Unlike Labor and Liberal, the Greens conduct a gracious leadership transition
She conducted a complicated dual negotiation last year on the carbon package, selling the deal to the party’s 
hardliners ….also winning a $10 billion clean energy finance corporation from the Gillard government
”This is our opportunity to build on Bob Brown’s legacy,” – Christine Milne
A warrior for the wilderness, Brisbane Times, Lenore Taylor April 14, 2012 Bob Brown built the Greens into a powerful force in Australian politics. His successor faces a challenge in keeping it there.
It was the kind of civilised leadership transition no major party has pulled off in recent history – the popular long-serving leader stands down at a time of his own choosing ”to make way for new talent” and his loyal deputy is unanimously elected in his place. No rancour. No back-stabbing. Plaudits all round.
But Bob Brown – the father of Australia’s Greens – and its new federal leader Christine Milne have been tag-teaming like this through-out their careers. Brown the fearless trailblazer, Milne the organiser, the negotiator, the campaigner, not far behind.
As his successor, Milne signalled she would be taking on the biggest
challenge of her political career in a similar way as she began it.
Milne was a schoolteacher and mother of two young sons in 1989 when
the Canadian company Noranda proposed to build a pulpmill at Wesley
Vale in Tasmania’s fertile farming north-west where she lived.
With almost no resources she waged a 15-month campaign, building
alliances with farmers and fishers and local companies until the plans
were shelved.
Yesterday she said she aimed to overcome the misunderstandings between
the Greens and rural Australia, where coal seam gas, foreign land
ownership and biosecurity all offer opportunities for common cause.
”I intend to go out to rural and regional Australia – it has a
critical role to play in terms of food security, renewable energy …
I’m going out there as a country person to say to other country people
it is time that the Greens and country people worked together … the
Greens and the bush have misunderstood ourselves, and I want to put
that right.”
She said she also wanted ”a more vigorous dialogue with progressive
business”….
But she has also demonstrated she can drive a very hard bargain.
She conducted a complicated dual negotiation last year on the carbon
package, selling the deal to the party’s hardliners – even though
there is no guarantee it will be any tougher in its ambition than the
carbon pollution reduction scheme the Greens rejected in 2009 – but
also winning a $10 billion clean energy finance corporation from the
Gillard government to help make up for what she perceived as its
deficiencies.
And while the government waxes and wanes in terms of how proudly it
claims ownership of the deal, Christine Milne is clear. ”There is no
doubt in my mind had there been a majority government of either
Liberal or Labor persuasion we would not have a clean energy package
for Australia,” she said yesterday….. ”This is our opportunity to
build on Bob Brown’s legacy,” Milne insisted yesterday.
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