Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / “Godfather of the Greens”, fmr Senator Bob Brown

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“Godfather of the Greens”, fmr Senator Bob Brown · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
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What should become of environmentalism and of the left and of capitalism and of planet
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earth?
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Today's guest is one of the most successful environmentalists in Australian history.
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Probably would have to make the top 10 list of most important and influential environmentalists
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of all time in the world is a former senator Bob Brown.
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He actually co-founded the world's first ever green party.
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It was in 1972 and it was right here in Australia in Tasmania.
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He then went on to become the first parliamentary leader of the Greens Party in Australia and was
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the leader of the party in Parliament for decades.
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Now interesting side note that we don't discuss in this conversation when President
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George W. Bush visited Australia in 2003 as a little thank you to his regional junior
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undersecretary deputy sheriff in the South Pacific for joining the Iraq war.
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He gave a big speech to a joint session of both houses of Parliament and during this
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speech that the US President was giving this august, this illustrious event, then Senator
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Bob Brown stood up in the chamber to find the president of the United States to his face
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and shouted and yelled that if the president respected international law then he would
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be respected and if he didn't then he would not.
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Today Saddam Hussein is gone and no one to see Senator Brown, I warn you, Senator Brown
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will excuse himself from the house.
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Senator Brown was ejected from the chamber and suspended from the Senate.
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I play that moment for you just as one small example of a very long history of protest
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and defiance.
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First as an openly gay environmentalist at a time when homosexuality was still illegal,
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later as a leading voice for environmental conservation and for the Green Movement worldwide.
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Bob Brown is now 80, he was kind enough to come by the uncomfortable conversations studio
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for this wide-ranging chat about strategy and tactics and activism and capitalism and
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what's going wrong and what's going right and what we're all doing here and his own mortality
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and everything else.
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He has a new memoir, it's called Defiance, Stories from Nature and its Defenders, he's one
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of the most iconic figures in Australian politics and environmental activism, please enjoy
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the one and only Bob Brown.
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I've heard you talk about trees as being creatures, which I thought was quite charming.
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Why do you use language like that?
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Well, if you go right back to the evolution of life on planet earth, we're talking about
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three billion plus years ago, we all come from the same little cellular organisms that
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it is trees do, so did dinosaurs, so does swans and anything else you see moving around
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the place and all those things growing up out of the ground.
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We do have that early relationship, but of course we evolved in the trees a couple of
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million years ago and decided to come down and stand on our two feet and move rapidly
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through the forest instead of through the forest canopy.
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That's why we've still got this grip between our thumb and our fingers, which is branch
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size.
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Our eyes are set back in our face so we can move safely through the forest and we've got
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the curl of our ears which can pick up the faintest sound of the forest floor.
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We're very much a creature of the trees of planet earth and there is a relationship between
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us and them.
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I think that's most poignantly expressed by Amrita Devi, the Indian woman who in 1730
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stood up to the Maharaja who wanted to come and log her forest, her village's forest,
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to make a new palace and she said, no, you don't.
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We have a spiritual relationship with these trees and he offered her a big bribe which
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she wouldn't take.
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So then these are the original tree huggers, the Visnoy people, literally.
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Amrita's people, yes, hugged the trees and the Maharaja's men beheaded her and her
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three daughters and then more than 200 others of the villages before in a fit of remorse
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he backed off and went to the village to express his sorrow.
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And Amrita was expressing a very deep relationship we have with nature.
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You see it in the 250 million indigenous people who still live with nature around the planet
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on all the continents except perhaps, well, except Antarctica.
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And we've divorced ourselves from that relationship and it's to our detriment because I now
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as a doctor, a medical doctor, that the majority of people back in the days when I was sitting
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in the surgery writing prescriptions were there because of anxiety, because of the stress
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of modern living, they had stomach ulcers or blood pressure or skin rashes or they couldn't
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insomnia, they couldn't sleep at night.
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And yet we're tracing the biggest treasure house for allowing human anxiety, which is nature.
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And it's great to see these days, Scandinavian doctors being given the law for right to write
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a prescription for a 15-minute walk in the forest instead of another valium.
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Right.
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I mean, the flip side of the health risks of living in modernity is also counterbalanced
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by the fact that modernity has given us vaccines that protect us against diseases and
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better hygiene and clean drinking water and so on.
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Indigenous populations don't tend to live as long as we in the developed world now do.
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How do you balance the two trade-offs?
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How do you think about them?
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Well, we can have our cake and eat it too when it comes to this.
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And in fact, we can't do anything else.
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But the problem is that with our technological wizardry, where we've overstepped the
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mark and we're now destroying nature at the greatest rate in history, when there's less
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left than ever before in history.
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And in fact, in my lifetime, and I've just ticked over 80, three quarters of the volume
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of the world's wildlife has been destroyed, that's just in my lifetime.
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Wow.
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It's astonishing.
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And you know, since I finished this book, Defiance, the British Office of Actuaries, these
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are people who weigh everything up and do extraordinary assessments as well as exit
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the university, which is a specialist in climate change, says, and I'm always hesitant
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about this sort of thing because I'm not a gloom and doom merchant, but they are experts.
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And they say, if we get two degrees warming by 2050, that's when kids now are 25, and
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we're going to overshoot, that's the way we're going, then there'll be a 25% collapse
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in the global economy, and two billion be in front of that billion people dead.
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And those figures double by the end of the century on current and trajectory.
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And yet they've got no coverage.
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But if we get a quarter percent interest up or down or a 10% fall in the stock exchange,
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it's front page.
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So we're cut off from...
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Well, there's an exhaustion, isn't there, Bob?
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I mean, I feel there's a climate chaos exhaustion for people's...
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No, no, no.
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People feel it's futile, they hear stats like that and they go, I've been trying to address
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this since the early 90s.
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We didn't do that when Hitler was broke the peace agreement, you know, it was dancing
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in the streets in London in 1937, eight when peace in our time, Neville Chamberlain flew
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back.
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The church bells were ringing a million people in the streets, hooray with...
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We're going to have peace in our...
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And thirdly, denying the reality of what was coming, and 18 months later, they had to
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change around and address it.
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We're in the same situation now.
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It is coming.
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I don't subscribe to, we're tired of this.
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I do subscribe to, we're denying it because it's more comfortable, so we won't think about
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it.
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I mean, aren't they not flip sides of the same emotional valence in the sense of...
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Of course, I'll grant you that there are a lot of people who make a lot of money out
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of the status quo for whom it's convenient, you know, the old saying about it's hard to
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get a person to understand something that when his paycheck depends on his not understanding
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it, there's a lot of, you know, people who are defending the status quo for unconscionable
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reasons.
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But among my cohort of broadly lefty, broadly climate sympathetic science-driven people,
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I do sense this paralysis that you don't exhibit and never have, but a kind of doom,
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a preemptive doom grief about not just climate, but biodiversity loss, the threats to liberal
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democracy, the status of the West, rise of China.
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What's going to happen to Putin?
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What's going to happen in Gaza?
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It's just a sense of overwhelm that makes people...
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It is, it's everywhere, Josh, but the point is that that was the situation too before the
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Second World War as an example.
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And we human beings do tend to think this is all too hard.
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We can't do anything about it until somebody comes along and marshals the force to do something
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about it.
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And that's what's missing on the left or the green side of politics at the moment, are
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those leaders who are going to come out of the woods and stare down the people who are
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wrecking the planet, you know, we've got corporatization of governments, whether it's democracy
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or autocracy or dictatorship, whether it's Putin or Xi or Trump or in Australia's case,
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Anthony Albanese.
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The corporates have taken over, and I've got a chapter in the book about the succession
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of American presidents who warned about corporate take over going right back to the...
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Eisenhower's famous phrase about that, and I came back to the 17th president.
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Oh, yes.
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And it's happened, they took a quote I had from Lincoln out of the book because they said
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it's been shown to be not true, but he had a number of quotes warning about corporate take over
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as well.
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But then you get to Woodrow Wilson and later on, the New Deal president, Roosevelt and so on.
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And of course, Dwight Eisenhower, on the flip side, you've got JFK in early 1970, talking
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about our need to pass on the world as beautiful as we received it.
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JFK wasn't talking about anything in 1970, he was dead.
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1960.
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1960, right?
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Yes.
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And this poetic call to the responsibility of us all to pass on the world the better for
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having been here.
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And then Johnson afterwards put that into legislative, well, he put it into Congress form,
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if you like, our responsibility to enjoy the world, but at the same time, pass it on to
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those coming after us in the same acceptable state, beautiful state.
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And then wasn't it Nixon of all people who created the Environmental Protection Agency
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and, like, did a whole bunch of green, half the last person you were in, the last president
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you would expect?
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Well, later on, it was Maggie Thatcher, who really made a stand on climate change and
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said, this is serious.
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And what's more she said, it's up to the rich countries to pay the poorer countries to
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deal with climate change and as we save the world from it.
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I mean, this is why I started with this idea about trees as being creatures and the
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poetry in your book and the poetry and the way that you talk about our relationship
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to the natural world, because it can get a bit, the whole conversation can get a little
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bit as well as being doomy, it can get a bit arcane and bureaucratic and technocratic.
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And there are lots of conferences and the prime minister is going to go and he's going
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to try to hammer out a deal with this or that and then everybody's eyes kind of glaze
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over.
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It does seem to me that we need to be able to anchor your aspirations in the other
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side.
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In the poetry as well.
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You know, it's not only in the poetry, Joseph, it's in the action because deep in the
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heart of everybody is a yen to protect nature.
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You know, you can take the wild out of, you can take the person out of the wild, but you
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can't take the wild out of the person and I must adhere that it's every parent's responsibility
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to take their kids to the bush and to the beach and repeatedly do that, leave the tablets
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at home because this is such an important part of who we are and not being fearful or
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disdainful or neglectful of nature down the line is incredibly important and if we deprive
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our children of having experiences with nature, we're sure it's treating them and we shouldn't
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do that.
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That said, there's in Tasmania, the island state of Australia, is the Tarkoan rainforest,
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the biggest temperate rainforest in the country and they're wanting to log it and are trying
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to do so at the moment, but my foundation and these, a combination of quite young people
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and quite old people in the middle of the nest, nest builders and people who are raising
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children and so on, so they can't so readily go out there, but this can, thousands of people
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have been out there, hundreds have been arrested, but the statistics are that in 2019 they
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wanted, they had a three-year plan for 3,600 hectares of that forest to be logged, so far
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they've managed to log 60 hectares and that's a peaceful direct action which they've made
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illegal, nevertheless people go out there, they've paid fines, a couple have gone to jail
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for a couple of months for peacefully protesting to defend the environment.
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I mean, you were being locked up half a century ago, weren't you, in the same state for
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similar reasons? That's right and like them, I've come out of a feeling better, I'm so glad I
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did that and they all say that and years ago with saving the Franklin River, the last great wild river
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in southern Australia from damn works for hydroelectricity and it's now one of the world's great white
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water rafting adventures along with others, hundreds of others, I went to jail and I was there for
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three weeks and the curious thing about it was that an electoral contrivance in Tasmania,
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the day I came out of jail, I was elected into the State Parliament and I can tell you that
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jail was a far friend of the place. Can you explain to people who are either too young to know
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about it or not Australian the importance of the Franklin River? I mean, you are sort of the
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iconic face of what is the biggest environmental success story from an activist perspective in
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Australian history and can you just give us a rough outline of what happened? Well, 10 years before
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beautiful lake, it was the Hedge Hedge of Australia, Lake Peter was flooded for a
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hitence of power and those people I arrived in Tasmania at that time and ran into them and
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they're wonderful people who tried to stop that happening but they didn't take direct action.
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Then you were a doctor at this point? Yeah, I went to
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still practicing here as a young general practitioner. So I was busy as I said in my
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surgery writing out scripts for people who had all the range of things that you see,
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but then I was asked to float down the Franklin River by a forester and he couldn't find
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anybody else still enough to do it and it was a transformative. This magnificent two weeks
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with side canyons and the deepest, one of the deepest canyons in Southern Australia,
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the Great Raven and ancient Ewan pine trees two or three thousand years old and leatherwood
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blossoms floating on the stream and the big rapids and seagulls and cormorants and platypus
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is surfacing and ringtile possums calling it night in the trees. It was a magically
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experience and we came around the corner at the end of that trip onto the Gordon River where
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they were about to anchor this dam and there was explosions and there was drills going and there
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was helicopters and the whole works there and it suddenly struck me. What were we doing?
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Destroying more wilderness and nature, this great storehouse for human rest, adventure,
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recreation to build, to get more electricity to build more tranquilizer factories. It just didn't
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work out and so since then I've been an environmentalist which means involved in preventive medicine
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because that storehouse of nature is good for human health but of course seven years later the
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dam was going ahead the bulldozers were in there they were outlying millions of dollars and
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we held a blockade, a peaceful blockade and 6,000 people went right out into the wilds,
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1,500 were arrested, 500 went to jail and there was a national election in Australia where
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the Labour Party in opposition changed its policy to saving the Franklin because there was
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such a problem. You spoke to that as well, you convinced them that this was going to be an
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electorally popular thing for them to do to differentiate themselves from the government by saying
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that we're going to be back in the incoming Prime Minister saw that he wasn't inherently
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environmentalist but he could see the votes changing on what had been because of the blockade,
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people at home were seeing the Franklin River in this process.
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This was suddenly on the nightly news like what's going on down there and what is this thing?
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Did you have a sense when you started protesting that that was possible? Were you motivated more
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by youthful idealism or... No, no, no, we were very practical about this and after the first
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trip down the river the second time got a 16-millimeter wind-up bollocks movie camera and made a film
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of going down the river the next time but by the time see when Lake Peter was flooded it was black
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and white TV by the time we got to the Franklin being flooded it was color TV and here we were
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working out of the little town that was drawn on the west coast of Tasmania it was an hours flight
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from Hobart and we had to arrange to get the media up to the blockade site that was 40 kilometers
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away deep into the forested river country and back in time to fly out their film or to arrange
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to get their film it was a very big tactical thing but we knew that we had to get the wilderness
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the beauty of the rivers and the wildlife and the forest speaking for themselves and they did
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that through the through the modern telecommunication modern television and it struck a chord with the
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Australian people and they voted out the government that wasn't supporting it wasn't stopping the
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and brought in a government that was and then he went to the high court and four judges to three
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and they will the river because of its world heritage status to be saved it's interesting I
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invited you a few moments ago to talk about the poetry of our our relationship with nature and
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you dodged that question and then when you were talking about the the experience of going down
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the river you're talking about the ringtail possums and you're talking about the platter
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possums and you're painting this incredibly articulate and beautiful poetic vision but then you
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followed that up by saying that this is a storehouse for human health it seems to me that you spend
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quite a lot of time emphasizing the benefit for humans in protecting nature is that a strategic
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it's a life it's my own life experience Josh I was a very turbulent young man
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and I looked at it was the Cold War was on when I was going through university
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you know the Soviet ships carrying nuclear weapons to Cuba were stopped and I write about that
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in this book the chapter on the the Russian
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they keep it in their sacrifices Admiral who stopped a nuclear war effectively back then but
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it was the Cold War the madness you know the world saving philosophy of the day in politics with
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mad mutually assured destruction so nobody was a game to press that button but we're still
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settled with that and other dangers and we have to but I found in nature this tremendous
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personal resource and yes I do love the the poetry which is the speaking from heart to the
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rest of the living planet because we're of it we can't do without it can do without us but we
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can't do without it and we're selling out all the future of humanity at the moment and we're
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getting right to the brink of doing that because we're not taking action to protect the environment
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and here we are in Australia with a so-called progressive government it's not it's opening more
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coal mines it's exporting more gas and even this country uses and putting those greenhouse gases
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into the atmosphere and here we are at 1.5 degrees heat hotter than has been the average when I was
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a boy the sea level is already up 20 centimeters and it's rising faster green lands melting that's
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a six meter rise and it's as if no that's not happening I'm not talking about people here
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lacking I'm not wanting to front up to what's happening I'm talking about our governments
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they know this we've got the Australian government to the moment sitting on an intelligence report
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which is described as horrific the impacts on climate change coming for our country and the
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government won't release that in other words the government's cheating on its own people because
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it thinks they don't want bad news this isn't bad news this is the reality of where we are and what
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we have to deal with so yeah I love nature I'm very very grateful to it I must add that I'm
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happier than I ever have been in life now that I'm taking action on it after 30 years in state
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and federal parliament so I'm back out there with an environment group that's growing rapidly
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because people love to see what we're doing in pacefully standing up and people are doing that
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right around the world and I've written about that in the book as well and in much more dangerous
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circumstances than we have in this lucky free rich democratic country of Australia what so what
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drove you to create co create the Greens as the world's first green political party why transition
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from activism into the establishment well I realized that if you do respect democracies and I do
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you know like Winston Churchill and democracy warts and all is the best form of government
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which so far are invented and I could see plutocracy that is ruled by the rich was taking over
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and the environment was being left to the to the side now when you see something like that
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happening you want to get involved and to put it back on course and I ran into people like
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Petra Kelly the great German format of green who grew up in the state her father was a great supporter
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of the democrats and she could see as I could see that the old parties weren't for changing they were
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too captured and you needed a new entity out there speaking for the environment and giving people
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the opportunity to vote and so the the Greens in Australia now have 10 12 14 people in the national
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parliament and all the state and federal parliaments it's very much more difficult in the state's
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unfortunately because of the electoral system there but the action of the people themselves
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speaks volumes about that however for me there's nothing like getting out to people and saying
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here in Australia 70 80% of people one data forest logging stop but 70 or 80% of people vote for
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the parties which are actually financing that logging what logging did you say native forest
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native old growth forest still being logged in Australia for in Queensland New South Wales and
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Tasmania New South Wales has just created this great koala national park after lots of people
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went into the forest and protested they wouldn't happen without it and and the street marches
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and we're having national street marches in Australia in March March for the forest in March
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coming up and they'll be bigger than ever because we have enough plantations we don't need to be
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logging these forests and and and in fact I'm conservative when it gets to markets remove the
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subsidies being giving to the logging operations and they stopped tomorrow they simply not economic
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but we've got governments giving these all fuel rebates to loggers we've got money being paid
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for driving them up the highways in Tasmania they subsidise the logs being exported to China and
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Taiwan lastly the majority is going as wood chips these magnificent ancient forests with what
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they're irreplaceable old forests being turned into wood chips yeah because materialism economics
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has us by the throat and the other values in life which include love and wildness and beauty and
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our our indescribably
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inherent love of those coming after us and want for them to because if we know that next
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generation is going to be happy we're happy too but they've all been sidelined because the
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because they're priceless they have no price and in a market economy they therefore have no
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value or they have no price and this is an absurdity we have to get over and we have to get back to
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and the world heritage convention does this of course it not only protects
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the great natural wonders of the world but it protects the great human heritage of the world
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everything from the Grand Canyon to Westminster Abbey to the great pyramids and of course the
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Franklin River and Southwest wilderness of Tasmania when you say that it's priceless and it's
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very hard for the market to therefore put a price on it you're also skeptical of market solutions
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to these things because you know an environmental economist would say well let's just assign a
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value to the old growth forests that makes it that makes it no longer profitable for the old growth
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forest to be harvested right but you seem to think correct me if I'm wrong that the problem is
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deeper than that that you're never going to be able to shoehorn capitalism into being a trustee
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for the natural world well you know an environmental economist really I have I have they do exist
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I have seen koalas valued at three hundred and fifty dollars and you know the absurdity of this
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Josh as they get rarer the value goes up and so the the leave it to the market and you'll find
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that there'll be an impulsion to make all their creatures rarer because that will increase their
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value it's it no it does not work so what does being human beings simply voting for those
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values voting for the right of our children voting for peace voting for beauty
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the greater Lagos trahanas have had to come all the way from Lithuania to Tasmania to say
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how beautiful it was in the sixties and seventies echoing JFK said should we not leave this world
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a brighter place should not Tasmania be a beacon of natural beauty in a world that's otherwise
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drab and dreary why should we industrialize just like the other countries are in these days
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here we are the majority of people in Tasmania are employed by in for hospitality
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tourism and entertainment and the old industrial sites that were that funded those dams that
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wrecks so much of our rivers are either shedding jobs they've highly automated or they're
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depending more and more on public handouts and and you know the zinc words and how about
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got tens of millions of dollars given to it by government just the other day big international
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corporations being given millions of dollars where they couldn't survive in the market but
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no value to and and one of the suppliers of those MMG this is a chinese state owned company so
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president g actually has the last word on it has bought the rosemary mine in Tasmania and now they
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want to pipe across the palm and river into that kind of forest that I was talking about this
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ancient rainforest which has got relatives it's got this pieces of relatives of it in New Zealand
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and in and Patagonia and South America to put their acid waste out of the mine they've got cheaper
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options on their side of the well they got not sorry they've got more expensive options on
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their side of the river but leave it to the market and I just put it in the rainforest and
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everything there including the giant mast owls which our scientists have found in those forests
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breeding in those forests will be destroyed because they have they also have no value the standing
31:20
trees have no value they make nervous and panorama and over the way they're uh uh
31:26
human pines these are some of the longest living creatures on our planet standing they have no
31:33
cut down and and put into timber links they then become dollar value and they enter the market as
31:37
a positive this is crazy thinking we we all are good-hearted people we we do enjoy being loved
31:46
and we do enjoy loving others and that includes nature and so it's simply a decision that we're
31:53
going to protect these areas and here we've got trump opening up national parks you know they
31:58
are going to extract oil out of Alaska to heat up the planet and you know this uh
32:08
denial of what it is to be human this denial of what it is to live in a life where
32:15
we all appreciate the wonders of this brilliant little planet which so far as we know
32:21
out of hundreds of billions is the only one in the universe which harbors life and love and laughter
32:27
and we're giving it away and we're voting in people like that who have no empathy with it
32:35
we've got to get people in who do have empathy with it uh they're you know the great the greatest
32:42
leaders of the past do have that empathy with human beings and with nature and that's the challenge
32:48
that we 8.2 billion people have on this planet in 2025 there's the poetry I'm looking for
32:55
uh um you I mean so that kind of empathy for not just the natural world but for one's fellow man
33:02
in contrast to I think you said the draben did dreary uh you know alternative culturally speaking
33:08
I'm interested in your experience of going to Tasmania as uh what I don't want to be
33:14
pejorative against Tasmania beautiful place but maybe at the time when you moved there it was not
33:18
the most enlightened or progressive cultural space for a young gay man to be moving to um what was
33:24
it like socially and culturally because many people would have felt it was draben dreary uh well
33:33
yes I used to value at the coffee shop in Hobart there was a picture of two drag queens and one
33:40
saying to the other cheer up there they're in Sydney cheer up dearie at least we're not in Hobart
33:47
they're not in Tasmania but you see what they were doing was missing the point uh in Tasmania
33:53
the grew and and I had um a couple of young men come along to me and after the franklin river
34:00
and say because I come out in 1976 and did I cop it after that and this is just a carifold
34:07
this was more than two decades before homosexuality was even legalized in Tasmania it was the last
34:13
state in Australia to legalize homosexuality in the late 90s or 96 or something right
34:18
in your face 21 years in jail and not longer before that your face being hung and that's still the
34:23
case in many places around the world and you must never forget that however along came Rodney
34:30
Krum and Nick Turner and they got together a campaign and I have some some of the lighter moments in
34:38
my book are talking about that campaign because it was deadly serious that uh over the course of
34:45
those uh decade or two and and what they and my partner Paul they seem we've been together 30 years
34:52
now and and I wouldn't be here and so happy without having run run into a fantastic soulmate but
35:01
um got he he my first meeting with him was he asked me as a member of parliament who was open and
35:11
would I come and talk to the gay community about how to campaign and the first thing I did was say
35:16
we'll get yourself an opinion Paul it'll be bad but it's it's baseline and they did and it was bad
35:23
the majority of people thought that uh homosexuals and uh lesbians for that matter although they weren't
35:30
affected by the law because of will no queen victoria couldn't believe that women could love each
35:35
other so that was left out of the law but inherently discriminated against and um they did
35:42
but there they had the marker and every opinion Paul after those they campaign showed the public
35:47
changing and now of course there's an enormous majority you'd never think you could possibly go back
35:55
to uh the mindset that there was back then and was that a mindset that you shared how did you think
36:03
about your own you know a lot of people growing up in that period found it difficult to identify who
36:09
they were outside of a context of the identity or like you know perverted or broken in some way
36:16
yeah we were told all that you accepted and the jokes were all pejorative you know uh and we
36:23
felt bad about ourselves and I I tried a version therapy which they're now you know sensibly
36:29
realizing is absurd because uh we're our own created or god-given selves and we should
36:37
celebrate diversity and what did that involve what did the therapy involve electric shocks
36:42
mysteriously pictures of uh men you get electric shock and put out the picture of a woman you
36:48
get a glass of water and this was supposed to change the way your brain worked I I was pretty
36:52
desperate and and this is I went and sorted out because I was a presbyterian and I knew I'd
37:00
read some Paul uh and you know I there is a repressed I think a repressed man and himself and
37:09
it scores so much harm down the following centuries and it's so in full same same Paul I'm talking
37:15
about here yeah yeah he and other he's led us to this person he's led us to that group full of
37:21
invective uh not I'm not just against men's lapping with men men but women you know they should
37:28
walk them meet up behind their male and and not be heard etc that absurdity which defied
37:37
how we as human beings should be which is to treat each other equally and to try and bring out
37:44
whatever we can to make people happy and were you seeking that out from a religious therapist or
37:49
was this a legitimate testimony and health care profession uh this was in Sydney this oh this
37:54
was back to here yeah and and this was with um medical doctors trying to work out a cure
38:01
incredible um to stop what was potentially criminal behavior and you know that was uh I read
38:07
about it um there was a outfit in Texas doing it and and so I went to see if if it was available
38:15
here and here it was and I must say this though what I ran into there did me a lot of good I ran
38:22
into a series of doctors who were you know he go each along each side to get you so called therapy
38:30
who were not pejorative they were just saying oh yeah come over here but you know there wasn't
38:36
the the fear I had of being hated and put down because of sexuality just didn't exist there so
38:44
that was enlightening and encouraging you know it's a small wins isn't it it's like you know
38:49
it's not a sin which is good it's just a condition which we're going to treat in this barbaric way
38:54
and it doesn't work exactly a step along the road yeah and now that's been seen as a barbaric
39:02
and what was the can you articulate the development in your thinking about what your own sexuality
39:09
and a point a tipping point at which you sort of just decided to own it yeah I was I was um you know
39:15
thinking about ending things and uh instead I love my family and my friends so I bought a ticket
39:23
to London and got out of it and I tell you what it was a very close thing when I got the London I
39:29
went and saw a psychologist and he said this guy beaming from the other side of the table Bob
39:35
why don't you accept who you are well and you know here we had the so-called permissive society
39:41
and what the flower power and uh the whole world was changing and fortunately I ran into that
39:48
and then I ran into other uh gay men and uh there's been women and uh who felt quite comfortable
39:57
with their lives so it was only a couple years after that back in Tasmania where
40:04
I asked well I went down the Franklin River as I explained earlier in my friend who I went with
40:09
I thought I had to tell him uh that I was going before I went because you know you get to talk
40:14
about those things cut the men floating down the river and he laughed and he said well I'm not
40:18
that you know he had a family and he said but I can tell uh uh what's a good looking man the
40:24
same as I can tell what's a good looking trout and he laughed about it but afterwards he encouraged
40:29
me to come out and I did and it was tumultuous and I got an equal number of violators and for
40:37
years after that uh copped it you know it was um very threatening uh I had a number of letter boxes
40:45
destroyed and um uh their threats and and the whole thing it's so good now that people don't have
40:53
to feel that way that we've got over it and I see the same with the global uh fix wherein
41:01
you know people uh uh uh uh uh doing terrible things to each other we don't have to have that
41:07
happened and we all have to work towards a future in which we live with each other on this planet
41:12
and that's why I'm in favor of global democracy uh the strange thing is that Americans and Australians
41:18
were the poll showed in huge favor of global democracy after the Second World War and then
41:25
if just a few years later we were we realized we were wealthier than everybody else and didn't
41:29
want to share that so we got uh we got away from it but we ultimately need a consensus on this
41:36
planet about such threatening things as artificial intelligence the destruction of nature the
41:42
spread of chemicals uh nuclear problem which is not getting worse it's uh they're with us and
41:49
is getting compounded and sensibly we should do that and the onus is on us to do it just before
41:56
we leave that I don't dwell on the sexuality question but the London therapist did that person save
42:04
your life? I don't think you saved my life I think going to London did but he gave me he opened
42:11
up a trapdoor and let the light in and uh it was you know that was pretty marvellous a simple thing
42:21
I was probably getting to I was inevitably finding my way there and getting rid of the saddle
42:28
of the repression that I'd learnt in my youth and so lovely now having you know I often get
42:36
couples coming up and saying oh thank you Bob for just being there and and mothers and
42:41
fathers saying it it's meant such a difference to my girl or to my boy and and just by being open
42:48
about it and and uh being in politics speaking about it of course and and you're pursuing as Paul says
42:56
I'm a green who happens to be pink not the other way around green who happens to be pink yeah right
43:03
I mean the the way that politics gets captured you were talking about the money in politics and
43:10
the risk of corporations controlling political parties there are various ways that political parties
43:15
can get captured they can get ideologically captured by their own base for example and
43:20
I wonder how you think about the utility of having a party structure versus doing activism outside
43:27
because my to be perfectly honest in my cohort of friends when they think about the greens today
43:34
they don't think about a party that is uncaptured or unthetted they think about a
43:39
party that is captured in just non-financial ways by ideological hobby horses by intellectual
43:46
group think by you know a particular dogmas that they're supposed to follow on colonialism and
43:52
whiteness and you know indigenous and gaza and trends and like that there's this sort of cohort
43:58
of correct thinking that goes on inside the greens party that you have to agree with it's not a
44:06
a big tent and that that can be as constraining as corporate as you shouldn't have to agree with
44:12
anything we all should be open to other people with different ideas but the greens from their
44:17
formation going back to Petrokeli in Germany and the first world's first greens party the
44:23
in Tasmania which came about because of the flooding of Lake Petra had four pillars and
44:29
our peace and and democracy and of course the environment and social justice it never was
44:38
a movement that was just environmental but I will say this unless the environmental
44:44
environment stays at the forefront we're missing the original charge the derivation of the
44:49
grains which was to protect this planet and it's wild and and indigenous but natural heritage
44:59
and that's it a premium the green vote is very very solid but we're seeing other people now
45:08
who have policies on other issues coming up and that are strong on the environment being elected
45:15
and we've got the situation in Tasmania now at state level where the crossbench
45:23
others the greens and independence is bigger than the labor opposition and is moving towards the
45:30
size of being able to take government and you know the Greens have shared government and are
45:35
sharing it in quite a number of jurisdictions in Europe and whatever happens that in the
45:43
environment you know is down on the agenda at the moment we're all too busy wanting to get more
45:51
and worried about quite rightly the the spiraling cost of housing and of food and insurance
46:01
insurance has gone up enormously because of climate change and yet the majority of Australians
46:08
are voting for more coal mines more gas fracking more burning of forests we have to
46:15
well they don't have an option do they really I mean they if they want to if they want to pick one
46:19
of the two big parties the way people think about it is they're voting for a prime minister and both
46:22
of the candidates are in favor of those things no no they're voting against their children they
46:27
should vote for the Greens or for the Teals or for the Independents who are who are there they do
46:31
have the choice and most people are voting for their children to go to hell because of this
46:37
extraordinary threat we have to survival of the ability of life to survive on this planet I
46:45
go back to those figures again earlier on we are confronted we're a warming planet we're just
46:52
seeing the start of the massive cost that's now in the trillions of dollars per year because of
46:58
the added severity of storms and bushfires and avalanches and all right but if people thought
47:06
that they were voting for that they wouldn't right I mean if you think about what's going through
47:11
the mind of the vote I can't let you get away with that Josh people know that that's the situation
47:17
and you ask any right but they don't think that the green candidate is going to change it
47:21
well that's because they're dismissing it as not being important because it's not one of the
47:28
it's not a republican or a democrat or in Australian terms a liberal or labor as if they have
47:37
a mortgage on your vote and if you vote for them you vote for the consequences you said you're
47:45
a greenie who happens to be pink should the green party be a green party that happens to be
47:52
pink because I think it's perceived as being a pink party that happens to be green at the moment
47:58
as well if you've listened to this much of the episode then you must enjoy it presumably unless
48:03
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that's fine I'll see you the next free episode I guess take care