Despite moving to Hobart some years ago, Christine Milne still sees North-West Tasmania as her spiritual home – her “blood’s country”.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The former leader of the Australian Greens still retains her Tasmanian polish, despite spending years in the swamp of vested interests and backroom party deals that we call Canberra.
In the first chapter of her new autobiography An Activist Life she refers to the unspoken language, symbols and imagery of rural Tasmania that stick with her to this day.
“I learned from a very young age that the most important things can be read from faces and practical gestures,” she writes.
“The index finger raised from the steering wheel as a friendly hello, casseroles left at the back door, gates or taps fixed in the householder’s absence.”
The remnants of her North-West upbringing are also evident when you hear Ms Milne speak.
When she talks about The Advocate it’s The Ad-vo-cayte. Tasmanians, meanwhile, are from Tas-mayn-ya.
She still occasionally retreats to her hometown of Wesley Vale to get away from the hustle-and-bustle of city life.
“I still get to the North-West and I've still got the farm at Wesley Vale in the family,” she explained.
“You can walk around the paddocks there and it takes me back to where I was brought up and spent all those years and to the site of the Wesley Vale campaign in 1989.”
The grassroots campaign to stop the Wesley Vale Pulp Mill was the first of a long list of tangible political achievements surpassed by very few other politicians of her vintage.
After being elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1989 in the seat of Lyons, Ms Milne played a major role in successfully campaigning for an extension of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area in 1989, Tasmanian gun reform in 1996 and decriminalising homosexuality in 1997.
Ms Milne was also a part of coalitions with two minority governments – with Labor from 1989 to 1992 and the Liberals from 1996 to 1998.
She was leader of the state Greens Party during the latter coalition.
However, Ms Milne believes her biggest achievement in Tasmanian politics was her broader vision for the state and its future.
Upon entering the state parliament she described her vision through the mantra: “Clean, green and clever.”
“We Greens stood up and said, ‘no’ as the rest of the world was being polluted and destroyed,” she said.
“Tasmania's competitive advantage is its green, clean island in the southern hemisphere, where human potential knows no bounds.
“It was in 1989 when I first articulated that vision and now it is totally mainstream.
“Everyone is selling Tasmania on the back of that vision, whether it's tourism, a stubby or cheese.”
It is a legacy that, she believes, is under threat.
Ms Milne argues that the clean image of Tasmania may be the very thing that causes future mass destruction to its biodiversity.
People’s demands for an “authentic” outdoors experience is in danger of becoming exploited and over-commercialised by private enterprises, she explained.
“You've seen this desire to stand on a beach and be the only person there, and you can still do that in Tasmania.
“The extractive mentality is, 'people want a wild experience, so lets put a resort in there', that is exactly the antithesis of what they want.
“It would undermine the work of thousands of people to see the tourism industry move in and build resorts and commercial developments in national parks and world heritage areas.
“What they don't realise is that they're killing the goose that laid the golden egg.”
As she entered the federal parliament in 2004 as a senator for Tasmania, so did her focus shift to larger, global problems.
By 2004, the issue of climate change had come to the fore of global consciousness as a defining issue for generations to come.
Ms Milne fought, with Greens leader Bob Brown, for an effective carbon emissions trading scheme unsuccessfully for six years in parliament, before the 2010 election catapulted The Greens into an unexpected position of power.
After the election threw up a hung parliament, The Greens entered a crossbench deal with the Gillard government, along with three other independent MPs, to hold the balance of power in Canberra.
It was every conservative’s worst nightmare – the greenies from Tasmania had the ear and the allegiance of the nation’s highest office.
Within six months of its formation the coalition drew up legislation for an emissions trading scheme to come into effect on July 1, 2012 – The Clean Energy Act of 2011.
The scheme taxed the largest industrial, and governmental, emitters of carbon dioxide, aiming to significantly reduce Australia’s carbon footprint and encourage a switch to renewable energy sources.
Ms Milne describes her part in the Clean Energy Act as her proudest political achievement.
Despite the Abbott government’s replacement of the legislation in 2014 with its direct action plan, and the subsequent uncertainty over energy policy, she still believes the act’s legacy will forever be felt.
“The generalised mantra that everything has failed [from the emissions trading scheme] is wrong,” she explained.
“What that period did is it acted as a bridge long enough for renewable energy to win the energy race of this century.
“Renewables are unstoppable – we have won.”
In the twilight of her career, Ms Milne was voted to the leadership of The Australian Greens in May, 2012, after the retirement of Bob Brown.
If it was between an issue and power, power would win every time.
- Christine Milne on former Prime Minister Julia Gillard
However, less than a year later, the political romance between the ALP government and The Greens ended with Ms Milne’s announcement that she was severing the coalition.
She cited Ms Gillard’s “back room” relationship with miners as one of the causes at the time.
“She deserves to be a role model in the sense she was the first female prime minister..
“But ultimately, she wanted Labor to be in power and took the view that whatever it took to stay there is whatever she would do.
“If it was between an issue and power, power would win every time.”
While Ms Milne retired from public office in 2015, she still plays her part in community and global activism.
In her role as Global Greens Ambassador she continues to advocate for her own personal environmnental causes.
Her involvement in the same-sex marriage debate was also personal – her son Thomas is a homosexual.
With her esteemed career put down in the pages of An Activist Life, Ms Milne now feels she can finally put the last 30 years behind her and earnestly begin her next stage in life.
“Writing this book was quite cathartic.
“It enabled me to draw a line under it and I can now free myself up to do what's next in my life.
“What I would like to do now is find a role working to assist pacific island governments in their negotiations in the global climate space.”