Readers have been at me to check out the ABC interview with Senator Bob Brown last night. I found these priceless words from Senator Bob Brown – “We all use metal. I drive a car.”
That is very perceptive Bob – but not enough to get my vote.

Transcript
CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Mining does add billions to the national accounts, but some of the billionaires it makes have been on the receiving end of a tongue lashing from the Treasurer in recent days. In an extraordinary attack, Wayne Swan took aim at three of the richest tycoons in Australia: Andrew Forrest, Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer. The Treasurer says they’re poisoning public debate ,and risking the Aussie “fair go” by using their wealth to push their own interests. To continue the discussion tonight we’re joined by the Greens’ leader Bob Brown, welcome.

BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: Hello, Chris.

CHRIS UHLMANN: How are vocal billionaires poisoning the fair go for other Australians?

BOB BROWN: Well, there’s moving to buy up the media – we’ve seen that with Gina Rinehart. There’s the ability to put full page ads splashed right across the country that no community organisation can match – we’ve seen that from Mr Forrest; and of course Mr Palmer’s engaged in massive publicity wherever he goes. And, you know, they do have an enormous amount of clout – they and the industry associations they’re with have glass offices in Canberra; they’re lobbying all the time, they change the laws in Canberra, Brisbane and other capital cities in a way that other citizens, ordinary taxpayers and small business could only hope.

CHRIS UHLMANN: How is what they’re trying to do any different from Greenpeace trying to get $6 million to ensure they can frustrate future coal mining. What’s the difference?

BOB BROWN: The difference is Greenpeace wants to get $6 million and doesn’t have it, and Gina Rinehart’s got $20,000 million, which she could be using to buying into Channel Ten, etcetera; that’s the difference, Chris.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Greenpeace had 220 million euros last year, so they’re cashed up.

BOB BROWN: You’re talking about a global organisation which paying for staff and so on, and if that’s the excess they’ve got you’ve seen different figures than me. That’s quite a wrong assertion. But Greenpeace is also trying to save the planet. The activities of Ms Rinehart and Clive Palmer are threatening the whole future of this planet. I’m talking about not just the massive potential damage to the Great Barrier Reef, but I flew over their potential mine sites in central Queensland last week with Larissa Waters, and, you know… either of those mines is going to, when burnt overseas, the coal is burnt overseas, put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which will completely cancel the carbon package we’ve just seen go through the Parliament, which would overturn all the solar panels and hybrid cars, the effect of those, all the investment that local people are making in trying to stem the threat to the future environment – and which is going to have a huge potential impact on the Barrier Reef, which has got an economy itself of $6 billion and 60,000 workers.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But you want to see an increase in the mining tax because you know that – among the other things, among the wealth they create for Australians, among the jobs they create for Australians – they are also a fairly big cash cow for the Federal Government. Rhey’re providing an enormous amount of money: the coal industry alone, if you knocked off coal, that would take $6 billion out of the federal budget each year. That’s money you want to use for other programs?

BOB BROWN: Well, of course they should be paying their taxes and the original super profits tax ought to be levied, because that will bring an extra hundred billion dollars into our economy over the next 10 years, and Chris I ask you – and the big parties can’t answer this – how are we going to support the $5 billion that Gonski says should go into our school system? How are we going to get Denticare? How will we get a national disability scheme? How will we get high speed rail between Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne if we don’t get that funding?

CHRIS UHLMANN: That’s right, Bob Brown, you won’t get any of those things without the mining tax, you won’t get any of those things without mining. Actually, if you shut down the industry you won’t get any tax at all and none of those things will be available to you.

BOB BROWN: If you add to the votes, we might get the Government, but we’re not any time soon going to be the authority… we’re not going to have the Treasury benches that’s going to allow that to happen. So in the meantime, these mining billionaires ought to be paying their fair taxes, and they’re not doing that. And remember this: the coal they’re digging out of the ground which threatens the future of this economy, it will knock six per cent to 20 per cent off our gross national product by the third or fourth quarter of this century if we don’t deal with climate change; that money ought to be coming from the coal barons in a fair amount, because the coal’s owned by the people of Australia. And I should add to that, despite the billions they’re getting, most of the money from this industry which threatens the manufacturing sector in Australia, Mr Palmer’s mine alone – according to his own consultants – will suck 2,000 to 3,000 jobs out of manufacturing and agriculture in this country. We need that money…

CHRIS UHLMANN: You’re looking at all the costs: in order to… it has lifted profits in Australia, there’s been a job boom, it’s handing income to Australians, it’s lifted markets and protected housing prices – and with the rise in the exchange rate that you’re talking about, although it’s a shock to the community, we’ve had them before. We had them with the Gold Rush and two wool booms. You always get those sorts of changes when you have a boom. So you don’t look at any of the positives at all that come from mining, do you?

BOB BROWN: Yes, I do. I’m saying to you: we need to get the money from that so we can have all those positive things I’ve been talking about, and I agree with the Treasurer.

CHRIS UHLMANN: But you can’t do that if you shut the industry down. You won’t get any of it.

BOB BROWN: I’m not going to shut the mining industry down, Chris. You’re sounding like a Liberal propagandist. I’ve never said that, and nor would we. We all use metal. I drive a car. We’re not about shutting the mining industry down, we’re about making it pay its way and share a fair go – because the ore all belongs to the Australian people, with the Australian people, to keep this an egalitarian country. The Treasurer is quite right: the rich are zooming ahead in their multibillion dollar catapulting into the future, while the poor are being left behind. And if you come to just funding public education adequately, according to this report from Mr Gonski, the Greens say, let the mining riches of this country make sure that we can be implementing that by the end of this year, but neither of the big parties are responding to it.

CHRIS UHLMANN: National incomes have risen… I just don’t follow the argument about how it’s affecting the Australian fair go, where over the last decade in fact we haven’t seen the division between rich and poor that we’ve seen in the United Kingdom and the United States. In fact, the United Kingdom and the United States are Australia without a mining boom.

BOB BROWN: Well, we’ve got a two-speed economy in this country. In the southeast of the country – Sydney, Melbourne, the states in the south east corner are seeing unemployment go up, they’re seeing a loss of real estate, they’re seeing retail sales down, they’re seeing a whole potential for manufacturing jobs lost. I was at the Rheem factory in Sydney today – and that’s another one the Greens are going to fight to keep going because it’s renewable energy. While the boom in the north that’s lining the pockets of these millionaires is making it worse, because of the high Australian dollar.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Bob Brown, you don’t accept that any of that money flows beyond that at all? That it doesn’t increase national income, that it flows into the city of Australia.

BOB BROWN: Of course it does, of course it does, but…

CHRIS UHLMANN: You talk about unemployment – it’s 5.1 per cent – and you talked about a two-speed economy. We’d have a one speed economy and be in the slow lane if it wasn’t the for the mining boom?

BOB BROWN: You can defend the billionaires, but I’m with the Treasurer in saying, “Let’s just make this fair”. It’s not black and white, Chris. The world is not that easy. But we have a parliament of democratically elected representatives to get a better go for average Australians, average small business, schools, hospitals, transport systems and the manufacturing sector, and that’s what I’m about, as a Green, and I make no bones about it. And I think that we need to get a fair return – the super profits tax, remember this, recommended by Treasury – is what the Greens are supporting so we can have the things I spoke about earlier in this interview.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Bob Brown, just briefly, what do you think then should be done about what they say in the public space? Should we stop the billionaires from speaking at all?

BOB BROWN: Well that’s nonsense. Of course we shouldn’t. But we should have some fair go in this country, and let’s even up the lobbying system and the power of those barons in getting a fair deal for the rest of Australians, and that’s what we’re about, Chris. Of course we’re not going to shut anybody up. This is a free democracy, but from what I saw today there’s quite a lot of representatives around the place want to shut Greenpeace up, for goodness sake. Well, let’s have some proper discourse in this country – and, by the way, let me not leave this by saying: and let’s stop dumping! We have an environment minister who wants to dump millions of tonnes of dredged soil into the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area, for goodness sake.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Well Bob Brown, I’m sure you’re not going to go quietly into that good night, so thanks for joining us.

BOB BROWN: Thanks, Chris.