Carlton, Australia: Black Inc., 2019. 560 pp. US$34.99, paper. ISBN 9781863959520.
Paddy Manning is currently the editor of The Monthly Today, and has been an award-winning investigative reporter for twenty years. His work has appeared in Crikey, The Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Financial Review and The Australian.
Manning has recently published the first comprehensive work on the history of the Australian Greens. He does an excellent job taking the reader back to the party’s origins in the early 1970s, and finishes this rather large and detailed endeavour by providing some keen insights about the future direction and status of a political party now considered to be the “third force” in Australian politics.
Manning provides an excellent overview of the genesis event that eventually led to the creation of the modern-day Australian Greens. In 1955, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies approved the creation of Lake Pedder National Park in Tasmania. However, in the late 1960s, the Tasmanian state government and its Hydro Electric Commission (often referred to by Tasmanians as Hydro, a somewhat secretive agency) decided to flood Lake Pedder.
Tasmanian Labor Premier “Electric” Eric Reese, in 1967, revoked the park’s charter and had it re-designated to be flooded because it was viewed as being a critical part of stage one of the $95-million Middle Gordon Hydro-Electric Scheme. Reese justified his actions by proclaiming that the massive amount of hydro-electric power produced by this scheme would attract manufacturing and well-paying jobs to Tasmania.
Manning identifies the Lake Pedder dilemma as the first public confrontation that pitted economic growth against environmentalism. It is a battle that has continued to this day. Ironically, almost fifty years later, Tasmania’s economic fortunes have not changed—it remains the second poorest state in Australia.
At this time, Lake Pedder was viewed by local conservationists to be the “crown jewel” within the national park. Geomorphologist Kevin Kiernan stated that there was nothing like it in scientific literature. Indeed, Lake Pedder was a glacial lake, approximately 300 metres above sea level, that possessed a pink quartzite sandy beach. Its beauty was unquestioned, its uniqueness beyond dispute.
Manning writes that the looming Lake Pedder crisis was also an extension of the global awakening that was fundamentally transforming environmental consciousness. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, is often identified as the book that began the modern environmental movement. Consequently, there were Australians such as zoologist Alan “Jock” Marshall whose landmark book, The Great Extermination (1966), and Queensland poet Judith Wright, who founded the Wildlife Preservation Society in 1963, who began to bring to the attention of the nation the importance of preserving these beautiful creatures, many of which existed only in Australia.
Manning also does an excellent job of showing just how unorganized these anti-Lake Pedder forces were at this time. In 1971, the Lake Pedder Action Committee was formed, but construction of the hydro scheme was already well underway. In the end, Lake Pedder was flooded. But, on March 23, 1972, the birth of a new political party, the United Tasmania Group (UTG), emerged in Tasmania. Its first president was Dr. Richard Jones, a biologist who founded the Center for Environmental Studies Unit at the University of Tasmania.
Like a Shakespearean play, the first act ended badly, but not without hope. Manning writes that the primary lesson learned from the Lake Pedder debacle was that the UTG had to prepare much earlier, and create a detailed plan for not only resistance, but victory.
A decade later, the UTG’s second act began. The Tasmanian government and Hydro were now planning a new scheme: the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam. In short, the state government was going to construct a dam on the Gordon River. The conservationists and environmentalists were ready. They began state, national, and international campaigns to derail the project.
Manning recounts how two guys named Bob (Bob Brown and Bob Hawke) became pivotal figures in the Franklin Dam outcome. In 1972, Bob Brown, a medical doctor, had moved to Tasmania from New South Wales. He briefly worked as a doctor in Tasmania, but he soon decided to become an environmental activist for the rest of his life. In 1978, he was appointed director of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society.
In 1983, the Franklin Dam crisis was the talk of Australia, and Labor Party candidate Bob Hawke was campaigning to be Australia’s next prime minister. If elected, Hawke promised to stop the Franklin Dam project. He was, and he did. As a result, it literally changed the course of environmental and political history for Australia.
Hawke went on to be the only Labor prime minister to be elected in four straight elections in the country’s history. For the next quarter-century, Brown would serve in the Tasmanian Parliament and the Federal Parliament. He served at the leader of the Australian Greens from 2005 to 2012. Though Brown is retired from politics, he remains deeply committed to protecting Australia’s environment.
Manning writes that the Australian Greens are now entering their third generation of existence in Australian politics. I was told during my many trips to Tasmania and the Australian mainland that the Greens would soon fade. I was told this every time I went to Australia, yet it never happened. If anything, they have only gotten stronger and more influential.
At the end of his book, Manning clearly respects the accomplishments of the Australian Greens. Without a doubt, they are no longer seen as just an environmental fringe group. They have expanded their political agenda to include economic issues, and matters of war and peace. Though infighting does occur on a regular basis amongst the Australian Greens, they have nevertheless remained faithful to their foundational issue—environmental conservationism—and the voters continue to support them in large numbers.
The 2019 federal election results were quite telling: the Australian Greens elected nine senators and one House of Representatives member. Overall, the Australian Greens received over 10 percent of the national vote (over 1.48 million votes). At the state and territory levels, 23 Greens were elected.
In the final chapter, Manning declares himself impressed by the fact that a political party emerged, in 1972, that was founded primarily by a group of disorganized but well-meaning environmental protesters, who in fact failed to stop a lake from being flooded by the Tasmanian state government. Ironically, today, this very same political party is now seen as a key political faction in cleaning up Australian democracy.
Randall Doyle
Mid-Michigan Community College, Mt. Pleasant