Pacific policies of Australia's balance-of-power Greens
Updated
Australia's Labor Party alliance with the Greens in the hope to form government has put our guest today, Green's leader Bob Brown, firmly in the spotlight - but what does this mean for the Pacific?
It could still be another week before Australians find out who will have the numbers to form government. The numbers tipped back to the Labor Party this week when Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie announced Thursday that he would back Julia Gillard's attempt to form a minority government.
The numbers this morning are 74 to Labor and 73 to the Liberal coalition - 76 members are needed to form government. However, three independents who may have Liberal leanings are still undecided as to which party they will support.
On Wednesday the Greens party signed a agreement with Labor with one of the main conditions having a cross-party committee on climate change.
Geraldine Coutts sat down with Senator Brown to discuss the Greens' position on a range of Pacific matters.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Bob Brown, leader of the Australia's Greens political party
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BROWN: Thank you good to be here.
COUTTS: Now then we had a bit of an historic signing with leader of the Labor Party, Julia Gillard, yesterday where you signed on to support in essence the Labor Party on a number of things, to support supply and that there will not be votes of confidence that you'll join in. Is that sort of in essence the signing?
BROWN: Yes, that is to give if there is a Labor Government with Prime Minister Julia Gillard continuing in that role, is to give her and that government the assurance that the Greens won't be blocking any supply bills. In otherwords government will be funded for the next three years and also to assure her that we will not be supporting somebody else coming forward with a no-confidence motion.
COUTTS: Now Mr. Brown, if we can get onto our patch, which is the Pacific and the Labor Party in recent times has not really shown a lot of interest in the Pacific. Kevin Rudd was chair of the Forum, but didn't play much part in any of the functions there, he handed it mostly over to Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith. What is the Greens attitude to the Pacific?
BROWN: Well, we don't agree with either of the big parties in the level of attention they give to the Pacific and indeed you can extend that to our near northern neighbours. The Pacific is a highly important part of our region, it's part of our neighbourhood and I am very concerned that we need to put a lot more effort into our relationship with the Pacific. I think that, for example, we have in mind the Pacific all the way down the line, when it comes to Australia taking a much more active role in climate change. We've had past governments have said well, we're not going to act on climate change, nor would we take climate change refugees. New Zealand has been much more positive about that. We, of course, need to play a role with refugees, but perish the thought, much better that we had action to reduce Australia's role as the worst atmospheric polluter with carbon in the world outside the Arabian Peninsula. Australia has got a lot to do there. A simple thing like ending the logging of Australia's forests and woodlands would reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent, but neither of the big parties will do that. You will see that is not written into the arrangement with Labor, so that's a work in progress.
COUTTS: Now Mr. Brown, the Greens join with the Coalition to defeat the ETS Rudd trading bill in the past. Why was that, if you were so keen?
BROWN: Because it was a prescription wich made the coal industry happy, but it had failure written all over it and the Climate Institute and other experts who have looked at that legislation showed that it would actually increase greenhouse gas emissions out of Australia. To do that, the big polluters simply were going to buy credits overseas. In otherwords, go to the Pacific and buy credit by either having renewable energy or more likely saying we'll pay to keep a patch of rainforest in tact. Now we need to do that, we need to help people maintain their forests outside the country and the best way we can do that is by starting, ending the destruction of forests here in our own country. But we really need to be able to do much better than that. That deal would have given $AUS20 billion over the next ten years to the polluters. The Greens proposal for a carbon tax takes $10 billion a year off the polluters and puts it into restructuring our industry to renewable energy and helping against any increases in power prices. Mind you, doing nothing, we know will put power prices up by 13 per cent at least by 2020.
COUTTS: I was going to ask you, isn't it over simplification to say that something is better than nothing in the first step?
BROWN: Yes, it is and we have had that a lot, but the Australian people are smarter than that and they voted for the Greens in record numbers. Our vote was up by 50 per cent almost in this election, because they want action on climate change, they understand it, and they are dismayed by the failure of both the big parties in Canberra to take real action. Well now we've got an arrangement with Julia Gillard that there will be a commission looking at action on climate change, that is a carbon price, whether it comes through an emission trading scheme or whether it comes through a tax or some combination of both, that everybody on that commission will be in agreement at the outset where the carbon price is needed. That was Labor policy going into the election. It was the Greens policy going into the election. We're now simply wanting to make that policy direction the best possible by curbing climate change and I do that with very much in mind our Pacific neighbours who are much more threatened by climate change arguably per person than we are in Australia. Devastating as climate change has already been to our crop lands like the Murray Darling Basin and the prospect of losing the Great Barrier Reef it by mid century if we don't act. We're very aware of that, but the Greens are the action party on climate change and that's writ large in the agreement that we signed with Labor yesterday.
COUTTS: Well, the parliamentary secretaries have now both resigned. Will the Greens be pushing to see that the Pacific is represented through some kind of parliamentary secretary, because I think the minister for Pacific Island Affairs, Mr Bilney sometime ago. How will the Pacific be represented?
BROWN: Well, that's a very good question. We have not discussed that with Labor, nor did we discuss it with the Coalition, with Tony Abbott. But I can assure you that these issues, we will still be a party of ten in a parliament of 240, but these are issues we are very keen on. Christine Milne has been to the Pacific. She is our climate change spokeperson. She is acutely aware of our need to be much more active on climate change, but we are also acutely aware we need to be much better neighbours than we've been in the past in very many ways with our Pacific neighbours. So we will be active on that front and I can assure people in the Pacific we have them very much in mind in our future relationship with government, even if it's a Coalition Government, that is part of our responsibility.
COUTTS: Now Mr. Brown, you have already mentioned refugees and asylum seekers and of course we know that Tuvalu and Kiribati have shopped around quite actively to try and find another nation to host them, because they are sinking fast. Australia in the past has said no. Is that a door that will open?
BROWN: I would hope so, it is irresponsible of Australia to be arguably per person one of the worst polluters in the world and then to say well, but we will not take responsibility for the outcome of that. I was horrified when that was put forward by the Howard Government originally. As I say, New Zealand has had a more responsible view of that. But yes, it is part of our job to try and change the thinking of the old parties in this country, to recognise we as a nation are very, very much responsible for being better neighbours to the Pacific.
COUTTS: Nauru, what is the Greens stand on Nauru? Do they think that that asylum centre should be reopened?
BROWN: No, we don't. We've made it clear that we don't support the Coalition's move to reopen on Nauru, even though I note that the authorities there have said they are wanting it. Ditto for Timor Leste. We think there is other ways which we can be good neighbours for Nauru and Timor Leste. Rather than putting our asylum seeker responsibilities, we should bring asylum seekers, refugees ashore in Australia and process them in our own country, rather than putting that responsibility onto Nauru or Timor Leste and I have very clear recollections of the mental trauma that came to refugees when they were put on Nauru before, the desperation that came through that marked many of those people, who ended up coming to Australia and New Zealand as valid refugees, they weren't illegal, they were legal, they were seeking refuge and they had a reason to do so, but they in some cases have been traumatised for the rest of their lives by that harsh attitude from the Howard Government. We don't want to see that return.
COUTTS: Ninety per cent of the successful asylum applications of the applicants who are on Nauru are in Australia now anyway, so obviously that is not a situation that works?
Your minders are wanting to move you on. So I will get in one more question. So we will move on, there is lots more I would have asked you about Nauru. But Fiji, New Zealand and Australia have got a very firm stand on Fiji? What's the Greens policy?
BROWN: Well, we are very strongly in favour of democracy and Fijians deserve democracy no less than Australia, New Zealand or the people of Kiribati. Yet it concerns me to see that Australia has so much more to do in terms of economic relationships with places like Fiji and Timor Leste again who are turning to look at what China has to offer. So they can, but Australia has to be very well aware of that and to see what better it can do to assure the people in the countries in our neighbourhood like those two that we are going to do more in the future to share the wealth of this great country in helping them develop education, the facilities and infrastructure that they would want to share in the good life that Australians already have.
COUTTS: How accurate is it to thank Mr. Bob Brown as Coalition partner with the Labor Party. Is it a Coalition?
BROWN: No, we are not a Coalition, but we are in a working arrangement and we have an agreement which we have made public and I hope there will be a Gillard government next week, but there may well be an Abbott Government and if it turns out the latter, we will work with them to get the best results we can.
COUTTS: Mr. Brown, thank you so much.
BROWN: Thank you.
