The former Australian senator sits down with Andrew Mueller to reflect on the highlights of his political career and how he became leader of the world’s first Green party. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
You are elected to be a leader, not to be a follower, not to be told what to do by rich, influential sectoral interests, including the miners, the loggers and the people who want to exploit nature, let alone exploit people and take them down.
So your job is to be in there advocating.
But nevertheless, my experience is if you stand up and confront them and explain to people why you're doing that, you'll prosper.
This week's guest has spent most of his life swimming against tides, running into headwinds, hacking through jungle.
These challenges have held no fear for him, metaphorically or actually.
Bob Brown, former Australian senator, inaugural leader of Australia's Green Party, has made his love for Australia's wilderness, Tasmania's in particular his abiding cause.
A new film, the Giants, chronicles Bob Brown's efforts to persuade his fellow citizens to care for it as he does.
I'm Andrew Muller and I spoke to Bob Brown for the big interview.
I wanted to start at the start and talk a bit about the political journey you've been on.
But I thought if we begin at the origins of it, is it right that you started out in life as basically a, you know, a Bob Menzies liberal, by which I mean for international audience, an Australian conservative?
That's right.
And Bob Menzies was arguably the most prominent prime minister that Australia had ever had.
He was a very staunch monarchist.
In fact, when the Australian pound was changed to dollars, he tried as prime minister to have the dollar called the royal.
But there was a bit of an upset about that and he backed off and we've got dollars instead.
But he was a great orator and we had.
He had a referendum against the Communists in 1954.
And I was quite astonished when the referendum went down and people said, no, we're not going to ban the Communist Party.
That's in conservative 1950s Australia.
But it didn't take me long to start questioning that background that I had as a youngster, brought up as a Presbyterian with parents who supported the Liberal Party.