Greens leader Bob Brown has resigned from parliament after a political career of 30 years. He began as an activist in the Franklin River Dam campaign where he scored his first success in forcing a Labor government to stop construction of the Tasmanian dam, he entered the Tasmanian parliament then the Senate where his party now holds the balance of power.
The Greens were the successors of the Australian Democrats, the centre party started by Don Chipp in 1977. Chipp's party were famous for "keeping the bastards honest". The Greens didn't do that. The Greens themselves are the bastards.
The Greens have never pretended to be a mainstream or centre party, they are a hard left organisation. There are no moderates, no conservatives and no right wing of the party. Indeed there is a factional battle going on between the soft left of the party - led by Brown - and the hard-line Communists led by Lee Rhiannon. And therein lies the success - if you can call it that - of Bob Brown.
Brown was able to appear in the media projecting a dapper, sophisticated image which roped in the voters, especially young people. He appeared to be moderate but this was a facade hiding the party's true intentions and ideology. The Greens under Brown made Communism palatable to a new generation without them even realising it.
The Greens knew early on that you cannot sell Marx, Lenin and Trotsky to kids who regard that sort of thing as old fashioned and passe. But if you dress it up with a veneer of trees, wilderness and furry animals then young people will buy it. And they did. But beneath that warm and fuzzy green image is the same old Leftist tyranny we feared in the 1950s. The Greens and their supporters have been called watermelons - green on the outside and red on the inside - and not a truer word was said.
The Greens used standover tactics to get their demands implemented. They forced a prime minister who was elected on a promise not to introduce a carbon tax to commit political suicide and bring in the tax which will mean crippling increases in the cost of living. And all for nothing. Bob Brown didn't like being put under scrutiny by the Murdoch press so he forced a media enquiry which recommended savage controls by a government body over what can and can't be published even on blogs such as this. Bob Brown was a spiteful and petulant foot stamper who hated the thought that 90% of the public did not share his views and objected to his influence over the government. He has destroyed the Labor brand and turned the entire country against the Labor party and the Left in general.
The Greens claimed to be pro-gay yet they supported the pro-Palestinian, pro-muslim "Boycott Israel" campaign, Israel being the only middle eastern country where homosexuality is not punishable by the death penalty or savage jail terms.
Now that Brown is gone there is hope that the extremists will take over, push the party to the extreme left and thus make themselves so electorally unpalatable that they will lose their seats and follow the Australian Democrats into oblivion. Indeed there are signs that this might have even started with Brown as leader. During the week The Australian Financial Review published a poll saying that Senate voting intentions are closely following the state opinion polls. Under that scenario Labor and The Greens will lose three Senate seats, the coalition will pick up two - one each in NSW and Qld - and Bob Katter's Australian party will pick up one seat in Qld. If that happens - and let's hope it does - The Greens will no longer have the balance of power and there will be a coalition majority in the Senate. Tony Abbott as prime minister will be able to repeal the carbon tax and reverse all of Labor's destructive so-called "reforms" without needing to call a double dissolution and holding a joint sitting. Hopefully Brown's exit will accelerate this process. The flirtation with Left and hard left politics is almost over and things are looking up at long last.
Nobody will be lauding Bob Brown's period of influence and his leadership of The Greens. He split the Labor party hijacking its left base and traditional supporters leaving the Labor party neutered and irrelevant. So-called progressives have had to vote Green even though there are no factional leaders in the party to keep the extremists in line. Without Brown as leader The Greens have now become a lot less appealing and the Communist hard left of the party is now running the show. Not even Leftists will stomach raven haired harridans screeching propaganda and fighting ideological wars we left behind years ago.
The departure of Bob Brown marks a turning point where the national swing to the Right became unstoppable and the Left completed its slide into irrelevance. We can now talk about a post-green society and make concrete plans to get the country back on track leaving the nonsensical and idiotic BS behind. The Greens have left a trail of destruction federally and state and did not achieve anything remotely positive or worthwhile.
That is the legacy of Bob Brown's leadership and influence and it isn't pretty.
