Bob Brown: when the law is wrong you have a duty to stand up against it

He’s been arrested multiple times, “beaten up” by vigilantes and jailed for “defying bad laws” but former Greens Leader, Bob Brown says he remains “very optimistic” and finds hope in resistance.

Speaking on his new book, “Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders”, the self-confessed “criminal” cites past American presidents on the importance of civil disobedience, saying “when the law is wrong you have a duty to stand up against it”.

“Time and time again you see laws and traditions being broken by people in power, not least on the right wing,” he said in a webinar hosted by the Australia Institute.

“President Trump’s making a gameplay of it. He’s breaking constitutional rules and breaking laws all over the place but it’s then okay if they do it.”

“But if somebody who’s progressive breaks the law, then they want to come down and send us to jail for such a thing as standing up for nature.”

After five decades of activism, he’s focused on empowering the next wave of changemakers to take on large “corporate extractors … who want to make money out of continuing the plunder unnecessarily”.

“It’s essential because they’re running the world. We need to get back democracy whereby the people are running it.”

The former senator warned Australia’s environmental laws are being written to suit industry giants and aren’t in the public interest.

“Corporations these days are making the laws to suit them, and they get weak-spined politicians to pass the laws and the rash of laws around the world to arrest peaceful protesters.

“The politicians in Spring Street, Melbourne or Macquarie Street, Sydney aren’t dreaming up these laws. They’re being given it by corporate lobbyists and then going out and passing those laws and you can see it in the way they’re written.”

The Albanese Government is currently seeking support from the Coalition or the Greens to get its changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act through parliament by the end of the year.

In June, Dr Brown declared Environment Minister Murray Watt was “feeding Australia’s environment to the wolves of mining, logging and clearing”, with the legislation preserving ministerial override and failing to end native-forest logging.

He also criticised Mr Watt for authorising a “carbon bomb” by greenlighting a 40 year extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project.

Reflecting on his prison sentence in 1983, he noted “I did come out of prison one day and go into parliament the next. I can tell you that prison was a far friendlier place.”

The former medical doctor is urging for mass mobilisation amidst a global crackdown on peaceful protests.

“It’s so important that we are roaring about the failure of this Government to protect the environment,” he told the webinar audience.

“We’ve seen here in Australia and around the world, a huge backlash and a crackdown particularly against environmental activists,” said the Australia Institute’s Deputy Director Ebony Bennett, “and a lot of draconian laws passed, certainly here in Australia, that really seek to criminalise protest, to crack down on environmentalists in particular.”

Dr Brown said it was imperative people stand up for the public interest and for “the interest of coming generations that should have what’s left of nature as part of their experience in life on this brilliant little planet of ours.”

He credits his parents for his unwavering belief in equality, recalling his father telling him, as a young, nervous boy, not to “back off to big wigs and the powerful and the high and mighty” and to always “stand your ground”.

“That’s echoed with me all the way down the line,” he said.

However, he noted, activism is not without its risks.

“It can be very scary, of course,” he said.

In 1986, during his first term in Tasmania’s Parliament, he was assaulted and shot at during an attack on protesters trying to stop logging at Tasmania’s Farmhouse Creek.

“Two busloads of logging vigilantes were brought down by a logging company here in Tasmania and while 40 police, under instruction, stood aside with their arms folded, these vigilantes beat up and assaulted the environmentalists, myself included, but one of many who were trying to stop the bulldozers crossing Farmhouse Creek into the giant forest on the other side, in what is now, because of that action, the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

“Those forests would have gone except for that action.”

These days, he notes, “There’s been a turndown in vigilante activities by, for example the logging industry, because it realises it doesn’t go well with the public.”

His message to young and aspiring activists is quite simple.

“Have fun, enjoy, don’t be too hard on yourself. If you’re young, get your certificate, go to parties, have fun along the way.

“It’s very important that we take on this most crucial challenge to life on this planet in good spirits.”

Defiance: Stories from Nature and Its Defenders by Bob Brown is available at all good bookshops and online through Black Inc.