With hardly a vacant seat in the auditorium, Bob Brown kept the party faithful’s eyes, ears and hearts glued to the stage on Saturday night at the Lennox Head Cultural Centre to support Greens candidate Tamara Smith MP’s campaign for reelection for the seat of Ballina.
Five hundred tickets were sold for the event and Saint Bob delivered so much bang for everybody’s buck that the crowd floated out the door on a magical green mist.
After a heartfelt introduction by Delta Kay, the event’s host Tamara Smith said she felt a bit nervous in front of such a large crowd. ‘You are in for an absolute treat tonight. I really want to thank Bob and Paul (Thomas), for giving up their precious time to come up here. Bob is literally just coming up from the Tarkine and a recent arrest.
‘He’s been on the planet seven decades and he’s still getting arrested, defending our precious wildlife.’
Dedication to the Tarkine
Brown was on fire as he traversed his love for the environment and its creatures. His absolute dedication to the Tarkine was unmistakable.
The Tarkine is an unprotected area of northwest Tasmania that contains significant areas of wilderness and the largest area of Gondwanan cool-temperate rainforest in Australia. Brown is insistent that the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, is prioritising industry over the environment by not accepting his invitation to tour Tasmania’s takayna/Tarkine rainforest when she visited the site of a controversial mining proposal.
Tailings waste dam and pipeline in the rainforest
He says Plibersek visited Tasmania to meet with representatives and workers from the minerals company MMG about their proposal to build a tailings waste dam and pipeline infrastructure in rainforest near the town of Rosebery in the state’s northwest.
‘The Rosebery mine has two big waste repositories. These are many football fields in size with dams built up at the side and the waste has been put there over those many decades.
‘They want to put a pipeline across the Pieman River into the cathedral-like Tarkine rainforest, with a dam at the bottom of McKinney’s Creek in this pocket of that rain forest, and fill it with acid mine waste, which will kill every living creature in that forest. Tanya Plibersek is making that decision in the next few weeks.’
Direct line to the front line
A highlight of the event was when Bob spoke live to a tree-sitter in the Tarkine. ‘Tonight while we’re here Viola Barnes is up in the tree on her 40th night – she’s at the centre of the camp to defend the owls if Tanya makes the wrong decision.’
At the end of the evening, Ms Smith said it was very special to have Brown supporting her election campaign. ‘The crowd were not disappointed.
‘We watched never before seen footage of some of these incredible creatures and crossed directly to one of the protesters in one of the ancient trees that are being felled to mine iron ore.’
‘Bob’s stories highlight a new era of environmental activism and reinforce the need to radically influence the Coalition and Labor who continue to open new mines and side with powerful vested interests over protecting the planet.’
Photos Tree Faerie
An inspiration in the environment but in politics he let purity of policy get in the way of good works resulting in a decade of inaction by the Tories.
Rod, except that deficient policy – even if it wears an ALP sticker – should never just get a free pass.
The Senate is there for a reason as our Fed Parliament’s house of review of proposed legislation and NOT to just be an automatic rubber stamper of “Approved” upon everything that is proposed.
The Senate is where ‘negotiating’ to improve proposed legislation happens.
That Rudd ALP refused any negotiation to improve the then proposed CPRS, is all on Rudd ALP.
On Tory inaction, it was approved at three general elections by the general voting public, the enablers of it all.
Thanks to the greens being perfect we had a decade of Tory inaction and denial, why don’t the greens publicise that achievement and now their doing the same with the voice. And I don’t have trouble associating with the alp, their not perfect but are attempting to make progress.
Unstoppable Bob Brown, a living treasure and national hero.
Well actually his adani convoy certainly came to a full stop and again gifted an election to the Tories.
So lets get this right, the protest should not have happened, yeah. Everyone should just have waved through a Big New Carbon Bomb – the Adani Carmichael Coalmine abomination – going to be unleashed. Oh wait, that’s what your ALP did do and to this day yourself and all the other ALP fans don’t want to understand what what wrong for the ALP at the 2019 election.
Gifts, Own Goals, don’t come any better than Adani ALP in 2019 but best to stick to the worn out ALP spin doctoring lines, that it was everyone else fault and those mean enablers, The Voters, who didn’t fall for the ALP’s attempted con on climate action.
So many watermelons in one place.
Quite right. Welcome back, Bob.
Eve, that must have been the night of nights for the party faithful, I bet you could just feel the love in the air; it’s a real shame that these Greens love-ins lead to very little else; maybe they could spend more time trying to unify the party and properly support the Labor Govt’s referendum on the voice.
Keith, we get it, your one track minded anti-Greens phobia is always looking for a page to write upon.
The Fed Greens are broadly in favour of The Voice, only Greens Senator Lydia Thorpe has epublicly expressed reservations and outlined her position, again, last night on ABC QandA show. You can get onto ABC Iview and dial up last nights show to hear what Lydia Thorpe had to say.
Maybe I missed it, but have you given The Federal Nationals a going over for coming out last December in outright rejecting the Voice?
Maybe I missed it, but have you given Peter Dutton a going over for his ‘attempted innocent ‘running interference of the Voice?
It’s a waste of time giving the Nationals or Peter Dutton a “going over” we all know what right wing f…wits they are, it’s the Greens that badly need to lift their game and act more responsibly and actually achieve something.
If Lidia Thorpe continues on her merry way casting doubt and division about the “voice” it will put that referendum in danger of defeat as they are always very hard to pass, and Aboriginal people will end up with nothing, a position the Greens seem perfectly happy about and are very used to.
Keith, another group for you to give a going over, “Recognise a Better Way”, that Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine – they NOT Greens – are spearheading in opposing The Voice.
Joachim, here’s another reality check for you you certainly need it, Lidia Thorpe is the Greens spokesperson for Aboriginal affairs and along with Jacinta Price has been railing against the voice since it was being drafted by Aboriginal people at Uluru She also walked out on those negotiations because they didn’t fit her extremist narrative of “war and treaty”, and if she keeps grandstanding on this important issue she may succeed in derailing it from within. Adam Band had to rescue the situation, it just shows what a disorganized rabble the Greens are and your weak as piss attempts at justifying their ridiculous behaviour is only making a bad situation worse and convincing no-one. As far as Mundine is concerned he’s been a sell out to the Right for some time and his and Jacinta Price’s efforts in derailing the voice is predictable. There is no logical excuse for the Greens to derail this referendum as it should improve the lives of Aboriginal people; but it’s looking like the Greens have learnt nothing from their past mistakes with Kevin Rudd and Julie Gillard and are once again prepared to blow something positive out of the water simply because it doesn’t fit radical narrative. Like I keep telling you Joachim, your Greenspin is not working.
If only NSW Labor would run a strong, well resourced campaign in this seat they would take it! They only need to turn about 500 voter preferences – this is what the Greens are concentrating on doing. Makes you wonder why Labor don’t take the seat for themselves instead of propping up a lazy and personally unlikeable Greens person who is blue on the inside.
Melony, “well resourced” is the problem, we are well aware there are not many votes in it, but being a sitting member Tamara can outspend us multiple times over; what needs to happen is for enough disaffected National voters to vote Labor for once to remove the useless Greens, who they hate with a passion.