 Before we begin, let me just take a moment to acknowledge the first Australians, the traditional owners of the land that we meet on, and pay respects to their elders past and present. Crawford School, if you've not been here before, and I think many of you have, if you've not, Crawford School is ANU's public policy school, which has core expertise in the environment, development, public policy, political science, economics, a span of disciplines that Bob Brown nicely covers. So it's quite nice to have him here. Very happy to have him here, indeed. The running order is pretty simple. Gonna let Bob talk, something he does very well. Very much looking forward to, for about 30 or 35 minutes, something like that. And then he's nicely agreed to take some questions, which is good for another 25 or 30 minutes. And then he'll say thank you and there'll be a brief reception outside of this room for Bob Brown. Bob scarcely needs an introduction. Of course, the leader of the Australian Greens, someone I think everyone in this room admires for his courage, his dedication, his conviction, overall issues public policy, and in particular for his concern with the planet. Please welcome Bob Brown. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Well, fellow Earthians, it's lovely to be here with you tonight to reflect on the 68 years I've been on the planet, but also to project forward to the lifetimes of all you younger people. I think that's everyone in the room. And the fellow seven billion people now on the planet, there were two and a half billion when I arrived at Oberon with just after my twin sister in 1944, there's now seven billion and best predictions are, we're headed for some nine to 10 billion later this century. And we are a large and voracious mammal. And we come from a long lineage, which was enfolded into the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. In that Big Bang was our genes, if you like, was our ability to think, was this prescription by the universe of being able to reflect upon itself, think about itself and alter itself. And the sheer astonishing fact that that is being expressed through each of us as well as us together is one of those things that sometimes defies comprehension, but nevertheless puts us in a position of responsible management. We have determined that we are in control of this planet. That is a debate in itself because the biosphere can do without us, but we can't do without it. I'm reminded of my friend David Suzuki's story about going to his usual shopping supermarket and seeing a new sign in the window saying, animal's not allowed inside. So I got in his car and went to a place where he could shop. And the reality is that we have a finite planet and we have a rapidly growing consumption of that finite resource. And I'm very happy to be a bird out of the Senate cage able to engage in discussion about that trajectory forward if it isn't going to be the one that some scientists may leave us with a population of one billion at the end of this century rather than 10 billion. And Obama recently re-elected, has made a feature of saying that in his estimation, nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to humanity. One can debate that as well, but nevertheless we are in an age where Al Qaeda and other people are wanting to get the technology for nuclear weapons. And we have to think about what would happen were a nuclear, a handbag sized nuclear weapon to be suddenly announced as being at Sir James Station in Sydney or in the underground in any other great city for that matter by people who actually could demonstrate that they had that weaponry. Because one of the realities of our existence is that one person's knowledge ultimately becomes the knowledge of everybody and one person's technology ultimately becomes the technology of everybody. And of course the warriors are looking at Iran moving towards nuclear weapons status now and wondering whether to bomb or to keep talking. And that brings to the core the question of how are we going to from different cultures and with different ways of governing ourselves. How are we going to manage this planet without getting into a hell of a destructive period? And anybody who thinks we can't get into a hell of a destructive period has not read history. And the Santayana said, of course, if we don't know history, then we're doomed to repeat it. But on a worse scale into the future. And one of the things that's caught to this is how we govern ourselves. I was speaking to the Australian Chartered Secretaries in Melbourne this morning, the secretaries from the corporate sector about governance and spoke about the governance of the planet. Because ultimately, if we don't govern the planet, nothing much else we govern, including ourselves, matters too much. It's my very simple and simplistic, if you like, dictum that we ought to have across the doors of all the portals of power, after that matter, schools, businesses, universities, and certainly, parliaments. This question, will people 100 years from now thank us? And if we can't say yes to that, we should not be doing it. If we don't know what the answer to that is, then the precautionary rule says we should not be proceeding. However, far from that, we're in a world where technology is rushing rampant ahead, where the best we can say about global governance is it's in the hands of the corporate sector and the plutocrats of the planet. Be they in Beijing or Moscow or New York or Sydney. And the big contest now facing us is one between plutocracy and democracy, between the rule of the wealthy and the rule of the people. 400 BC or so, Socrates said, I'm not a Greek. I'm not an Athenian. I'm a citizen of the Earth. Well, for that and for other reasons, they had him drink poison. But there have been many thinkers right through all of recorded human history have recognized that we human beings are born equal and have a right to exercise an equal say in our society. And yet, extraordinarily enough, talking about the prospect of global democracy brings the house down. It certainly does in the Murdoch media. And earlier this year on the 23rd of March, I gave the third green oration in Hobart to mark the 40th anniversary of the first Greens public meeting and recorded history anywhere on Earth, which was held to do something about the fact that both the big parties were moving to flood the Lake Petter National Park. This beautiful, gently beautiful place, 900 feet up in the highlands of Southwest Tasmania for a pittance of power less than now you can get out of a small wind farm or a solar power station. And so they decided that the thing to do was to set up their own political party. I arrived in Tasmania three months after that in 1972 and fell in with this group of people and they had already developed policies for agriculture, for women having equality, for indigenous people, for the arts. It was a wonderful thing to run into. And so 40 years later, I found myself in the Hobart Town Hall paying tribute to that 40 years of green political presence on the planet. And I talked about global democracy because it struck me more and more in my public life and political life that we don't have a way forward unless we do it together. We're in an age of modern mass communications. We have a shared destiny on the planet and it's all the old great religions which in the main can't cope with this situation because of their separation have said, a house united will stand but a house divided against itself will fall. Why is that? Because people have been thinking and recognizing this reality for thousands of years. And now here we are, a house that knows all about what's going on in every wing. This planet is totally saturated as far as we human beings are concerned with information about what's happening everywhere else. And yet, when it comes to governance and according, extending the idea of one person, one vote, one value to everybody on the planet, it's Kelle O'Rourke in 2002 with my then lone other green senator, Kerry Nettle from New South Wales after the invasion of Iraq to furnish democracy in a place of tyranny, George W. Bush and John W. Howard and Mr. Blair told us, I thought, well, if we have to bomb, invade and bomb people to give them democracy, how about we at least aspire to a global move voluntarily to global governance, global democracy? If it's important at national level, surely it's important at global level. But the result was in our parliament, which is the fourth or fifth oldest continuous democracy on the planet. When a vote was, when I put forward a motion to the Senate that we should have a global parliament to deal with international issues, not domestic issues, but such as nuclear weapons or the gap between rich and poor, which maybe possibly could be funded by a Tobentax, a fraction of 1% of the international monetary transactions which take place in their billions of dollars every day. The vote was 74, effectively, against and to in favour all the other parties, including the Democrats at that time, voted against this concept. And as I was crossing the floor of the parliament to vote for my own motion, one of the senior other senators said to me, Bob, don't you know how many Chinese there are? And of course, yes, I said, of course I do. And all of us are equal. And we have to get beyond this fear of other. And we have a responsibility in this, the wealthiest country on the planet. And recent UN findings that we are not only the holders of the greatest wealth per person on the planet, but we have the greatest resource base in wealth per person on the planet. Surely it's beholden on us to be able to promote a system of governance into the future which gives us some hope that everybody will feel involved and therefore everybody will potentially accept outcomes. The history of democracy on that score is not new. Moving from enslavement to the vote in the United States took a civil war. And it was at Gettysburg in 1863 that Lincoln said, we are in this, I'm paraphrasing, effectively so that democracy shall not disappear from the face of the earth. And it has been a course afterwards where women aspire to suffrage. And whenever I get depressed, I go back and read about the suffragettes who in Britain at least didn't live to see universal suffrage. The First World War intervened and so on. And they went through great travails. We got the first vote in the world for women in New Zealand in 1895, followed a year or two later by South Australia. And then in 1901, I'm sorry, Federation, the federated colonies of Australia in their new constitution ensured the right of every citizen to a vote. And not least in that was the founding mother of Federation always airbrushed out of the picture, Catherine Helen Spence from South Australia who was an enormous advocate for not just one person, one vote, one value, but for proportional voting and ensured along with the then Attorney General, Andrew English Clark of Tasmania, that the provision is there in the constitution for us to have proportional representation in Australia if the parliament votes for it. You don't need a referendum for that. So why not then the ultimate in democracy which is global democracy? And I submit that we can't really call ourselves Democrats unless we move rapidly towards global democracy. At the moment we have a de facto governance of the world by corporations, by Coca-Cola, Exxon, BHP, Billiton and not least News International who when I spoke about this matter and I prefaced it with a little bit of back in March, a little bit of a introduction about our place in the universe. We are the only planet so far as we know where there is this awareness and this thinking going on. Although as Hawking and many other people will tell us there's potentially, there's a trillion planets out there and amongst those billions which ought to be suitable for life. And it's a bit, in no other way mathematically unlikely that there hasn't an art people out there are more advanced or things out there more advanced in terms of intellect than we are. Some would submit that's not a high bar to surpass. And it's interesting that Hawking and others have put forward this presumption that maybe it is that each time we're an intellect on a bias, in a biosphere on a planet that supports life gets to where we're at. It cannot help messing around in the view of short-term advantage to itself with that biosphere to the point where it does the unthinkable and doesn't only extinct fellow creatures but it extents itself as well, a very sobering thought. But if that's the case, I'm one of those and I suggest I'm full of a haul of other people who think likewise, we'd like to buck that trend and make sure that on earth, this mammal with this intellect and this ability to think about the universe on behalf of the universe goes on into the future for the joy ride into the universe to find out some of the things that we can only now dream to question about. And I had put those ideas forward as a senator and the Murdoch media and a few other commentators came forward, I should read here what I think and I'm just a Johnny come lately in this, there are such good thinkers around, Einstein was saying we must have global governance back in 1914. Many people long before that, hundreds of years before that, great thinkers, men and women have aspired to this logic that we must be together as a community and I'm not just talking about Western thinkers, I'm talking about Eastern thinkers as well. So let us resolve that there should be established for the prevalence of happiness and happiness of humankind, a representative assembly, a global parliament for the people of the earth based on the principle of one person, one vote, one value, one planet. And to enable this outcome that it should be a bicameral parliament with its house of review having equal representation elected from every nation on earth, that latter of course, to help the most obvious hurdle to this which is nationalism, which was of course a big halter to the Australian colonies getting together 120 years ago, this idea that each colony didn't want to give up its navy or its postal service to a central government which might do what. So that was met with some of these comments from the Australian media, extravagantly absurd vulgar theater we saw in the Sydney morning in the Herald Sun. This is crazy stuff, said John Fane on ABC Radio in Melbourne. Unreason and intolerance came from Andrew Bolt, that doyen of reason and tolerance. Ravings, said Chris Kenny in The Australian. He is known to detest the Murdoch press. It's strange, he sounded like a latter day, John Lennon wrote Patrick Carline and the Herald Sun. Gee, that hurt. Loopy, said Miranda Devine. Senator Brown repeatedly attacked corporation and rich individuals wrongly, said Amos Aikman in The Australian. Barking Mad wrote David Pendethy in Murdoch's Adelaide Advertiser and extra-terrestrial ravings, said Gerrit Henderson, known for sobriety and expansive thinking from the Sydney Institute. But all history has been, all those who have wanted to change history and those of us who aspire for global democracy are going to cop this, have been subject to that and much worse as history shows. But I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that this move for global democracy has come of age. The logic is unsurmountable unless you believe in some form of other global governance and the question is what is that? Churchill, a repeating previous thinker, said back in 1947, democracy is the best form of government, you know, it's very flawed, but it's the best form of government considering all the others. I put it as simply as this, we have a pick, democracy or guns, peaceful, decision-making, or violence. And our human history points to that being a stark reality facing us on a planet where we are moving to 10 billion people. If current projections are true, consuming 300% of our current consumption, where we're already consuming 120% of the replaceable, livable environment, and you know we can't happen. So it's common sense this big bang given intelligence going to be brought to play or do we leave it to those who do have the weapons of individual and mass destruction to have their way? It's a frightening thought, but for those of us who are inactive or feel it's all too much, that option is going to become loom more and more as we go down the line. I'm, you know, a greenie, my foundation, that Professor Tom so kindly mentioned at the outset, is not to think and to look at what is happening to the environment, but to help those people who are moving ahead to protect the planet's environment against great odds. And I'll talk about two cases in point here in this wealthy country of ours which should never have been left, even in this democracy, where we have a joust with democracy because it is bought and sold so easy. The decision making process in our wonderful democracy is so influenced by the might of the dollar. I read in today's Australian page too that the Liberal National Party Premier of Queensland, Cameron Campbell Newman, is in India flying around in private jets. I believe it because it was in the Australian. And over there with him is the Labor, Minister for Minerals and Energy out of the Gillard Government, Martin Ferguson, flying around in private jets. And with them is Mr Adani, the multi-billionaire coal developer who owns private jets, flying and meeting them at his hydrobad industrial complex. But glad to announce, ladies and gentlemen, that on a day where the front page of the age in the Sydney Morning Herald ran the not unexpected news from the CSIRO that the planet's heating faster than scientists thought and could end up heating by six degrees this century, but is likely to land at four to five degrees. In a world where we just saw a typhoon or hurricane Sandy in New York, with whatever else we might think about it, you can't prove any individual where the event is caused by climate change, a 20 centimetre sea-rise level having taken place already and that 20 centimetres on top of that surge reached way beyond where that storm would have got to a century ago. And yet, here we are with Mr Adani. You'll be pleased to know, about to get the tick off on the Australian Minister for the Environment, Tony Burke, who recently ticked off on the then world's biggest coal mine at Wandian on the Darling Downs, up to 11 kilometres across. That coal to be exported and burnt overseas, but it goes into our atmosphere as well as theirs. And this one's going to top that, it's bigger. And it's in the Galilee basin, you know, put a pin in the centre of Queensland and you're pretty close to it. Gina Reinhart's got one quite close and so has Clive got one quite close as well. This one's bigger than theirs. And it's going to lead to the burning of 10 billion tonnes of coal overseas. And putting that carbon dioxide into an atmosphere that's already overloaded and where climate change is out of control. And as Christine Milne was asked at doors at the Senate, on Thursday, what did she think about union slush funds and various other things? And she ignored that and said, I'm concerned today about the reality of the latest news of the tundra, permafrost melting, and zillions of tonnes of methane, 20 times more damaging to the atmosphere. From that going into the atmosphere to super accelerate a process of global warming that's underway and which is measurable and which is wearing the tripe out of everybody who thinks about it. And they rolled up their eyes and they looked the other way and she walked into the parliament totally unreported. If she'd said something sensational about a union slush fund she would have got a good run. And I've had a number of people say to me since then, why aren't politicians talking about the tundra, permafrost melting? And my answer to that is ask the press gallery. This is culpable behaviour. However, as J.K. Galbraith, the great American economist who sadly is no longer with us, said in the 1990s, our parliaments reflect almost exactly the people who vote for them. And we're not only in the world's richest per capita country but we're in one which was measured recently amongst the wealthy countries on the earth as to be the least content-winging about conditions in this lucky, fantastic, wealthy country of ours. And I subscribe that not a little part of that is due to the fact that we no longer have in the main a media that presents us with the news but instead of that we have a commentary from the media. And today's front page Australian was as disgraceful as ever with its headline about green-tape rules, riled conservation groups into action. The Business Council of Australia, ladies and gentlemen, has got the Minister for the Environment, Tony Burke and the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to reverse Australian environmental law to the pre-Whitlam era. And COAG is meeting later this week and the Labor government is hoping they will accept a transfer of Commonwealth powers over in threatened species, over world heritage, over Ramsar wetlands, et cetera, back to the States. They're doing that because the Business Council wants it because it knows it can knock off one of the eight state and territory administrations much easier than it can a federal government even though we've seen a Minister for the Environment currently incumbent there who happily ticked off on the world's biggest open-cut coal mine just a few months ago and I doubt if there's many people in this room even knew about it. Well, there's very few of us know about this reverse mark. Bob Hawke came in on the 5th of March, 1983, in the wake of the Franklin campaign and I see some of my fellow campaigners here. I spent three weeks, that's three weeks over that Christmas New Year in jail for peacefully protesting about the Franklin. Thank goodness Bob Hawke was elected because Australians rose to the news about the destruction of this internationally important place which has now been given the accolade by American experts as the world's premier whitewater rafting river. Gone had there not been a change of government back then. But now we have Julia Gillard doing what Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke and Paul Keating would never have done. Handing back powers over these world heritage areas and the threat of developers wanting to invade them to the States and there's no public debate. Goodness knows Christine Milne and Larissa Waters, the spokesperson on the environment the Greens have tried hard in the Parliament, read hands side and at the doors. No, they're more interested in union slush funds. And the reality is it's quick march back under the pressure of the rich corporate sector who want economic powers in Canberra because they need to have our government talking with overseas government as we move towards free trade agreements. For example, with Japan, which is while whaling, killing our whales in Australia's Antarctic waters and a world whale sanctuary. After in 1986, the world decided that whaling would be illegal. Giving back the powers to the States while government sit on their hands and do nothing. And that brings me to somebody who is doing something and up in the forest tonight in Tasmania, 60 meters high in a tree. That's about as high as the highest building in Canberra is Miranda Gibson. She's a young school teacher. And when I spoke at the town hall in March, she'd been three months up in her tree because the loggers had moved into this massive trees. These are the tallest flowering trees on the planet with their wildlife, realm and she got up the tree to stop them logging her tree. And they, thank you, Paul, they were stopped and she's still there. And on December the 14th, 11 days from now, Miranda will have been there 12 months. She's never come down. Paul and I have been up and others, her mother went up for a few days. Paul baked a cake and we took it up. And I can tell you, I was so nervous I could hardly eat the cake when I got up there. But Miranda's here tonight. Are you there, Miranda? Yeah, hello. How are you? I'm gonna put it near this one. And what's it like up in that tree, Miranda? Beautiful and rainy today. Miranda, during the week, somebody told me you've been up there so long. They're worried about what it's done to your head. How's your head going? And I think it really has only what's really important and to come and go up in wedge tail eagles up here has really shown me that this is so worth fighting for. And I think that, you know, I'm glad I can be here on behalf of the forest and hopefully people around the world at this forest protected. Well, Miranda, I'm at one of the world's great policy think units and development units, the Crawford School at the Australian National University. And you used the word amazing. I think you're amazing. You inspire me and I thank you for being up there and protecting that forest for us. Thanks, Miranda. Another group that I've been happy to be engaged with, I was at Williamstown in Melbourne on Saturday for the ships had left, they've left Sydney, and they're headed north to meet the Japanese whaling fleet coming south this time. They've decided not to wait till they get down there with their grenade tipped harpoon and that of course is Sea Shepherd. And due to a conjunction of good events and a very, very noble donor who helps the environment and the arts and youth who need to help along so much, Graeme Wood, Sea Shepherd was able to take the Steve Irwin up to the Kimberley Coast where the world's biggest humpback whale nursery is. Now, these are Australian whales. They go to Antarctica to feed, but Australia is home. They procreate, a year later they give birth and this is the biggest concentration of them left on the planet. And I'll allow, I've got a very short film here, I hope you'll watch that and see some of the beauty which I experienced just a couple of months ago on the Steve Irwin. Thank you. Going up to the Kimberley. Well, these are our great warm-blooded cousins of the ocean. We can only guess at how their intelligence contributes to this biosphere. And that nursery is going to be bisected if Woodside proceeds. I think it would want to move. The Citibank estimate is that it would save $2 to $15 billion by moving. Shell, the next biggest shareholder, 26%, has the world's best offshore floating platform technology. Woodside has refused to go ashore in Timor-Leste. It says we're going to build, we're going to float. And the problem is two individuals in particular. The Premier, Liberal Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, who says there's nothing remarkable about that coastline and who is insisting, he did so again at a conference in Perth this week that Woodside built there. And Martin Ferguson, the Federal Minister for the Minerals and Energy Labor, who's effectively said if you go to some other option you must keep it on the same schedule, which is impossible. And besides the Wharf, there will be a six-kilometre ditch, 300 metres wide dug through the coral to accommodate mega-gas ships, 1,400 a year coming into service. A factory which I'm told in one figures is 24 times the CBD of Melbourne in extent. $45 billion worth. It can go somewhere else, but the Whales can't. The spoil, the mud from that ditch, 34 million tonnes, they don't know how to dispose of it. So thoughtfully, the plan is for the Federal Government, Tony Burke and Julia Gillard, or Tony Abbott if he comes in, to allow it to be dumped in Commonwealth waters outside the state waters, which is an international whale sanctuary. This is our own country. And whale experts are now telling me that this project is a bigger threat to those humpbacks than the Japanese whaling fleet going with their harpoons to Antarctica, and it's in our country. And we are challenged. I know we couldn't have won the Franklin campaign had we not got the people of Australia right across this country, galvanised by what is happening. We would have lost it the other side of Bass Strait. I think here the same. If we don't get active on this side of the Nullar Boar, that will happen. There's some months left yet. The federal government has ticked off on it. This week they've said to Tony Burke, don't have a federal environmental assessment. He's got seven days in which to make up his mind on that. Just put it through to the keeper. In other words, jump the gun on your plan to hand back the federal powers on these matters to the states. If you can do anything pre-Christmas for the environment, ladies and gentlemen, please send a note to Tony Burke and to Julia Gillard this week saying, do a national assessment of the impact on the whales, the dinosaur footprints. There's one right in the way of this gas factory, 1.74 metres across the biggest footprint on Earth of any creature that moved on Earth so far as we know from 160 million years ago, a herbivore, and the living Aboriginal songlines of that coastline. And as with the Franklin, we get active on this. There's going to be a national day of protest on Saturday. Then the federal government can say, ultimately, you should go and have one of the alternatives. The money that can go to the Indigenous people can flow anyway. And the Indigenous and natural heritage can be protected. This is a litmus test. Not only for this great wealthy country of ours, but for this planet. And if the people don't become active about it, it will happen. If the corporations which run the show at the moment have their way, that will happen. If we as citizens in a free and equal democracy make our voices heard, the win, win, win alternative will happen. I am out of the cage of the Senate. I'm delighted in the Greens who, there for peace, democracy, ecology and social justice, are working their way towards a better planet here and in countries, many other countries around the world. It's great to be alive. I've never been happier in my existence. I know that optimism feeds on itself. And I have not run into anybody in whom I could not see a person who wanted the future to be secure, happy and bountiful with that extraordinary inspiration which nature and nothing else gives us. We Australians are extraordinarily lucky. We Australians can set the world going in terms not just of environmental wellbeing, but should we not say to the rest of the world, we'll host a parliament. We will provide the flux for a debate on global democracy. And I might end by saying, making a prediction that if we had left it to the people, if we had a referendum tomorrow or on Saturday of the six or five or six billion people who as adults would be able to vote, I ask this simple question. Would you like to reduce by 10% the trillion dollars being spent on armaments and so-called defence this year so that every child on the planet could have a school to go to, clean water and enough food for her or his growth? I am very confident there will be a resounding yes vote. As it is, the answer is no. That's why I'm in favour of democracy rather than plutocracy. And that's why with my remaining years I'm going to be advocating everywhere I can. This move which Socrates spoke out about so long ago and which so many others have had as a dream down the line. It's now time for that dream of global democracy to become a reality so that we human beings can learn to live in a sustainable relationship with each other and the planet as we go on to the joyride of the future and the exploration of the universe and ourselves in a way which is going to have folk like us gathered and talking about this fantastic emanation of being alive and aware and reflecting as this lecture called on me to do 500 or why not 500,000 years from now. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much, Bob. I still want to hold 20 minutes, friends and colleagues, for questions. Just three rules of engagement. Please wait for the microphone. Everything's being recorded and podcasted. Second, just identify yourself and where you come from quickly. And third, try to keep the questions short so we can get in as many as possible with the 20 minutes we have. So I see a good show of hands already. Let's start here. Thanks, Bob. That's a fantastic talk. I'm Ruth Karris from PhD candidate at NSF here at ANU. My question is, knowing what you know now and knowing the Doha predictions for 2100, what would you suggest we and our politicians do differently to save future generations? Well, only as a Democrat and be careful here because you're asking a former politician and Jaundice is in what politicians say. But the first thing is, and I've indicated that in the talk, if you want the Great Forest of Victoria and New South Wales, including that last remnant of genetically very important koalas down at Bermagui and Tasmania protected, there is no option but to vote green. If you vote Labor, you're voting for the destruction. If you vote Liberal, you're voting for the destruction. So far, we'll find out soon. The same applies to the Whale Nursery. It certainly applies to the six mega coal ports that both the big parties are planning now to allow to go ahead and use billions of dollars of public infrastructure money which is then for not available for health and public transport and schools to be built inside the Great Barrier Reef exporting coal from the greatest exporting province on the planet when it comes to fossil fuels and that's Queensland. So the first thing is, we have our ability to vote and if the Greens get weak and if they become a pile of shade, vote for whoever else comes onto the scene. That's the natural flow of politics and that's extraordinarily important. I think in terms of direct action, the best thing one can do is contact the Parliament and Ms Gillard or Mr Burke this week and say, haul off on that gas factory and please make sure you do your own study. 0262771, we'll get you through in business hours. Beyond that, and I give this injunction to everybody. Have fun. Emma Goldman's dictum from Chicago, 1890s. I don't watch a revolution if I can't dance. Don't get carried away by anxiety. Enjoy life. It's very, very important to be able to keep going and to be productive in terms of making the world a better place. Hi Bob. Is it on? Yep. My name's Pierce Grudge. I work with the Clean Energy Regulator. The question I wanted to ask about was as you were alluding to, democracy is really only exerciseable if we've got the right level of information and it's quite obvious that we're very ill-informed about what's going on in our own country. I mean, that video demonstrates how many people would have seen that in the room. Corporations have been studying how to communicate with us for 100 years at least about how to pinpoint our desires and then move to advertise things to us. Do you think that the Greens or whichever policy thinkers out there are running behind the times in terms of how they communicate their messages out there in a way that we can very quickly acquire it and how would you see us or those policy makers moving in the future to do that better? Well, it's a de facto plutocracy at work. And for example, when it comes to fast food advertising on TV and children's viewing hours, all the experts and studies show that that's a bad thing. I moved a couple of times and my colleagues since I left the Parliament have moved again to ban junk food advertising in children's TV viewing hours and the big parties vote against it. And the reason for that is the outcomes, the Kate Carnell and the other people saying, oh, this is an infringement of freedom of speech, but what's more, it won't work and what's more, and you're quite right. There's an industry that employs hundreds of psychologists to get kids to be engaged in, amongst other things, the PESTA factor. You know, when you go to the supermarket with my dad PESTA them until you get such and such, it's pretty terrible. And yet, I called for some media regulation enough to have the journalists own code of ethics, not written by anybody else but themselves in Australia, implemented. That led to cartoons of me as a Gestapo burning books. And we got this totally fatuous discussion at the moment about whether, and we see it after the Levison Inquire where Prime Minister Cameron and Britain has dissembled within 24 hours because of this concept of freedom of speech, but of freedom of the media. Well, the thing is the right of the people to be properly informed has these days been suborned by the power of the media plutocrats. And it's, well, it's just again, we have to debate it more, but I see very little public support in this debate about the media having no control at all. As academics, you do. As doctors, we do. As police, you do. As politicians, you do. Media, you don't. And it's time we even that up a bit. Advertising part of our open and free democracy. But we're advertising crosses into harm. Then we should as a democracy be able to say the limit's been passed. Very little of that now. The power of those glass houses around parliament house here in Canberra, housing the Australian mining industry council and the advertisers and the insurances and they have a huge impact on what happens in that parliament and they're in the three quarters of the parliament which is out of bounds to the public. And if you ask how can somebody be supporting public education, getting adequate funding against the power of independent education which has its place in Australia. The lobbying power is intensely lopsided and I know that from being in parliament. We should at least have a lobby, a register of lobbyists and who they talk to and what they talk about and what the outcome was. But we don't even have that in Australia. Jack. Jack Pezzi, just picking up one small part of that. Driving here from Britain about a decade ago I was very struck by the power of political advertising on TV and the fact that it didn't exist in Britain at least not very much at all. Have the Greens Hill looked at any of the details of the legality, the kind of technicalities of whether it would be constitutionally possible to have the kind of controls or more or less restriction on political advertising on TV in this country as happens in the UK? Well, Bob Hawke tried in 1987 to forego television advertising and the High Court struck it down. But that said, we, the Greens, I did and my colleagues pursue truth in advertising that they'd be established a unit for ensuring that in the run to elections advertising material is truthful. Both the big parties oppose it. And it's time and time again the common sense for all there. What is it to be opposed about honesty and advertising? It used to be that if you wanted to put an ad on TV you had to send it to fax here and get it vetted. That's gone. That's all gone. And it's open go. And I agree with you. Voters should not be deceived on their way to the ballot box. Might be unequal advertising but it shouldn't be deceptive. But we're moving into an age where deception is becoming a great advantage to those who wield it with the best of psychological advice on how to get a voter to change their vote. And that of course is encouraging negative advertising. In Tasmania they've got a rule that you can't name your opponents in your advertising. It's a very refreshing one. I'd be frightened if that was tested in the High Court. That'll go too. So it's a very difficult situation we're in. Another question up here. Bob, it's very inspiring to see you 30 years after the Franklin awareness tour that you had in September 982 that you might remember. But my question is a few months ago I found a clipping by Dick Jones, the leader of that Tasmanian anti-pedamirbant that you referred to that was launched in March 972. And in it he lamented that the UTG found it very hard to get covered on anything but environmental issues. Now that was 972, it's now 2012 and I thought to myself, geez, not much has changed in 40 years. Why do you think that is? It struck me that you might have said that or Christine might have said that or Nick McKinn might have said that or Shane Rattenbury might have said that. But as I say, it's 40 years later, so why is it so? Well, Greg, I do remember going at the behest of a 17-year-old student, I think. Was that the right age at University of Newcastle? And then after that we went out to supper. Was it the urn that you forgot or the cups? And anyway, it didn't happen. I think Greg was a great supporter during the successful fight to protect the Franklin. Look, when it comes to changing the world, as Machiavelli said, if you want to change the world get ready to be crushed by those who have the money and the power. And the simplest way to do that is to pigeonhole people. And so if you talk about the environment you're a deep green radical. If you move on to other issues you're abandoning your core issues. And the greens, of course, do have policies right across the spectrum, but it's understrapped by the ecological wisdom that says we must protect the biosphere if we're going to have future security for humanity. And that's not how the Australian, which says straight in its editorials that we should be destroyed at the ballot box or Robert Murdoch who says, oh, God, don't let the greens near the economy. Exactly what was said about women in the debate on the suffragettes in the upper house in Britain 120 years ago, we have to outlive that and we have to up with it put. I think all you have to do is be true to your own heart and recognise, read a bit of history. But that pigeonholing is something that is going. It's just going. And labelling won't go. Extreme, radical, whatever you like. Gina's not. Clive's not. Mr. Adani's not. But somebody who wants to protect a whale or a brimble box reserve, which is threatened by these coal developers in central Queensland, but Miranda are, Petrie, extreme, radical. Well, I think they're the true Earthians with the capital E. And, you know, that's the way it is. We're going through a phase. And I'm very positive about the outcome of that phase. Thank you very much. John Sandilins is my name. I currently live here in Canberra, but I'm pleased to say I'm coming to Tasmania. Bob? I'm pleased to hear that, too. If you're coming past St Mary's, I invite both you and Paul to call him for a cuppa. My question is, after you've set my mind on racing, more on personal note, what inspires you? What gives you your personal physical and mental strength to keep going for the time you have? Oh, that's a complex question that I can't understand. People have said, oh, when are you bringing out your autobiography? And I've said never. You know, the things we leave out and autobiographies can so easily end up being self-invented hagiographies. And, you know, I'm just me. Like all of us are just us. I guess coming home with a bunch of flowers to my mother, a truncky creek up the road past Crookall, Dad was the policeman there as a kid out of the bush with my sister, and her saying, you know, that's lovely. And I'll put it in the vase. I thought it would have been lovelier and would have lasted longer still had you left them on the bushes. Had some impact on me. So, thanks, Ma. I might add to that. I'm sorry. No, it's good. I might add to that a little self-indulgence here. But I, you know, I was a gay and a Presbyterian. So I know what it's like to be in a repressed minority when such fights were going on within me but I couldn't talk with anybody about it. And I'm so pleased to see the changes that occurred there. My own Earth Julia Gillard didn't support the recent Equal Marriage thing. We spoke to her about it. Paul brought it up. My partner here brought it up at the Lodge when we had a final, a last supper back there in June. But having a companion in life, a good companion as I have with Paul is just so wonderful. You know, it makes life seem. So that's another part, a very important part of the answer to your question. Thank you, Paul. Time for just two final questions. One in the back and... Hi, Bob. My name's Lani Perles and I'm a graduate of the Department of Sustainability and Environmental here in Canberra. Look, I am very much in favour of the idea of global democracy. However, I guess I'm slightly more disillusioned than you. And I just wonder if we have a lot of nations who are leaders of nations who are unwilling to take strong leadership on taking action on environmental issues, or significant environmental issues, and we are struggling to come to global agreements with international treaties on environmental issues, then I wonder how a global democracy will really work. That's a very important and legitimate question. Lani, there's some things that we just can't... We have to make decisions about without good information as to why we do it. And just a little personal story. When I was a medical resident here at Canberra Hospital, I was struggling with the things I was just talking about in 1969. I went out late one night and sat on the point and knew I could swim across there, but if I swam under the bridge, I couldn't get back. And I sat for hours thinking about that. The Cold War was on. The destruction of power of nuclear weapons was at its point and the rhetoric in both directions. And at a personal level, I was unable to resolve the things that made me doubt myself. But I decided to catch a buy a ticket and go to London. And if everybody wondering what on Earth he's doing now, I made a decision to get out of it and to meet up with other people who thought differently and it was a life-saving thing for me. But one of the things I've learnt is that there is no answer to being about pessimism. I spent 10 years being depressed and I took some anti-depressants for a large part of that. But at the end, I decided that it's a very uncomfortable place to be. It's very rational. If you look at what's happening, what about Syria? But we can't personally fix that at the moment. And we have to use our own psychological mechanisms to put that on the shelf while you fix the things like James Price Point that you can. And I've always been in my life had people saying, why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that as I get single-minded about the Franklin or about James Price Point or about global democracy? And you have to be able to judge what you as a person can do. It may be simply deciding to go travelling. It may be deciding to bring up a family. It may be deciding to become a professional in whatever profession or to go into Parliament. And God knows we need more women in business and in democratic positions of strength. But whatever it is this time, take time and look after oneself. And just this most unsatisfactory dictum that optimism and pessimism feed on each other. Take your pick. It's a very tough one. But being optimistic, you don't need to be pie-eyed. But optimistic about the potential we as human beings have through our intellect to get this right is essential to that outcome. If we're pessimistic of those who have a stronger right-brain working on aesthetic things, if I can put it crudely like that, get depressed, we're in real trouble. And whoever invented the universe, whoever's running it, he or whatever, they've left us in a situation where people who are very right-wing thinkers and have no trouble trading on the hands and fingers and faces of other people get to the top of the power. Later, naturally, while other sensitive, caring, loving, compassionate people drop off, we have to find a formula for reversing that. And the situation we've been dealt with seems counter-reactive to that. But I've seen enough of the way the world works and doesn't work to believe that we can. And that's why I propose global democracy, because I have greater faith in the thinking of the world as a community than I have in leaving it to those people who are invested in getting more out of it for themselves. It's as simple as that. So that's an unsatisfactory answer to a very, very important question. And by the way, there's two forms of depression. One is endogenous. It just happens. You need to get some chemicals to deal with it. The other is reactive, which I had and I hope you don't get, but if you do get depressed, you'll know it is reacting to what's happening in the world. And that is logical. That is a reasonable outcome in response to what's happening with the world. But don't stay there too long. Use this mechanism of saying, I'm going to put those troubles on the shelf. If you want to go shopping to fix it, go shopping. If you want to find a new companion, do so. Because it's important that people who care about the planet look after themselves so that they can be active and hang in there and make this change that we need. Last question. Hi. My name's Alex. I'm a student. Alex. Thanks for talking to us, Bob. It's fantastic. I just wanted to know, the Internet has been described as the nervous system of the planet and of humanity. What have you heard of open democracy? Open democracy. For instance, in Germany, the Pirate Party are using it. And I wonder if it could be a new kind of democracy, perhaps which could be used in a global way, simply by empowering people directly through the Internet on issues in a real-time kind of way. Are we at the brink of a new technology that could change everything for democracy? Yeah. Well, Alex, the answer to that is yes. In 1976, I wrote to the Launceston Examiner saying, we can bet on the races on the weekend and by phone. Why can't we decide issues confronting our communities by phone? And what you say is, along comes the Internet, which has us all interconnected. But we have to have a common agreement as to how that Internet will be used to have honest, balanced information going to people, as Ralph Nader said, and many before him, brought it back to Jefferson. Information is the currency of democracy, and then allow people to vote and then implement that vote. So you need, I think, people in contact with each other. I think we have this fantastic ability to contact everybody on Earth pretty well and is moving in that direction, and that ought to be used. And I don't think any Democrats frightened of that. I think there are a few people with huge bank rolls who are very, very worried about that, but bring on the day. And I think it's an... I'm glad you asked that question, too, because I think it's an integral part of the onrush of success of this idea of global democracy coming down the line. Thank you. That was a wonderful bum. You know, you look really good in that sea shepherd cap. And funny enough, we've never had a lecture here, a special lecture here at the Crawford School where someone's boned in from the top of a tree. So good luck to her and her campaign. Thank you. In honor to have you here, please stay behind a little bit for a reception if you've still got a bit of time, Bob. Sure. Please join me in thanking Bob Brown.