[lbo-talk] Green-Nazi claims debated

[Bill Bartlett]

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2003/s980044.htm

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
LATELINE
Late night news & current affairs

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: abc.net.au > Lateline > Archives

Broadcast: 31/10/2003

Brandis defends Greens-Nazis comments

This week Parliament heard one of its strangest speeches ever, the 
Green-Nazi speech. The author, Liberal Senator George Brandis, was 
attempting to condemn Greens leader Bob Brown for interjections he 
made during President Bush's recent address. Evidently inspired by 
newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt, Senator Brandis quoted from 
scholarly texts tracing the origins of Green politics right back to 
the German "Volkish" movement in the mid-19th century. It was a 
mystical, naturist movement that fused with the age-old hatred of 
Jews and just 80 years later gave birth to a vegetarian dictator 
called Adolf Hitler. Senator Brandis warned that just as Hitler came 
to power by manipulating free elections, so too "the sinister and 
fanatical views represented by Green politicians can grow and gain 
strength under the cover of democracy".

Compere: Tony Jones
Reporter: Tony Jones

TONY JONES: Well, as we said earlier we couldn't let this week pass 
by without close scrutiny of one of the strangest parliamentary 
contributions in memory, the Green-Nazi speech.

The author, Liberal Senator George Brandis was attempting to condemn 
Greens leader Bob Brown for interjections he made during President 
Bush's recent address.

Evidently inspired by newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt, Senator 
Brandis quoted from scholarly texts tracing the origins of Green 
politics right back to the German "Volkish movement" in the mid-19th 
century.

To summarise: that was a mystical, naturist movement that fused with 
the age-old hatred of Jews and just 80 years later gave birth to a 
vegetarian dictator called Adolf Hitler.

Senator Brandis warned that just as Hitler came to power by 
manipulating free elections, so too "the sinister and fanatical views 
represented by Green politicians can grow and gain strength under the 
cover of democracy".

Well, Senator Brandis is not hiding away from all this he joins us 
now in Brisbane.

And here in Sydney to defend himself is the Greens leader Senator Bob Brown.

TONY JONES: George Brandis, you've drawn particular disdain from the 
Jewish community for this Greens-Nazi comparison.

After a few days of reflection, was this a terrible mistake?

GEORGE BRANDIS, LIBERAL SENATOR: No not at all.

In relation to the reaction of Jeremy Jones from the Australian 
Council of Jewry.

Can I tell you when Mr Jones made that remark, apparently coming to 
the defence of the Greens, I was contacted by a very large number of 
leaders of the Jewish community who told me that they fully supported 
what I had said, in particular the leader of the other peak Jewish 
community in this country, Colin Rubenstein, the executive director 
of the Australia Israel Council told me not only was he not critical 
of the speech but he supported it and he was pleased that it had been 
given.

TONY JONES: So you flushed out a sort of difference of opinion in the 
Jewish community, have you?

Because here is what Jeremy Jones said ... to call someone Nazi is to 
invoke an image of genocide, of mass murder, of global conquest.

Do you disagree with that?

GEORGE BRANDIS: Well, what I have to say is that Jewish people in 
this country know that some of the most implacable opponents of the 
state of Israel in the Commonwealth Parliament are the two Green 
senators ... Senator Brown and Senator Nettle.

And they weren't very impressed.

TONY JONES: Is that tantamount to Nazism, is that what you're saying?

GEORGE BRANDIS: They seem to give comfort to the Greens when he made 
those remarks.

Can I also say that the historical comparison with the Nazis is not 
... I'm not the first politician to have made that remark.

For instance, in May of last year Senator Brown, commenting on ... 
I'm referring to a report in the Canberra Times on 17 May last year 
... Senator Brown, referring to what were alleged budget cuts to 
greenhouse abatement programs in last year's budget, likened David 
Kemp, the Environment Minister, to Joseph Goebels and said that the 
Government's environmental policy resembled the approach of the Nazis.

TONY JONES: Can I just stick to your speech for a moment.

We'll bring Bob Brown in a second.

You made a 20-minute speech developing this theme.

You quoted huge tracts from so-called scholarly texts, we can only 
assume that they were indeed, but I've read that you plan to continue 
to develop this theme in further speeches, is that correct?

GEORGE BRANDIS: Yes.

What I was trying to do last Tuesday and what I will continue to do 
is two things.

First of all, I want to change the perception of the Greens.

You see, the Greens have got under the political radar screen in this 
country and I think they've got most people convinced that they are 
not a danger, they are not a threat, that they are basically 
well-meaning oddballs or perhaps they're radical liberals.

But they're not that.

They're people who invoke the institution of Parliament but they defy 
the institution of Parliament as Senator Brown did last week.

They're people who claim to be defenders of free speech and yet try 
to shout down somebody, President Bush, exercising the right of 
speech.

TONY JONES: We'll move onto that in some detail, I want to get Bob 
Brown first of all to respond to the claim you've effectively made, 
that he and his party are Nazis influenced by Nazism.

BOB BROWN, GREENS SENATOR: Well it's totally abhorrent and of course, 
it's totally misplaced in the Parliament that anybody should refer to 
anybody else in those terms.

The Senator is misrepresenting me there in a number of ways in saying 
I've used that terminology.

But also in saying we are against the state of Israel.

We have just released a policy which endorses the state of Israel and 
an independent state of Palestine.

But misrepresentation is what we're into here.

What is particularly alarming about this obnoxious use of the term 
Nazis on any other political opponents is is that the PM endorses it.

And he says that he understands and supports what Senator Brandis is saying.

So it's not just Senator Brandis here.

This is coming from the PM's office.

And it's aimed at political opponents, not on the issues of the day, 
but to put labels on.

I particularly remember Pauline Hanson's speech in 1996 which was 
very divisive and very racist and PM Howard said nothing for five 
months.

But within a couple of days of us speaking up in defence of law, 
international law, and Australians, in the same chamber last Friday, 
PM Howard sends Senator Brandis out on this line.

It's very poor politics.

It's outrageous not ... the Greens can of course live with this.

TONY JONES: Let me just quickly raise with you the accusation that 
you've used the same terms to describe Liberal members.

You've referred to Dr Kemp as being equivalent to Goebels for example.

You acknowledge that you actually said that?

BOB BROWN: No, I don't.

And if I ever did, I would immediately apologise.

I would not brand anybody else with that label.

It's offensive and shouldn't be used in politics.

And of course that's what PM Howard and Senator Brandis should be 
doing here in regard to the Greens.

You know, they're ... we're going to get a lot more of this as the 
Greens build.

I've just come from a dinner in Wollongong of 300 people celebrating 
Michael Organ's first year in the Parliament there.

And they're middle Australians, they're right across the spectrum, 
wonderful people, good stout-hearted Australians who are making a 
different political decision.

They like the Greens, they're terrifically impressed that we stood up 
in the Parliament the other day and that's worrying the Government.

TONY JONES: Let me go back to George Brandis.

What is behind this George Brandis?

And did you inform the PM or any senior Government member prior to 
making this speech?

GEORGE BRANDIS: I haven't discuss the matter with the PM, no.

Now, Tony, you cut me off before.

TONY JONES: Hang on a sec, I'll just finish with that question, 
though, because you only answered half of it.

Did you inform any senior Government member prior to making this speech?

GEORGE BRANDIS: I'm not going to talk about conversations with colleagues.

You asked me about the PM.

I haven't discussed the matter with the PM.

TONY JONES: No, but the key question here is, is this part of a new 
tactic to take on the Greens, which has been endorsed by the 
Government, not just you, it's not an individual thing that you're 
doing, and I imagine that by not saying whether you did or did not 
discuss it, you're refusing to deny that you discussed it with senior 
members of the Government, therefore we can assume, perhaps, it is a 
tactic.

GEORGE BRANDIS: You ... can assume what you like but you asked me 
whether I discussed it with the PM and the answer is no, I haven't 
spoken to the PM about it.

TONY JONES: And I also asked you did you discuss it with any other 
senior member of government?

GEORGE BRANDIS: And I'm telling you I'm not going to go into 
conversations with colleagues.

And it's not fair for you to expect me to.

I'd like the opportunity to reply too ... because you cut me off before.

TONY JONES: Go ahead.

GEORGE BRANDIS: In relation to what Bob said about the state of 
Israel, you read his speeches and you read Senator Kerry Nettle's 
speeches in the lead-up to the Iraq war, where they asserted, in 
effect, a moral equivalence between Israel, the only democracy in the 
Middle East and the Saddam Hussein regime ... to see what they think 
about the state of Israel.

Secondly, what I was going to go on to say a moment ago was this ... 
what I also want to do, is do something we do too seldom in this 
country and have a debate about ideas and the source of ideas.

You see, I claim that the ideology that underlies Green politics is 
something new and different.

In this country I think --

TONY JONES: Well no, you're actually claiming it's old and racist and 
it's old and Nazi.

I read your speech, you're claiming and it's not new in fact, but it 
stems right back to the 1850s, to the origins of Nazism.

GEORGE BRANDIS: No, let me make the point in my own words.

I said new in this country, new in this country.

And you're right, because the source of the ideas which inspire Green 
politics, you can trace all the way back to the dark forests of 
German romanticism two centuries ago.

We don't have enough debate about ideas in this country.

We're used to the idea of a paradigm in which there's a left, right 
spectrum in which the Labor Party represents the left, and they're a 
kind of amalgam of socialism, although they've given up on socialism 
on the left and on the right you have the Liberal Party which is an 
amalgam of liberals and conservatives.

My point is that the ideas that inspire the ideology of contemporary 
Green politics, and that is a debate that is raging in western Europe 
at the moment, don't fit into that paradigm.

The sources, the mainsprings of contemporary Green politics arise 
outside the Liberal democratic or indeed the social democratic 
tradition.

TONY JONES: Let me ... we haven't got endless time to discuss this.

I want Bob Brown to respond very specifically to that question you raised.

Did the Greens' ideology stem from the black forest of Germany?

BOB BROWN: No, that's very nasty rubbish from Senator Brandis.

The next thing he will be claiming is that the Christian Church and 
the Buddhist religion because they've got environmental components to 
them are in some way related to Nazism.

It's an extraordinary blinkered but very, very nasty type of politic 
we're seeing here and we know it goes much further into the 
Government than Senator Brandis.

The Greens are very much bound on social justice.

The protection of the environment of course.

Democracy is an absolute hallmark and so is peaceful resolution of ideas.

But ... and these are ideas which have great traction with people and 
we've manifested those.

For example, we've been very much opposed to this Government taking 
innocent people and putting thousands of them behind razor wire, 
including children, and we've fought very hard to get those decent, 
warm-hearted human beings, who are just like us, out of those 
appalling conditions on Australian soil into Australian society.

This Government's been fighting to keep them behind the razor wire.

The Greens have been fighting to give them dignity and a human 
existence in our society.

That in itself asks the question ... who are the compassionate, human 
beings fighting for the rights of individuals and you have to come 
down on the side of the Greens as against the record of the Howard 
Government.

TONY JONES: What do you think is behind this, then?

We saw what happened when the juggernaut of One Nation became 
extremely dangerous, I suppose, politically.

Tony Abbott was tasked to go and destroy One Nation.

Do you get the impression this is what's happening now to the Greens?

BOB BROWN: Yes, Machiavelli said centuries ago if you're going to 
change the world get ready to be squashed by those with most to lose.

And in this case it's the Government and its supporters.

And we're ready for that.

But it is going to be interesting in the coming months, because the 
Greens are growing in popularity ... we've gone from 2,000 members in 
2000 to 7,000 now.

We do have an enormous public support coming.

It's still small but it is very potent and the Government does not like that.

They want to keep the two-party system going as more and more voters 
in Australia are saying let's have difference and let's welcome in 
other parties like the Greens.

TONY JONES: Let me welcome George Brandis back into this conversation.

George Brandis, do you find, does the Government find the populism of 
the Greens as threatening now as the populism of Pauline Hanson was 
once?

GEORGE BRANDIS: Tony, you were one of the journalists at the 
forefront of criticising the Liberal Party in relation to One Nation 
in two ways.

First of all, you said we didn't take One Nation seriously, we didn't 
anticipate what was behind One Nation, we didn't go out into the 
market place and expose them.

Secondly, and we had this debate on this program only about six weeks 
ago, you --

TONY JONES: My point --

GEORGE BRANDIS: For going about the antagonised.

TONY JONES: No, I didn't criticise Tony Abbott for that.

In fact, if you want to go back over the transcripts, we were talking 
about Tony Abbott's characterisation of what he was doing and whether 
or not he was telling the truth about it.

That's a different question.

Do you now believe the Greens represent the same sort of threat that 
One Nation represented?

GEORGE BRANDIS: I think they represent a different kind of threat to 
democratic politics in this country.

But, if the Liberal Party made a mistake in not exposing One Nation 
for what it was early enough in the piece a few years ago, then 
that's not a mistake we're going to make with the Greens.

For a very long time now Bob Brown has had clear air.

Somebody, I can't remember who, but somebody last week said that he'd 
become the de facto leader of the Leader of the Opposition.

There is a lot to be exposed about the Greens, about the ideas that 
underlie them, about the intellectual traditions to which they are 
heir and it's about time somebody blew the whistle on them.

That was the purpose of my speech in the Parliament.

BOB BROWN: We're going to look forward to this debate.

If there's one thing we do want to see, it is greeter analysis of 
what the Greens are putting forward as an alternative to a Government 
which has lost touch with the Australian people.

TONY JONES: Bon Brown, let me analyse something quickly, because we 
are nearly out of time, that led to this, that's the interjections 
that you made during the Bush speech.

Would you be prepared to admit that that actually was political 
theatre designed in the end to get votes and to get your message 
across to a wide audience?

BOB BROWN: No, absolutely not.

I got up, and Kerry Nettle got up, and spoke on behalf of Australia 
in a forum which is ours.

It's the people of Australia's.

We're elected representatives.

There is no circumstance in which that Parliament should be turned 
into a place where parliamentarians effectively are muzzled.

And particularly when great issues like the free trade agreement, 
like the incarceration of Australians in Guantanamo Bay when 
President Bush has repatriated his Americans out of that hell hole, 
these are issues which we have a right to speak up in our own elected 
Parliament.

Of course, what the Liberals are saying manners are much more 
important than human rights.

We don't agree with that.

And manners are more important than the welfare of Australians and 
Australians speaking up in their own Parliament, we simply do not 
agree with that.

GEORGE BRANDIS: No, Bob --

TONY JONES: Just a couple of seconds, George Brandis, because I'm 
really sorry, that we have run out of time.

Just a couple of seconds.

GEORGE BRANDIS: What we say is that your claim to be exercising free 
speech is a fraudulent claim.

You were trying to shout down someone.

It's a pretty strange use of the word free speech when you're trying 
to prevent somebody else being heard.

TONY JONES: Alright, we're going to have to leave it there, I'm sorry to say.

We could probably have kept going for half an hour or so, but that's 
where we'll have to leave it.

George Brandis, Bob Brown, thanks to both of you for coming in to 
join us tonight.

GEORGE BRANDIS: Thanks, Tony.

BOB BROWN: Thank you.


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