Brown seeks

By Bridget Brady
BOB Brown is hoping to find a home among the seats of Parliament.
The long-time Mornington Peninsula resident, who co-wrote the Australian classic Give Me a Home Among the Gum Trees, will contest the upcoming election as the Greens candidate for the Federal seat of Flinders.
Mr Brown, 62, who shares the same name as the Australian Greens leader, said being his namesake provided a laugh within the party.
“I’m sort of like the other Bob Brown. But I refer to him as the other Bob Brown,” he laughed.
But all jokes aside, Mr Brown said the country faced a string of serious predicaments such as rising sea levels, extinct species, erratic weather and disease if action on global warming was not taken soon.
“We’ve got no choice, really,” he said.
“To me it’s the equivalent almost like a war footing. If we don’t do it now, future generations are going to be faced with this these massive bills and out of control situations.”
Mr Brown said the country should consider greener energy sources such as solar and wind power more seriously, and opposed the government’s financial support to ‘clean coal technology’.
Mr Brown, who contested the 2007 Federal election, said he always had an interest in social justice and was sympathetic towards asylum seekers and strongly opposed to the war in Afghanistan.
Mr Brown said he believed there should be on-shore processing of asylum seekers and would welcome an increase in numbers.
“The majority of people who come here and overstay are the people who come on aeroplanes,” he said.
“I think that this time around people are starting to appreciate what the Greens stand for, a compassionate, progressive party that provides the only real alternative to the Labor and Liberal parties who are both starting to sound pretty much the same.”
He said Australia tended to make a big deal out of the asylum seeker issue, when really the country accepted a small percentage of the world’s refugees.
The Liberal Party’s Greg Hunt, who is the Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage, currently holds the seat of Flinders.