By Crikey political correspondent Christian Kerr


The watermelon from the Apple Isle, Bob Brown, is at it again. He wants the best of both worlds.

On Wednesday he turned up on PM
criticising the Government’s refugee “concessions” to grant temporary
visas to some asylum seekers in return for them waiving their right to
future legal action. Brown talked about “the right to take legal action
under Australian law, whatever the grievance might be”.

“It’s
abhorrent for the Government to move in, to take away not just the
rights of people who are abroad in the Australian community to be
protected by the law, but to take away the right of the judiciary to
listen to a case brought before them by anybody on Australian soil,” he
said.

So why was he quoted in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald
opposing the right of everyone’s favourite woodchippers, Gunns, to take
legal action against his fellow shrubhuggers seeking damages for
alleged harm to the company’s business activities and interests:

“Speaking
about the Gunns writ on ABC radio last month, Greens Senator Bob Brown
spoke of one of his fellow defendants as she ‘wandered around her house
thinking that this lounge suite, my TV, the things she’d worked years
to get, now inherently are not hers; the cloud of Gunns ownership hangs
over them’.”

Isn’t that both an emotive misrepresentation of
bankruptcy laws and a denial of Gunns’ right “to be protected by the
law”, Senator?