Which is the luckiest political party in Australia? The Greens, of course. One of their star candidates resigns from the Party last week, and is criticised for not being enough of a tree hugger, and only one media outlet in the country bothers to give the story a decent run – the Hobart Mercury last Friday. If the story was about a resignation from the ALP, Liberals, Nationals or Democrats you can bet your house that the political media would salivate at the prospect of such a yarn. But Bob Brown’s Greens are, for the most part, off limits to criticism by the Canberra media.
The candidate in question was Andrew Wilkie. Wilkie, a man of genuine integrity and intellect, was the former Defence official who blew the whistle on the Howard government’s deception in making its case to the Australian people for involvement of our troops in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Wilkie was pilloried by conservatives and ended up running for the Greens against John Howard in the former PM’s Sydney electorate of Bennelong in the 2004 election.
Wilkie then moved to Tasmania and ran with Brown for the Senate at last year’s poll. Wilkie didn’t get elected and last week he announced he was quitting the Greens because of internal wrangling in the Party, and his concerns about a lack of professionalism in the way the Party ran its federal election campaign.
It seems that despite Wilkie’s ability to potentially capture voters who might not otherwise vote Green, some in Brown’s party don’t want him anyway because he is not enough of a tree hugger. One Green member quoted in The Mercury last Friday said of Wilkie that his sin was that he wanted to talk about issues other than trees – not a bad idea for a Party that says it wants to be seen as a genuine third force in Australian politics.
Wilkie “was never a tree-hugger,” whined the unnamed Green described only as a “prominent Green member.”
“He stood for broader policy issues. That created some tensions with long-time local Greens who felt he did not understand or feel strongly enough about how important forest issues and protests are to the Greens in Tasmania,” this anonymous source said.
The resignation of someone as high profile as Wilkie from the Greens is a national story and one that the Canberra gallery should be investigating and interrogating Brown about. They should, for the first time, seek to discover whether or not Wilkie was a threat to Brown’s ego and personal dominance in the Greens. So why aren’t they? And why haven’t the Age/SMH, The Australian and the ABC – all of whom have rightly given Wilkie prominence over the past five years — bothered to get their Tasmanian correspondents to dig deeper on the resignation?
Ironically, Wilkie is now running an exotic rugs business in Hobart with his wife. His competitor is Bob Brown’s long-time partner who also runs a rugs shop in central Hobart!
Greg Barns writes a weekly column for the Hobart Mercury.
Andrew Wilkie, in my opinion, sits at the same table as the late Peter Andren, in terms of the three essential characteristics of the true Independent: Independence, Integrity & Intelligence.
i only wish that some of our leading journalists & politicians could get their act (& courage) together, and start a push for a public apology to Andrew: having sacrificed his career, his marriage and his fiscal security FOR ALL OF US, simply on the grounds of his belief in honesty and morality, this man deserves a return from those of us who still hanker for a return of similar standards.
Read his book “Axis of Evil”, and you would understand how and why the Greens would be too constraining for a man of his calibre. Google up the story reported on Negus’ Dateline concerning the ASIO stooges’ outrageous raids on the homes of Carmel Travers and Robert Manne some years age, and you would understand why and how much we NEED men of Andrew’s calibre on today’s political stage.
And if I want to buy an “exotic rug” in the near future, guess where I’m heading!
Bob Brown’s partner closed his shop in central Hobart a couple of years ago. On his website it says “In 2000 I opened my ‘Rugs of Tibet’ emporium in downtown Hobart. Six years later in 2006 I closed the doors to focus more on my negleted farm.”
Mmm., Quite a gristy article there Greg. Only you’re not applying your vocational scepticism (cynicism?) in both directions (as below). Agree it’s a national story, and yes the Greens do need to grow beyond but not instead of their ecological mission. They are GREEN, and it’s not just a colour code, particularly Tas, with an inbuilt invisible GK Chersterton invisible line that returns to the 4 broad principles with a twitch of the thread. As a member 1993-2000 been there too, and proud to have helped work the Bennelong electorate in 2004 – Not Happy John, in synchrony with Wilkie. So sure let’s hear the detail which sounds quite mundane despite the beating. As for the other angle – Andrew’s situation – he stood against the Iraq war. It’s just been dumped as a govt combat role (which AW surely knew it would ahead of time?). So his raison d’etre is lost to some degree, or mission accomplished too if you like. 2nd he is clearly a significant intelligence resource but unemployable in higher responsibilities while remaining so prominently aligned to The Greens that is in the federal ALP Govt, or federal controlled agencies. That might be an even more probitive story – What Andrew did next, a chapter in the book after the one about what Clive (Hamilton) did next?
Greg, do you really expect us to believe the comments from your so-called Greens ‘insider’?? Funny how this insider is regurgitating the same old claim that anti-Greens have been throwing around for years. Come now. The Greens aren’t the ‘luckiest’ party in Australia – they’re the third largest political party in the country and you don’t get that from focusing on one topic only.