the afternoon proposals for the regulations for new environmental laws, which are astonishingly an affront to the intelligence of Australian people, is basically devolving to the states. Decisions on the environment. And of course, they're more vulnerable to the big corporations. And it's just very difficult to like with the Franklin Dam, if it was left to a state, it would have the river would have been flooded. These are national issues of extinction, destruction of habitats and the robbery of future generations. You know, if you want to get on in this world, don't rob a bank. It's dangerous. You might get caught. Now be a big exploiter of the public commons and rob future generations of their rights to have a natural planet like we've got, and you'll get government subsidies to do it. It's it defies common sense. But we are a compliant nation that keeps voting for it. And the extraordinary thing 80% of Labour voters want native forest logging stopped across Australia, 100% of Labour incumbents at state and federal parliaments are are in favour of the national forest destruction continuing. Now, I know here in Victoria we had a labor government that's put an end to native forest logging temporarily. But what happened to the Great Forest National Park that was promised? How come Heybridge, the big timber processing works got massive compensation from the Victorian Labor Labour government. But the Tasmanian Liberal government is allowing logs to be brought out of our forests and put through that mill. Are they waiting for a Liberal government which will turn things around and get logging, logging going again? Where is the mass protest that we don't have a great forest national park as promised in Victoria, let alone the Great Koala National Park as promised, because it's not as promised in New South Wales? And how come this march to extinction, including the swift parrot, which comes here in summer, in winter and goes to Tasmania in summer to breed, and they keep logging the trees from under it. And that's licensed by Murray. What? The chief, the most powerful environmentalist in the country. He's talking to the logging industry about these regulations but won't talk to me or to our foundation, the environmental heartland. He's refused. He's written to us saying he will not talk to us. He hasn't got time, but he's talking to flies down and talks to the logging industry to set these rules about the destruction of the environment into the future. That's the Albanese government of of our age. And I mean, we're living in some sort of la la land when it comes to the reality of protecting this planet so that it will be a beautiful place, as JFK, President Kennedy explained in 1962. We have an obligation to pass on this planet and its beauty and its natural riches, the better for having been here, not the worse.
00:23:27
S1: Speaking of passing things on for people out there in this audience who feel like there's nothing they can do, maybe they can't get down to Tassie and be up on that snowy, plain blockading bulldozers. I wanted to mention a woman named Gayla from Wales, who you wrote about in your book. You said that on the day the Tarkine wilderness in Tasmania is finally saved, you say that you'll raise a glass to her, and this is due in part to an act of giving as much as resistance. So what was that act?
00:24:02
S3: Well, I mean, there was the spirit of this planet being turned around. I'm driving home. Um, Pauline. And I've got a house. Paul's just over here. I've got a house. We've got a house. Um, by the seaside at Randalls Bay, which is 15 minutes east of Cygnet. I'm driving home from Cygnet. And here's a woman, older woman, standing by the road hitchhiking. Very unusual to see hitchhikers these days, let alone an older lady. So I picked her up and she hopped in. And after we introduced each other, she said she was from Wales, but she liked Tasmania because it was the next best thing Down under. And she had a. She bought a caravan and she had it in a park at a place called Eggs and Bacon Bay next just a kilometre from us. And she was living in, in that. And she was had candles and she was, uh, actually, uh, cooking up roadkill at times. Uh, and I, I say in the book, be a bit careful of that because since we arrived, there's a few toxoplasmas and things in there that, uh, need to be worried about. But anyway, she wasn't worried, but I got talking about the Tarkine. We got straight into world affairs. No trouble. 20 minutes later, uh, or less, she went off across the meadow to her caravan, and a few weeks later, here she was again. So I picked her up again, and we had a short conversation and we just hit it off straight off. Uh, gala was, uh, a philosopher, a thinker, uh, worldly wise. And she loved the story of the people being up in the Tarkine and blockading the logging and the mining. And then she invited Paul, Paul and I to come and visit her in Wales. But only a few months later, I got a message to say she died. And, um, that was really distressing, although I was pleased to learn that it wasn't. She died a peaceful death. But next thing, she'd left all her worldly goods to my foundation to help save the Tarkine $150,000. Couldn't believe it. Simple as that. Such a good heart and such an easy thing to do if, uh, in saving the planet. And of course, we're campaigning for public lands which can't be bought up by wonderful organisations like Bush Heritage, uh, which gets lots of people leaving money to it as well. So as campaigning, I talked about the folk who are up in the forest Today that's helped, funded by the gifts of people like gala. And it makes a huge difference. And it's why the recently passed legislation in Tasmania to say that it's illegal to. You'll be jailed for peacefully protesting to defend forests. Oh, I should have told you earlier, Conrad, you're talking to a criminal. Convicted criminal? I stood in front of some trees that were swift parrot nesting site and, uh, got arrested for that. We. I remind you, we're appealing that verdict. It was it was, uh, illogical that we should be arrested for upholding the law, which says you can't cut down trees where these critically endangered birds are nesting. But anyway, um, our little foundation is, is growing rapidly because people are like, what? Like the action that's being taken. And I can say, um, I love saying this, that, uh, takina the biggest temperate rainforest in Australia. And at this time of year, it becomes a snow forest as it, as it snows on it, north west Tasmania, come down and visit it. If you haven't been down there before, it's a most arresting place.
00:28:01
S1: I love it. Um, I did have a question about all those times you've been arrested, but I want to move on quickly to a question about writing, because there is beautiful writing in your book, particularly the way that you describe the the natural world in such a kind of tender and reverential way. Um, it's a writers festival. So I get to ask the writing question, where do you write? When do you write? Do you have a timetable? Do you have a room with a view? Do you have a desk with certain totems on it that inspire you? Like, I don't know, I write, I like to get into the nuts and bolts of how other people do it.
00:28:36
S3: Well, these days I get asked to write about the environment, sometimes for magazines and so on. But in writing a book like defiance, uh, and I had the first book was optimism, the second defiance. If I have time enough for another one, and I somehow doubt this, but I'll give it a go. It'll be empathy or compassion. So there we have optimism, defiance, and compassion. There are three big components for humanity saving itself and the planet. But I like to my, my, uh, writing home is, uh, my original house up at Liffey. It's owned by Bush Heritage these days, but due to their largesse, Paul and I go up there and I write on a desk at the front window, by the way, uh, it's just, uh, less than an hour out of Launceston, and it's open to everybody and you can walk through the house and, and, um, uh, look at the poor person's gallery of, uh, wilderness pictures and so on. That's there as well as around the property. Um, that aside, when we do go there, uh, I, I write in longhand. I still like my dad. I still get the writing pad out of the cabinet and, uh, write in longhand and Paul types it up these days. The valley, very fortunately, is quite steep. And, and you can't get phone communication. And my iPad won't work anyway, which is fantastic. But his computer does connect somehow. And, uh, so he types it up. He's, I've, I spent six years at medical school learning how to scribble. But Paul can interpret it and, and he's also a very good speller, which is lucky. And, uh, so that's how the book comes about actually. And it's lovely to be there. I write best early morning or late at night. I sometimes get out of bed and go and write a chapter or two kerosene lamps still, um, although modern solar, little solar things work very, very well. There's no electricity in the house. We had that I had that cut off in 1982 when they were building the. Frank wanted to build the Franklin Dam while they were. And were saying, we need it for more. All the houses that are being built in Tasmania. And I said, well, I sent him a card with a picture of the Franklin River, the hydroelectric commission, and said, well, disconnect me. I don't want to be one of your statistics. And I rang up and said, oh, Doctor Brown, did you send us that card asking to be disconnected? I guess they don't get a lot of cards like that. And I said yes, and within a week they disconnected it. Well, you can't believe how much money I've saved in the last half century by, uh, and just put a barrel in the river if you want to keep something cool. And it works beautifully.
00:31:26
S1: From the old world to the new. I just wanted to ask a little about social media and our attention spans because capturing interest for a green campaign today would be a lot different than it was in 1982, when you know you could rely on something as simple as a photo by is it Peter Dombrovskis? Dombrovskis, Dombrovskis? That famous photo from the Franklin that could capture hearts and minds. How do we do it today? Now, when we're fighting against kind of data profiling and algorithms and advertising and AI?
00:32:02
S3: Well, it's very important to be in the thick of it. It's also very important to be factual. And I, um, try and imbue everybody with, if you're uncertain about it, don't write it. Uh, make sure it's factual because the other side loves to come in with a tirade on the simplest slip up. But photographs are still incredibly important, allowing nature to speak for itself. And I mean, by including that, of course, videography. Our foundation has got wonderful people who are very skilled in that. I'm not, I have no idea. I love taking photographs, but beyond that, I have no idea. But I get. And I don't see it. I get the feedback saying, uh, from people saying how your foundation puts out fantastic material onto the internet. And they do, and it's, and it's rapid, uh, and it's testimonies from the people who are out there in the forests as well as responses to, uh, but, you know, a conventional media doesn't get covered. Those folk who are up there today blockading will get zero coverage on the ABC or on, uh, in the, the local media or, uh, look, we had a press conference the other a week ago on a court case about swift parrots in Tasmania. And I said to Adam Burling, our media fellow Adam put out a media alert saying that we think we're going to lose in the morning and they'll all come. But he refused to, and they didn't come anyway. We won the court case. Uh, and it's now proceeding. This is one that involves my conviction for, uh, refusing to move when the loggers were knocking down swift parrot trees. And the law says they must immediately stop logging if it's reported that there are swift parrots there. And we've done that. But they didn't. We got arrested instead. And but we won this court case and there's no coverage. Uh, so you've got to get your own media out there. And we have got a fantastic crew of people who are doing that and, uh, and informing the public, of course, you know, you're getting tirades from the other side. Uh, basically what happens with environmentalists is they don't argue the environment, they zero in on you a personal attacks because they can't win the environment. The public's with us on the environment, but the personal attacks are aimed at saying to the public, there's something strange about, uh, people who defend the environment. Yes, they're tree huggers. They're sandal footed do gooders, or they're, uh, Hugh and pine condom makers or whatever else we've been called over the time. And sometimes they get violent about it as well. Um, you know, but, uh, it's a great privilege to have such fantastic people working to get the message out there. And as that statistic I just quoted, 80% of Australians want native forest logging stock. Well, when the environment is allowed to speak for itself, people will respond to it.
00:35:20
S1: I could ask you questions all day. And I wanted to quote from the very beginning of your book, uh, the foreword by Geraldine Brooks, who you mentioned earlier was, uh, you must have met when she was just a cub at the age. Now, of course, a celebrated author. But she wrote, there is so much at stake. The work is urgent. The time is now. So the simple question is what can the people in this audience and the people listening to the podcast, um, take away from this? What's what's one thing that everyone can do this week or this month or this year to make a difference and join the fight?
00:35:55
S3: Well, the first thing is don't vote for fossil fuel extractors, don't vote for forest destroyers. Don't vote for people who want to turn a park into a tennis court. Don't vote for, uh, the marauders of the environment and the people who are captured by, uh, the corporate billionaires. Uh, that's so important in a democracy. It's fascinating looking at the British election results coming in today, a big change going on in the world. And I think we'll see that in America. And I think we'll see that in Australia. The next elections are going to be fascinating. Uh, as people are looking for something more substantial in terms of giving security back to the future on, on this planet. Um, we're all wealthy. We can give a small amount of money to the social justice or environmental outfit that takes our, our hearts. We can leave part or all of our fortune to people who are going to keep battling for the planet in one way or another. Did you know that, uh, philanthropy in Australia, 1 or 2% maximum goes to the environment? Um, I don't know why that is, but, uh, that's how it is. And of course, you can also, uh, contact and be in contact with local members of Parliament. We are in representative democracies. There are servants. I know I've been a parliamentarian for 32 years. I know how it works. We are the servants. Elected officials are the servants of the people. It's not the other way round. And you simply have to ask, are you going to cross the floor to vote for the 25% tax on the gas extractors who are making billions at the expense of the planet? Are you going to vote to end native forest logging? Are you going to cross the floor to support any motion to end native forest logging? I'm talking about the national Parliament here. And if they say I can't, I won't. I say you just have to make it clear. Well, I'm going to vote for somebody who will. Are you going to vote so that the old thing, nurses pay their taxes. But some of the biggest fossil fuel extractors, gas extractors, coal miners. Now Matt Canavan wants oil wells in the great. In the Great Australian Bight, and it won't be long before they'll be wanting them back on the Barrier Reef itself. Are you going to vote for people like that or not? It's a big it's a big question facing us all. But funding organisations who are standing up to that are is very, very important. And last of all, um think about taking direct action joining this the street March for a Safer World for an independent Australian view on the world for the protection of the environment and um, you know, becoming part of an, and standing for parliament yourself. I, uh, you know, the, the first box to be ticked for anybody who, who is worthy of being in our parliament is they're saying, oh no, not me. I don't want to I don't want to be in politics. Right. You've passed the first test. And and, uh, we we are politicians are just ordinary people, but they are it's been taken over by the corporate sector. And, you know, I know from being in politics, they're there every day. They're riddled through the Parliament people telling you what's good for the mining industry. They never talk about profits. They always talk about jobs. And, uh, it's very, very important that we get people who are prepared to stand up to that in, in our parliaments. Well, you know, a lot. And finally, yeah, go and visit the Tarkine. Go and look at those forests that are being threatened in south east New South Wales. Take it a go across to Karratha and look at the world's greatest rock art site. Over a million rock art pieces, including the earliest depictions of human faces on the planet, including Tasmanian tigers in Western Australia, including the giant kangaroo, which we know was spotted 12ft high. Sorry about the non metrics there, but uh, because there it is. Pictured 2030 000 years ago by the indigenous, the artists, the great artists of the world at that time. And what are they doing putting in gas factories. And the first thing that Murray, what our Minister for the environment did was to go over there, speak to Woodside, this giant marauding, nasty company, then go to the labor ministers for mining and so on in Western Australia, but refused to see Rayleen from Save Our Songlines. The Aboriginal representative opposing what they were doing didn't would refuse to speak. This is our Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Murray Watt, handpicked by Anthony Albanese and ticking off on expansion of the gasworks, which leads to some more bulldozing at the margins of that art site. But acid exudates coming out of those chimneys, which there's a lot of scientific debate about this, but which at the minimum threatened to erode that greatest rock art site on the planet. Go and have a look at it. It's just fascinating. It's just worth a trip to WA to see that at Karratha. Oh, and be optimistic.
00:42:05
S1: I love that. I actually just wanted to conclude by reading just a small passage from the tail end of your book. Um, this is it with action in mind. Also, take time to dance, to love and be loved. To visit and entertain, to clap and perform, to buy and sell. To ponder and decide. To give and take. to commit to care and be cared for, or to read a book by the river. Above all, take time to enjoy this remarkable planet. So it's nice to end on a note of optimism. Thank you again, Bob, for speaking here.
00:42:41
S2: Thank you Conrad. Thank you.
00:42:47
S1: To enjoy more in-depth journalism from the latest edition of Good Weekend, visit us at theage.com.au or smh.com.au. This episode was produced by Konrad Marshall and edited by Tim Mummery, with technical assistance from the team at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick oversee our podcasts, and Melissa Stevens is the editor of Good Weekend. If you enjoyed this episode, follow our podcast and leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. And thanks for listening.
S1: For more than half a century now, Bob Brown has been standing up to powerful interests who had put profit before the planet. The environmental crusader, former senator and founding member of the Wilderness Society has seen it all from the front lines of pivotal battles over everything from the existence of the Franklin River to the survival of the swift parrot. He's the kind of person who practices what he preaches to living sustainably for decades in a one bedroom home. I'm Konrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald and The age. Welcome to the 300th episode of Good Weekend Talks. This podcast was launched in 2020, and since then, we've had amazing conversations with athletes and writers, actors and academics. And today, we take you out of the studio for our first ever live recording at the Melbourne Writers Festival. The following episode takes place on stage, in front of an audience of 300 at the State Library of Victoria, and features a conversation between myself and Bob Brown, looking at everything from the origin of the term tree hugger to how he finds optimism and defiance in the face of massive challenges facing the world. Welcome, everyone, and welcome, Bob.
00:01:27
S2: Hi. Thank you. Conrad.
00:01:34
S1: Now, Bob, I wanted to start with that term tree hugger, which is often used to disparage people. You often refer to them instead as earth savers. Your book is dedicated to Amrita Devi and her daughters. Who were they and what was their connection to this, this term? Tree hugger.
00:01:54
S3: Well, thanks, Conrad, because, uh, it's a little known story, but it comes from India. And in 1720, the Maharaja wanted to build a new palace. So he arrived at the Bishnoi People's Forest and said, I'm going to cut that down. I need the wood for my palace. And Amrita Devi, the scion of the village of Bishnoi people, said, no, you're not. This is we have a spiritual connection with these trees and we cannot allow them to be cut down. So he did what so many people do these days to get their way. He offered her a big bribe and affronted, she said, you don't understand. We have a spiritual relationship with these trees and we're going to defend them. So the Maharajah's men arrived in great numbers, and she and her three daughters hugged the trees to stop them being cut down. Along with the other villages they beheaded. Amrita and her three daughters, and then 250 plus other villages, before the Maharaja decided that he couldn't face the slaughter any longer and backed off and the forest was saved. Amrita was the original tree hugger, and it led to the movement in India in the 60s and 70s, where people became tree huggers and defended their trees. And then that translated across to Terania Creek in northern New South Wales. And it inspired us with the Franklin campaign later on. But there's the original tree hugger. And what an exemplar of standing for our natural environment, which gives us all. We come from the trees, which gives us all we are, uh, which, uh, you know, I love telling kids at school our hand is perfect for holding branches. Our eyes are set back on our heads so that we can move safely through the forest without our vision being endangered. We're creatures of the forest and that applies to our hearts as well as our physique. You know, give your loved one a bunch of artificial flowers. Doesn't matter how good they are. And even if they're centered. And you'll draw a blank. Give them real flowers and they know that means devotion. It's just inculcated into it. That's why we want our kids to watch Attenborough rather than, um, some crime movie from America by preference and put pictures of nature on our wall. And yet, nature is the fastest disappearing. And particularly wild. Nature is the fastest disappearing resource on the planet, both in the oceans and on land. And treehugger has become. Due to the miracle of billionaire corporate spin has become a derogatory term. Well, not for me. I love being a tree hugger. I love being a follower of Amrita. And it's it's a term we should wear with pride. Uh, and I was telling you earlier, Conrad, just as we're meeting here this morning, there are 20 people from my foundation up in the central plateau of Tasmania where it's snowing, blocking a logging road. Uh, carrying on what Amrita was doing 300 years ago because they're getting directly in the way of log trucks going into convert Tasmania's forests and their wildlife into woodchips, going to, um, you know, a quick disposable greenhouse gas emissions effectively in China and Taiwan. And, um, there's the spirit of Amrita alive and going this day and in tree hugging As um derogatory as the the butchers of the environment might make. It is the only future for this planet. If we don't stop the marauding of nature, we're ultimately pulling the rug from under our own feet. And because we can go into some factual matters about that if necessary. But, um, hats off to Amrita.
00:06:24
S1: Let's go to the Franklin River now. Um, I rafted that a few years ago with, uh, terrifying, beautiful, spellbinding, like an amazing experience. And I did it with your old friend Jeff Law. Oh, really? Yeah, he was, um.
00:06:38
S3: I remember now. Yes.
00:06:40
S1: And he was, he was an amazing guide for going down those rapids and understanding the blockade and pointing out where it all happened. And I imagine that looking back on that action now feels really triumphant. But I've also got to imagine that at the time you were involved in it, it would have been, I don't know, in part hopeless or feeling despairing like you were up against it. You didn't know you were going to win. How did you keep going?
00:07:09
S3: Well, basically, while the river kept flowing. While there was life, there was hope. And we did get to a period a year or two before it was saved. In fact, May the 13th, 1982, the Tasmanian elections when, uh, Robyn Gray, the whispering bulldozer, uh, won the election in a landslide. Um, he'd hardly mentioned the Franklin in the campaign, but his first thing was that Franklin Dam will be built. And I stood amongst many others on defending the Franklin and lost, um, not least due to a very, very directly controlled homophobic campaign. People putting things in letterboxes. And I had friends taking older friends who are taking down their posters and so on. But that aside, you know, a real test on that night. Uh, we we had been wiped out was with all the glare of the lights on. Well, Bob Brown, uh, the franklin's gone now. They're going to build the dam, aren't they? And plucking up all the insensible courage I could, I said, no, it's not. There will be no dam. And, uh, one of the liberal senators behind me said, there you are. I told you, he's mad. He's stark raving mad. But it was a case of, uh, understanding that, uh, you mustn't give in to what seems to be a hopeless situation, but, uh, continue to rely on the fact that out there is an electorate that doesn't necessarily want that dam built, but we knew that we had to win that campaign on the mainland, and it was the Melbourne public, Victorian public, but the wider Australian public as well, but in particular the age newspaper, that was critical to that, running very strong editorials in favour of saving the Franklin and continuing to the Sydney Morning Herald with my friend Geraldine Brooks as a young journalist there at the time. Right. She came down and floated down the lower part of the Franklin with Don Chipp back in those days, too. But this feeling that we. If we could get the pictures of the Franklin into the national arena, people might change their votes on it, because the next thing was not the state election, but the federal election. And that was going to be crucial. And as I say in in the book, Conrad, Bob Hawke was central to that. He was not interested much, but at the National Conference of the Labour Party at the Lakeside Hotel in Canberra a few months before that election, he was contesting with Bill Hayden, who was the leader, to try and take over the leadership. And to cut a long story short, he decided to go with the no dam side. That was labor policy to support the dam. And when he got in, he he stuck with that. And we had a protest here in the Treasury Gardens with 15,000 people, at which he got up and said. And Hazel was wearing her no dam earrings. And he got up and said, uh, this dam will not go ahead. And on election night we were at the Windsor Hotel. Don't tell them this, but, uh, we had a book to room with a king size bed, and we were jumping up and down when Bob Hawke said, the dam will not go ahead and, uh, just through the power of the voting public. At that stage, the Franklin was saved, which was unthinkable just 18 months earlier when the Tasmanian election result came through. So thank you, Melbourne.
00:11:10
S1: I want to zoom back even further, if I can, to your parents, Jack and Marge, who you touched on in the book. Um, you mentioned upstairs to me earlier you come from, uh, regional conservative stock, uh, liberal voters, but they sound in the words within the book also like environmentalists in their own way. What did they pass down to you that led to the man that you've become?
00:11:36
S3: Well, I'm very indebted to my parents because I was pretty shy and, uh, a dreamer. And, uh, it seemed to me right back then, I wasn't as interested as other, uh, Boys were in particular in shooting the parrots and everything that was around the place. And, uh, but my parents, my mother didn't know it, but she wasn't environmentalist. And I tell that story of, with my twin sister bringing home a bunch of flowers for her to put in a vase out of the bush and her saying, you know, that's beautiful. And I will put them in the vase. But if you'd left them in the bush, they'd be even more beautiful and would have lasted longer. I remembered that much later, Conrad, when I was with, uh, a wonderful woman called Woody Labiner up in the Cape Country, and she took us out to her woodland savanna and picked some native plums and said her mother had told her, when you pick the plum, take it very carefully. Don't break the branch. Don't break the finger of the mother who feeds you. And it was the same philosophy there from two different, very different quarters. My dad, on the other hand, was a police constable. He was very had a. Looking back, he had a great deal of common sense. We were at. I came to life and went to school with my brothers and sisters up at Trunkey Creek on the old coaching road between Bathurst and Goulburn. 23 kids at the school and it was pretty rough, I can tell you. But he, um, you know, had the common sense. If somebody got into trouble to rouse on them and say, don't do that again or I'll you, you'll be locked up. But occasionally I was just reading a story that the Bathurst library sent me about my father, where he was put upon by three men down at the Black Stump Hotel in Trunkey. If you're ever there, stop in at the Black Stump Hotel. Um, and he was at one stage down on the ground, and they'd stolen his baton, and he was being having the daylights beaten out of him, but somehow managed one after the other to get them into the wooden cells up at the back of the police station before the reinforcements arrived on the gravel road 36 miles from Bathurst. But he he just inculcated me with the idea that you're not better, but nor are you worse than anybody else. We're all equal on this planet. And don't dip your lid to big bigwigs and potentates. Just take them on as they are on the same plane. Don't look down on other people because they're in bad luck, or they're in some way or other are not. You're not comfortable with them. And he did say, come home one time and say, oh, I booked somebody down the street today, which was very unusual and somebody must have done something out of the ordinary. But the car window was wound down and said to my father, Constable, do you know who I am? And my father said no. And he said, I'm the Bishop of Bathurst. And my father said, well, Bishop, it's lovely to see you. Here's your ticket. And that stayed with me down the line. I must also say this. I put my parents through tough times, both because I was gay and they wondered what was wrong. I got physically ill with it and. And then mentally distressed enough to go to London to get away from things and try and sort myself out as a youngster. And then I was involved in in, you know, from early on in um being active. My mother said, don't get involved. Well I, she was later on very pleased I did. But you know, uh, mothers want their, their children to be safe and it seemed like I wasn't going to be, but, um, through all of that, they never backed off. And I tell this story. Um, I've told this when the Franklin campaign came, my parents had been liberal voters all their life, but there was being arrested on TV. My father kept saying, when are you going back to the surgery to get on with your medical job? When are you going to go back to. But anyway, here I was being arrested and taken off to jail in Tasmania and my mother said he. He just quietly got up, went to the locker, got out the writing pad and wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who got to know quite well later on in life and said, Prime Minister, I voted Liberal all my life, but nobody puts a hand on a son of mine. I'll never vote for you again.
00:16:37
S1: That's.
00:16:39
S3: The blood's thicker than water.
00:16:41
S1: I want to get to the guts of the, uh, the book title now, which, as I mentioned, is defiance. Uh, in it, you quote Howard Zinn in saying civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. So are we. Are we too obsequious these days? Are we too apathetic? What do you think? Is the the problem?
00:17:02
S3: Yeah. It's us. We are here. We are in the wealthiest, uh, freest country on the planet. And apathy rules. And, um, a wonderful fellow writer last night, just out of the blue, said to me, if there's one thing that terrifies me, it's apathy, because we can be making a stand. We, as a middle order, ordinary and very well off country, ought to be taking a lead in, uh, addressing the world's real problems, including standing up to Donald Trump and President XI and Putin and the whole lot of these out of control. Uh, misanthropes who are always billionaires and always, uh, putting down other people, locking them up if they don't agree with what we say. I mean, we would be in that situation. I wouldn't be sitting here if any of those people was in control of this country. And yet we have this position like Canada, but we're failing to make a stand. Failing to make a stand on on the, uh, murder of tens of thousands of children in the Middle East failing to make a stand on. Well, here's the UK Council of Actuaries, the wisest looker's analysis of what's going to happen in the future, telling us that if we keep going with on the climate change directory we're on at the moment. Go and look them up along with Exeter University by 2050. That's 24 years from now. There'll be a 25% collapse in global produce and 2 billion people dead. Didn't get a rating anywhere in the Australian media. And, uh, this is, you know, that's actuaries. These are the best risk assessors in the world. And it's as if we're all mullets, you know, we're all oblivious to this. And, uh, we keep trying to work out who's the best between one nation and, and, um, liberals and national party and labor, all captured by the corporate greed, which wants to extract more fossil fuels, burn more forests, uh, keep compromising. And just this week, we've got the minister for the just two days ago the Minister for. Well. Friday afternoon. Is that yesterday releasing late in the afternoon proposals for the regulations for new environmental laws, which are astonishingly an affront to the intelligence of Australian people, is basically devolving to the states. Decisions on the environment. And of course, they're more vulnerable to the big corporations. And it's just very difficult to like with the Franklin Dam, if it was left to a state, it would have the river would have been flooded. These are national issues of extinction, destruction of habitats and the robbery of future generations. You know, if you want to get on in this world, don't rob a bank. It's dangerous. You might get caught. Now be a big exploiter of the public commons and rob future generations of their rights to have a natural planet like we've got, and you'll get government subsidies to do it. It's it defies common sense. But we are a compliant nation that keeps voting for it. And the extraordinary thing 80% of Labour voters want native forest logging stopped across Australia, 100% of Labour incumbents at state and federal parliaments are are in favour of the national forest destruction continuing. Now, I know here in Victoria we had a labor government that's put an end to native forest logging temporarily. But what happened to the Great Forest National Park that was promised? How come Heybridge, the big timber processing works got massive compensation from the Victorian Labor Labour government. But the Tasmanian Liberal government is allowing logs to be brought out of our forests and put through that mill. Are they waiting for a Liberal government which will turn things around and get logging, logging going again? Where is the mass protest that we don't have a great forest national park as promised in Victoria, let alone the Great Koala National Park as promised, because it's not as promised in New South Wales? And how come this march to extinction, including the swift parrot, which comes here in summer, in winter and goes to Tasmania in summer to breed, and they keep logging the trees from under it. And that's licensed by Murray. What? The chief, the most powerful environmentalist in the country. He's talking to the logging industry about these regulations but won't talk to me or to our foundation, the environmental heartland. He's refused. He's written to us saying he will not talk to us. He hasn't got time, but he's talking to flies down and talks to the logging industry to set these rules about the destruction of the environment into the future. That's the Albanese government of of our age. And I mean, we're living in some sort of la la land when it comes to the reality of protecting this planet so that it will be a beautiful place, as JFK, President Kennedy explained in 1962. We have an obligation to pass on this planet and its beauty and its natural riches, the better for having been here, not the worse.
00:23:27
S1: Speaking of passing things on for people out there in this audience who feel like there's nothing they can do, maybe they can't get down to Tassie and be up on that snowy, plain blockading bulldozers. I wanted to mention a woman named Gayla from Wales, who you wrote about in your book. You said that on the day the Tarkine wilderness in Tasmania is finally saved, you say that you'll raise a glass to her, and this is due in part to an act of giving as much as resistance. So what was that act?
00:24:02
S3: Well, I mean, there was the spirit of this planet being turned around. I'm driving home. Um, Pauline. And I've got a house. Paul's just over here. I've got a house. We've got a house. Um, by the seaside at Randalls Bay, which is 15 minutes east of Cygnet. I'm driving home from Cygnet. And here's a woman, older woman, standing by the road hitchhiking. Very unusual to see hitchhikers these days, let alone an older lady. So I picked her up and she hopped in. And after we introduced each other, she said she was from Wales, but she liked Tasmania because it was the next best thing Down under. And she had a. She bought a caravan and she had it in a park at a place called Eggs and Bacon Bay next just a kilometre from us. And she was living in, in that. And she was had candles and she was, uh, actually, uh, cooking up roadkill at times. Uh, and I, I say in the book, be a bit careful of that because since we arrived, there's a few toxoplasmas and things in there that, uh, need to be worried about. But anyway, she wasn't worried, but I got talking about the Tarkine. We got straight into world affairs. No trouble. 20 minutes later, uh, or less, she went off across the meadow to her caravan, and a few weeks later, here she was again. So I picked her up again, and we had a short conversation and we just hit it off straight off. Uh, gala was, uh, a philosopher, a thinker, uh, worldly wise. And she loved the story of the people being up in the Tarkine and blockading the logging and the mining. And then she invited Paul, Paul and I to come and visit her in Wales. But only a few months later, I got a message to say she died. And, um, that was really distressing, although I was pleased to learn that it wasn't. She died a peaceful death. But next thing, she'd left all her worldly goods to my foundation to help save the Tarkine $150,000. Couldn't believe it. Simple as that. Such a good heart and such an easy thing to do if, uh, in saving the planet. And of course, we're campaigning for public lands which can't be bought up by wonderful organisations like Bush Heritage, uh, which gets lots of people leaving money to it as well. So as campaigning, I talked about the folk who are up in the forest Today that's helped, funded by the gifts of people like gala. And it makes a huge difference. And it's why the recently passed legislation in Tasmania to say that it's illegal to. You'll be jailed for peacefully protesting to defend forests. Oh, I should have told you earlier, Conrad, you're talking to a criminal. Convicted criminal? I stood in front of some trees that were swift parrot nesting site and, uh, got arrested for that. We. I remind you, we're appealing that verdict. It was it was, uh, illogical that we should be arrested for upholding the law, which says you can't cut down trees where these critically endangered birds are nesting. But anyway, um, our little foundation is, is growing rapidly because people are like, what? Like the action that's being taken. And I can say, um, I love saying this, that, uh, takina the biggest temperate rainforest in Australia. And at this time of year, it becomes a snow forest as it, as it snows on it, north west Tasmania, come down and visit it. If you haven't been down there before, it's a most arresting place.
00:28:01
S1: I love it. Um, I did have a question about all those times you've been arrested, but I want to move on quickly to a question about writing, because there is beautiful writing in your book, particularly the way that you describe the the natural world in such a kind of tender and reverential way. Um, it's a writers festival. So I get to ask the writing question, where do you write? When do you write? Do you have a timetable? Do you have a room with a view? Do you have a desk with certain totems on it that inspire you? Like, I don't know, I write, I like to get into the nuts and bolts of how other people do it.
00:28:36
S3: Well, these days I get asked to write about the environment, sometimes for magazines and so on. But in writing a book like defiance, uh, and I had the first book was optimism, the second defiance. If I have time enough for another one, and I somehow doubt this, but I'll give it a go. It'll be empathy or compassion. So there we have optimism, defiance, and compassion. There are three big components for humanity saving itself and the planet. But I like to my, my, uh, writing home is, uh, my original house up at Liffey. It's owned by Bush Heritage these days, but due to their largesse, Paul and I go up there and I write on a desk at the front window, by the way, uh, it's just, uh, less than an hour out of Launceston, and it's open to everybody and you can walk through the house and, and, um, uh, look at the poor person's gallery of, uh, wilderness pictures and so on. That's there as well as around the property. Um, that aside, when we do go there, uh, I, I write in longhand. I still like my dad. I still get the writing pad out of the cabinet and, uh, write in longhand and Paul types it up these days. The valley, very fortunately, is quite steep. And, and you can't get phone communication. And my iPad won't work anyway, which is fantastic. But his computer does connect somehow. And, uh, so he types it up. He's, I've, I spent six years at medical school learning how to scribble. But Paul can interpret it and, and he's also a very good speller, which is lucky. And, uh, so that's how the book comes about actually. And it's lovely to be there. I write best early morning or late at night. I sometimes get out of bed and go and write a chapter or two kerosene lamps still, um, although modern solar, little solar things work very, very well. There's no electricity in the house. We had that I had that cut off in 1982 when they were building the. Frank wanted to build the Franklin Dam while they were. And were saying, we need it for more. All the houses that are being built in Tasmania. And I said, well, I sent him a card with a picture of the Franklin River, the hydroelectric commission, and said, well, disconnect me. I don't want to be one of your statistics. And I rang up and said, oh, Doctor Brown, did you send us that card asking to be disconnected? I guess they don't get a lot of cards like that. And I said yes, and within a week they disconnected it. Well, you can't believe how much money I've saved in the last half century by, uh, and just put a barrel in the river if you want to keep something cool. And it works beautifully.
00:31:26
S1: From the old world to the new. I just wanted to ask a little about social media and our attention spans because capturing interest for a green campaign today would be a lot different than it was in 1982, when you know you could rely on something as simple as a photo by is it Peter Dombrovskis? Dombrovskis, Dombrovskis? That famous photo from the Franklin that could capture hearts and minds. How do we do it today? Now, when we're fighting against kind of data profiling and algorithms and advertising and AI?
00:32:02
S3: Well, it's very important to be in the thick of it. It's also very important to be factual. And I, um, try and imbue everybody with, if you're uncertain about it, don't write it. Uh, make sure it's factual because the other side loves to come in with a tirade on the simplest slip up. But photographs are still incredibly important, allowing nature to speak for itself. And I mean, by including that, of course, videography. Our foundation has got wonderful people who are very skilled in that. I'm not, I have no idea. I love taking photographs, but beyond that, I have no idea. But I get. And I don't see it. I get the feedback saying, uh, from people saying how your foundation puts out fantastic material onto the internet. And they do, and it's, and it's rapid, uh, and it's testimonies from the people who are out there in the forests as well as responses to, uh, but, you know, a conventional media doesn't get covered. Those folk who are up there today blockading will get zero coverage on the ABC or on, uh, in the, the local media or, uh, look, we had a press conference the other a week ago on a court case about swift parrots in Tasmania. And I said to Adam Burling, our media fellow Adam put out a media alert saying that we think we're going to lose in the morning and they'll all come. But he refused to, and they didn't come anyway. We won the court case. Uh, and it's now proceeding. This is one that involves my conviction for, uh, refusing to move when the loggers were knocking down swift parrot trees. And the law says they must immediately stop logging if it's reported that there are swift parrots there. And we've done that. But they didn't. We got arrested instead. And but we won this court case and there's no coverage. Uh, so you've got to get your own media out there. And we have got a fantastic crew of people who are doing that and, uh, and informing the public, of course, you know, you're getting tirades from the other side. Uh, basically what happens with environmentalists is they don't argue the environment, they zero in on you a personal attacks because they can't win the environment. The public's with us on the environment, but the personal attacks are aimed at saying to the public, there's something strange about, uh, people who defend the environment. Yes, they're tree huggers. They're sandal footed do gooders, or they're, uh, Hugh and pine condom makers or whatever else we've been called over the time. And sometimes they get violent about it as well. Um, you know, but, uh, it's a great privilege to have such fantastic people working to get the message out there. And as that statistic I just quoted, 80% of Australians want native forest logging stock. Well, when the environment is allowed to speak for itself, people will respond to it.
00:35:20
S1: I could ask you questions all day. And I wanted to quote from the very beginning of your book, uh, the foreword by Geraldine Brooks, who you mentioned earlier was, uh, you must have met when she was just a cub at the age. Now, of course, a celebrated author. But she wrote, there is so much at stake. The work is urgent. The time is now. So the simple question is what can the people in this audience and the people listening to the podcast, um, take away from this? What's what's one thing that everyone can do this week or this month or this year to make a difference and join the fight?
00:35:55
S3: Well, the first thing is don't vote for fossil fuel extractors, don't vote for forest destroyers. Don't vote for people who want to turn a park into a tennis court. Don't vote for, uh, the marauders of the environment and the people who are captured by, uh, the corporate billionaires. Uh, that's so important in a democracy. It's fascinating looking at the British election results coming in today, a big change going on in the world. And I think we'll see that in America. And I think we'll see that in Australia. The next elections are going to be fascinating. Uh, as people are looking for something more substantial in terms of giving security back to the future on, on this planet. Um, we're all wealthy. We can give a small amount of money to the social justice or environmental outfit that takes our, our hearts. We can leave part or all of our fortune to people who are going to keep battling for the planet in one way or another. Did you know that, uh, philanthropy in Australia, 1 or 2% maximum goes to the environment? Um, I don't know why that is, but, uh, that's how it is. And of course, you can also, uh, contact and be in contact with local members of Parliament. We are in representative democracies. There are servants. I know I've been a parliamentarian for 32 years. I know how it works. We are the servants. Elected officials are the servants of the people. It's not the other way round. And you simply have to ask, are you going to cross the floor to vote for the 25% tax on the gas extractors who are making billions at the expense of the planet? Are you going to vote to end native forest logging? Are you going to cross the floor to support any motion to end native forest logging? I'm talking about the national Parliament here. And if they say I can't, I won't. I say you just have to make it clear. Well, I'm going to vote for somebody who will. Are you going to vote so that the old thing, nurses pay their taxes. But some of the biggest fossil fuel extractors, gas extractors, coal miners. Now Matt Canavan wants oil wells in the great. In the Great Australian Bight, and it won't be long before they'll be wanting them back on the Barrier Reef itself. Are you going to vote for people like that or not? It's a big it's a big question facing us all. But funding organisations who are standing up to that are is very, very important. And last of all, um think about taking direct action joining this the street March for a Safer World for an independent Australian view on the world for the protection of the environment and um, you know, becoming part of an, and standing for parliament yourself. I, uh, you know, the, the first box to be ticked for anybody who, who is worthy of being in our parliament is they're saying, oh no, not me. I don't want to I don't want to be in politics. Right. You've passed the first test. And and, uh, we we are politicians are just ordinary people, but they are it's been taken over by the corporate sector. And, you know, I know from being in politics, they're there every day. They're riddled through the Parliament people telling you what's good for the mining industry. They never talk about profits. They always talk about jobs. And, uh, it's very, very important that we get people who are prepared to stand up to that in, in our parliaments. Well, you know, a lot. And finally, yeah, go and visit the Tarkine. Go and look at those forests that are being threatened in south east New South Wales. Take it a go across to Karratha and look at the world's greatest rock art site. Over a million rock art pieces, including the earliest depictions of human faces on the planet, including Tasmanian tigers in Western Australia, including the giant kangaroo, which we know was spotted 12ft high. Sorry about the non metrics there, but uh, because there it is. Pictured 2030 000 years ago by the indigenous, the artists, the great artists of the world at that time. And what are they doing putting in gas factories. And the first thing that Murray, what our Minister for the environment did was to go over there, speak to Woodside, this giant marauding, nasty company, then go to the labor ministers for mining and so on in Western Australia, but refused to see Rayleen from Save Our Songlines. The Aboriginal representative opposing what they were doing didn't would refuse to speak. This is our Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Murray Watt, handpicked by Anthony Albanese and ticking off on expansion of the gasworks, which leads to some more bulldozing at the margins of that art site. But acid exudates coming out of those chimneys, which there's a lot of scientific debate about this, but which at the minimum threatened to erode that greatest rock art site on the planet. Go and have a look at it. It's just fascinating. It's just worth a trip to WA to see that at Karratha. Oh, and be optimistic.
00:42:05
S1: I love that. I actually just wanted to conclude by reading just a small passage from the tail end of your book. Um, this is it with action in mind. Also, take time to dance, to love and be loved. To visit and entertain, to clap and perform, to buy and sell. To ponder and decide. To give and take. to commit to care and be cared for, or to read a book by the river. Above all, take time to enjoy this remarkable planet. So it's nice to end on a note of optimism. Thank you again, Bob, for speaking here.
00:42:41
S2: Thank you Conrad. Thank you.
00:42:47
S1: To enjoy more in-depth journalism from the latest edition of Good Weekend, visit us at theage.com.au or smh.com.au. This episode was produced by Konrad Marshall and edited by Tim Mummery, with technical assistance from the team at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick oversee our podcasts, and Melissa Stevens is the editor of Good Weekend. If you enjoyed this episode, follow our podcast and leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. And thanks for listening.
