Transcript ABC TV the 7.30 report Reporter: Fran Kelly
KERRY O'BRIEN: And no doubt the US interrogators will also be asking Sheikh Mohammed to corroborate their claims of direct links between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
If those links can be proved, then they would certainly fuel President Bush's case for war and embolden his so-called coalition of the willing.
In Australia, anti-war sentiment continues to run strongly, but apparently with no real loss of support for the Howard Government or any gains for Simon Crean.
Instead, it's helped the Greens emerge as the new third force of Australian politics.
For how long remains to be seen.
For Greens national leader, Bob Brown, it's a long way from dams to torpedoes, but he's making every effort to mould an image as the country's Mr Morality.
Political editor Fran Kelly reports.
BOB BROWN, GREENS: Music fascinates me.
The piano is just great relaxation.
It's a good way of letting the anxiety go, I guess, so I don't do it when the neighbours are around!
FRAN KELLY: Politically, at least, Bob Brown's performing to rave reviews.
Raking in votes for the Greens from the left and the right, as he emerges as the hero of the anti-war movement.
DR JOHN HEWSON, ECONOMIST: The way he's done it is really quite incredible in a sense.
He's just come out and said, "No, this is not our war, we shouldn't be there".
SENATOR MEG LEES, INDEPENDENT: He's great at expressing himself in very short grabs for the media and making it very clear what he wants.
FRAN KELLY: So how did the dry, bookish looking environmental activist become the pin-up boy of the peace protesters?
The man with the moral compass in the eyes of a growing number of Australians.
How do you explain this new-found cult status that you're accumulating?
BOB BROWN: Well, I don't recognise that.
What I do find, though, is that I'm running into lots of people in airport passageways, in shopping -- in the streets, who want to talk about the big issue of the day, which is war.
FRAN KELLY: As the world looks headed towards a war against Iraq, the veteran campaigner has tapped into a discontent, and it's winning votes.
His critics see the recent support for the Greens as short-sighted and short-lived.
SENATOR ANDREW BARTLETT, DEMOCRATS SENATOR: It's the latest fad really and a lot of pieces are putting the Green party up as though they're some new quasi-religious movement and like any quasi-religious movement I think there's a lot of myths surrounding that.
DR JOHN HEWSON: Where the major parties poll the issues to see where they should be.
I think he polls the discontent.
That's probably the best way to put it.
LINDSAY TANNER, LABOR SHADOW MINISTER: It's very easy to capture the moral high ground if you're not in charge or anything or responsible for anything, if you're not responsible for decisions.
FRAN KELLY: Hobart's Salamanca Markets are bustling and colourful on a Saturday morning.
This is Bob Brown's comfort zone.
BOB BROWN: It's a bit daunting.
MAN: I don't know how you can live with that thing following you around like that.
FRAN KELLY: It's in this small corner of the world that you get a real sense of the remarkable journey this once uneasy communicator as undertaken.
>From the sleepy hollows of Tasmania, to the main stage of
national and international politics, where his opposition to war
has put him and his party front and centre like never before.
BOB BROWN: I think people have found that politics is cold, it's nasty, it's grim, doesn't account for people and their own lives.
What's happening in their lives and the world as they see it.
And by force of circumstances beyond the Greens, to do with the 'Tampa' and to do with the impending war in Iraq, we've been taken more seriously because we are putting up values-based politics.
FRAN KELLY: After a decade of state politics and countless stands at the barricades to save the forests and the Franklin, Bob Brown made his way to Canberra in 1996.
18 months ago, when the Government turned away the 'Tampa', and its human cargo, Bob Brown stepped into the vacuum created by Labor and almost instantly saw the Greens vote start to rise.
The ALP still watches nervously.
LINDSAY TANNER: There is no question that the threat from the Greens is still strong and it may even be growing.
FRAN KELLY: Bob Brown was the first Green Independent elected to an Australian Parliament.
Today there are 16 Green representatives in Parliaments around the country, with big hopes of more to come.
The march of the Greens has forced their political opponents to take notice.
The question now is -- what impact will a rising Green vote have on the way the other parties operate and on the political process overall?
SENATOR MEG LEES: I look at their great difficulty at working with the Government of the day and I think it could be considerably unstable if the Greens get the balance of power.
BOB BROWN: Like the GST, where they really wanted to slice the power and they went to the table with the Prime Minister and their voters didn't like it.
You know you've got to stand for what you say you stand for.
FRAN KELLY: Enter the Labor Party.
It's the ALP vote that will be hardest hit by a sustained assault from the Greens.
It might try to minimise that by steering slightly left on policy but some suggest the change to Labor forced by a rise in the Greens will be much more fundamental than that.
LINDSAY TANNER: If the large group of voters who are concerned about issues of principle and values and broader issues of human rights drift to the Greens, then the Labor Party will change for the worse.
It will become a narrower party with a narrower support base in the community, less focused on broader issues of values.
FRAN KELLY: As Bob Brown continues to impress some voters with the strength of his convictions, one former politician, ultimately brought undone by his policy conviction, is not impressed.
Former Liberal leader John Hewson says the Greens' policies are reckless and unsustainable.
DR JOHN HEWSON: If you scrutinise any of their policies, you find huge holes, huge inconsistencies and actually humbuggery, they're indeliverable policies.
BOB BROWN: They think it's one issue politics, or it can't be costed.
There's all sorts of criticisms.
But we are -- we feel very strong about it and we feel that we can absolutely take on the economic rationalist politics of the Labor and Liberal Party -- not only stand our own ground but replace them down the line.
FRAN KELLY: But already there are stress fractures appearing in that mission to move into the major league and policy is at the heart.
With the NSW State election less than three weeks away, the Greens' campaign has been ambushed by the media and the major parties zeroing in on their soft on drugs policy.
The result is some bad press, the loss of Liberal preferences and almost certain defeat in the one lower house seat that had any real hopes of winning.
The lesson -- it's tough moving out from single issue status to attract a broader audience.
BARRY O'FARRELL, NSW STATE LIBERAL MP: That's their growing pain.
Notwithstanding with resurgence in their support that we're seeing in some quarters, the more they seek to detail their wider policies the more they will alienate themselves particularly from those voters in the middle ground and those voters in the middle ground who lean a bit right.
FRAN KELLY: The way the major parties leapt on the drugs policy of the NSW Greens betrays some sensitivity, but the Greens themselves have to sort out how to manage the internal tensions that flow from expansion and the success and the closer scrutiny that brings.
For now, though, their hopes are high and as war looms their leader retains the idealism and certainty of a crusader, a look some voters seem to have been liking lately.
BOB BROWN: We're not in this simply to bite the ankles of the Labor Party or the Liberal Party.
We're here ultimately to replace them.
KERRY O'BRIEN: The song Bob Brown was playing at the start of that piece was actually called "It's a sin to tell a lie".
He never misses an opportunity!