A much repeated line of attack draws on my parent’s involvement in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and my early involvement with the Socialist Party of Australia (SPA) – and then draws a dubious line to the conclusion that I am a loony watermelon who does not care about the environment. See here and here, for example.

This characterisation is wrong and offensive. I have been a proud member of the Greens for 20 years. I want to use this blog to put on the record some facts about my family upbringing, my early political life and what I believe in. It is disappointing that often media outlets publish these opinion pieces and news stories without asking for comment on their allegations.

Apologies in advance for the length of this blog.

I want to respond up front to two of the main claims that have been pushed by some journalists and media outlets before going into my early political life and upbringing and finally look at more specific claims made recently by Paul Howes, Mark Aarons and Gerard Henderson.

Claim 1: I have no interest in the environment

It frustrates me no end that I even have to answer this. I have been an environmental activist for as long as I can remember, a Greens MP in NSW parliament for 11 years and an active member of the Greens for two decades.

I have worked on campaigns to stop the import of illegally-sourced rainforest timbers, to end wood chipping of native forests, to address human-induced climate change and the environmental impacts of coal mining, to reduce air pollution and lots more.

I majored in botany and zoology and my honours thesis was on “The Nature of Sclerophylly - a study of water and nutrient stress in Banksia species”. As far as I am aware, I am the only Greens MP around Australia with an academic background in botany.

You can read about my environmental credentials here, and here are some of the positive letters sent into newspapers in response to attacks during the 2010 Federal election campaign from individuals and community groups I have worked with over the last couple of decades.

Claim 2: I come from a family of Stalinists and I supported the invasion of Czechoslovakia

The use of the “Stalinist” term against myself and my family is insulting. That descriptor not only implies that my parents supported the crimes perpetrated by Stalin but that they were autocratic parents. This is so wide of the mark.

My parents are both dead. They were not Stalinists. Like so many of their generation who joined the Communist Party my Mum and Dad worked hard for a more just and peaceful society.

I did not support the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

I was 17 years old, in my penultimate year at Sydney Girls High, when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968. I had already been involved in many actions against the war in Vietnam. Along with a few friends from school, who I went to political rallies with, we joined the protest action against the invasion. My recollection is that we marched up New South Head Road to the Soviet Consulate where there were speakers long into the night. About five years later after I returned from overseas I joined the Socialist Party of Australia.

Personally I did not support the invasion and to conclude that when I was first getting involved in politics as a teenager and in my early twenties I backed oppressive violent actions against people in Czechoslovakia and Poland is ridiculous. 

My upbringing and early political life

I come from a very political family. My grandad, on my mother’s side, was arrested and gaoled in the First World War as he was a conscientious objector. My parents were both in the Communist Party, and my uncles were wharfies and also politically active.

But there was no expectation that I would follow in their footsteps. My parents instilled in me an independence of spirit and outlook – and they emphasised the importance of education to achieve economic independence. I was the first in my family to go to university. My parents wanted to give me opportunities. Career path pressure and expectations were not part of how they raised me.

When I was in primary school my passion, like many young girls, was horses and I wanted to be a vet. My parents found friends and friends of friends who had animals that I could help look after.  I was lucky enough to work at the Royal Easter Show with horses and spend time on farms at Little Hartley, Dubbo and Kangaroo Valley.

Dad was a keen body surfer and he taught mum and me to body surf. These days a woman body surfer is nothing unusual, but in my youth this was not the norm. My Dad also taught me self-defence. When I was young I took these aspects of my upbringing for granted – these days I appreciate them enormously.

While there were no expectations that I follow my parents’ political beliefs it is not surprising that I became interested in politics. From a young age I was surrounded by people who not only talked about what was happening in their community, in Australia and in the world but they also acted on their commitment to bring about change, to make the world a better place for all.

My love of animals and nature fitted in very easily with this world outlook.

The first political action I was involved in was the protest movement against the war in Vietnam. This was in the 1960s and I was still at high school. It was before the massive Vietnam Moratorium movement of the 1970s that gave voice to the majority of Australians who wanted the war to end and Australian troops to be brought home.

In the late 1960s the movement was much smaller and it was a time of great learning for me as I saw a range of tactics used to build mass opposition to the war in Vietnam. Peaceful direct action played a key role and my father and Jack Mundey along with Bruce Steele were arrested together at a protest against Australian conscripts being sent to the war. I understand that this was the first sit down protest held in Australia.

Mum, Dad and I would discuss the tactics of the anti-war movement at great length and at times disagree. The hallmark of our family was talking about what we were doing, thinking and planning. We shared a diversity of views.

These years of family and political life have certainly framed my political work. But it was not a political dogma as some commentators like to make out. I came to appreciate the value of collective participation and of building broad-based campaigns by seeking allies, listening, forming views and developing a range of actions.

Howes, Aarons and Henderson – three peas in a pod

During the 2010 federal election campaign, the monolith approach to my political life was largely perpetrated by Labor Party members Paul Howes and Mark Aarons, and Sydney Institute Director Gerard Henderson. 

This current round of attacks is reminiscent of Cold War political activities. The fact that this dishonest form of political engagement has been resurrected provides an insight into to the motives of those who attack the Greens.

We all have a past.

Paul Howes is effectively running the 21^st century version of a red scare campaign against the Greens. If he suggests I am a threat to the Greens, why does that not apply to him and other former leftwing colleagues now active in the Labor Party? Ian Macdonald a former Maoist, Michael Costa and Howes former Trotskyites, and countless others have taken a similar path into the Labor Party.

Howes has limited the details he provides about his time in the 1990s as an active member of both the socialist youth group Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party. He was part of a protest that occupied the NSW Treasury concerning increased police powers brought in by the Carr government. I remember Howes' strong speeches as a young socialist at protests outside the NSW parliament against the then Labor government. When members of various groups in 1997 set up the Youth Tent Embassy in the Domain for one week Howes to his credit was an active member.

I find it bemusing that my youthful past, of which I am proud, is regularly raised and denigrated but the political history of my critics from the ALP is rarely mentioned.

I have always been open that I was a member of the Socialist Party of Australia. When I returned from a couple of years overseas in the early 1970s the division in the Communist Party of Australia was very deep. Although I was never a member of the CPA these divisions disturbed me. With friends on both sides and family members either expelled or having resigned from the CPA I felt very torn about where I should put my political efforts. A factor that influenced me to go with the SPA was that the CPA leadership had expelled the whole of the Maritime Branch of their party. This was probably the largest and one of the most active branches with over a hundred members. My uncles were members of this branch as were many other family friends.

The 1970s splits in the CPA were a setback for the progressive movement. Serious mistakes were made on all sides. The portrayal set out in Mark Aarons’ book The Family File, that paints the CPA as the force for good and the SPA as the force for bad, distorts the history of this period, and leaves this book as just another Cold War relic.

Mark Aarons, while being open about his political history, has certainly worked hard to reflect his world view. He relies on ASIO files and his own memories to provide selective details of my political activities and those of so many others in his book The Family File.

Last year the National Archives Office sent me my ASIO files – up to 1979. They explained that their policy is to release a person’s file when someone else requests that file. I do not know who requested my file.

My ASIO records run to five volumes and I found it full of mistakes. This is the speech I made in the NSW parliament about the inaccuracies. Probably the biggest howler is the assertion that I studied motor mechanics at UNSW. I didn’t and as far as I know this course has never been offered at this university.

Aarons did not interview me for the chapter of his book that largely covered my work. He selectively recounts events to suit his version of our shared political history.

He dredges up a memory from the early 1970s about a discussion about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that is flawed. While I can remember him visiting my home I did not “aggressively praise McGahey’s endorsement of Moscow’s invasion of Czechoslovakia”. This was a conversation Aarons had with my boyfriend at the time, who was more interested in riling Aarons than having any serious exchange.

From his personal and political association with my family Aarons is well aware that my parents did not have a simplistic, adulatory approach to the former Soviet Union.

But in his book he gives scant coverage to the stand my father took in 1956 when he was the first CPA member to publicly report on the disclosure in the Soviet Union of Stalin’s crimes. Aarons would be aware that my father was strongly criticised within CPA ranks for this stand.

Aarons notes in his book that my father in 1968 stated that the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia ‘would be wrong’. However, he continued to paint a simplistic picture of this era which always has the Aarons and the CPA holding the right line.

My father subsequently concluded that the uprising in Czechoslavakia was not about national independence but a threat to socialism. For him this meant supporting the invasion. While at the time I thought socialism was being undermined, the military invasion for me was wrong.

In an SBS documentary on my mother, Freda Brown, screened in the 1990s, she dealt with some of these issues.

In the speech I gave at the Celebration of Mum’s Life in 2009 I stated that Freda realised that some colleagues on the left believed that she was dogmatic because she would not publicly criticise the Soviet Union. Later in an SBS documentary about her life my mother talked about the internal problems that she saw in the socialist world, but commented that previously she had not gone public with those criticisms. In the context of the cold war she was unwilling to add her voice to the criticism of the socialist world.

Mum would often joke that she could sit around all day and talk about the problems in the socialist world and the communist movement but that it would take more than a lifetime to go through the problems of capitalism.

Aarons’ states in his letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, in response to my letter clarifying inaccuracies in his book, “More astonishing is Rhiannon's attempt to deny the facts in the book about the views and activities of her parents, Bill and Freda Brown.”

In my letter to the Herald my only comment about my parents was that they were not Stalinists.

Aarons also argues in his SMH letter “Rhiannon's refusal to condemn the invasion (and the shooting of Polish workers) is recorded in the University of NSW student newspaper Tharunka (1972). Denial will not alter the facts.” This is a distorted version of events from 38 years ago. All I did at the time was not answer questions put to me in the pages of a student newspaper by Aarons brother Brian Aarons. To then assume I supported the actions referred to in his questions is manipulative and dishonest.

Gerard Henderson delves even further back into history for his attack on me. He followed up his Herald article with allegations on his blog that “one or more of the Browns”, which means either myself and/or my parents, supported a series of crimes starting with the 1932-33 Ukraine famine. I was not born when this tragedy occurred and my parents were 11 and 13 years of age.

He goes on to make a series of other baseless allegations. The best that can be said for this article is that his extreme bias is clearly revealed.

These insults from Howes, Aarons and Henderson were timed to coincide with my running for the Senate as a Greens candidate.

I welcome scrutiny of my political work. However, it does need to be asked why these critics fail to examine my political activities in a range of environmental and social justice campaigns and my work as a Greens MP in the NSW Upper House over 11 years.

One of the things I value about my years as a Greens NSW MP is the opportunities I have had to travel to regional and rural areas, to meet with community groups and farming communities to support their campaigns to maintain local services and protect the environment.  Support for the Greens has grown in recent years, and part of that growth has been in regional areas. 

In 2004 the NSW Farmers Assoc invited me to join their campaign to save rural rail branch lines and we did have a win, though there is a lot more to do.

Last month I was in Orange with Senator Bob Brown meeting with apple farmers concerned about biosecurity. And as mining spokesperson for the Greens I have had the opportunity to work farmers with whom we share a commitment to protect farming land from coal mining.

The Greens have worked broadly to improve public services – transport, health and education.

Freight on rail is one of our state wide campaigns. We have strongly criticised federal Labor’s transport budget that favours inner city motorways, and favours rail projects that move coal over a modern integrated freight and commuter rail service.

Our work with rural communities on retaining hospital and aged care facilities has also had some wins. When I was in the NSW parliament we worked with the Hunter community at Wallsend and the Riverina community in Carramar to save their aged care facilities. The Nationals supported our action. Wallsend Aged Care is no longer slated for closure.

I mention this as I would ask you to judge the Greens on our record working with rural and regional communities not on what others say about us.

Yes there are areas of difference, but we share many concerns, and public co-operation between farmers and regional communities and the Greens can help deliver solutions.

The Greens approach to farming issues is that Australia needs a food security plan. Men and women on the land should be appropriately rewarded for producing food. Land and water should be treated as strategic resources.

I acknowledge that food security issues are coming onto the agenda of Labor and the Coalition parties but in the main it is about consumers and prices. It has to be about keeping farmers on the land and preserving our agricultural land.

Farmgate prices are often too low. I know sometimes farmers are forced to grow food below the cost of production. And then there are the cheap imports, the result of so called free trade agreements.

The Greens address issues that make it hard for farmers to stay on the land and for young farmers to buy in.  In the Senate, Greens Senator Christine Milne sits on the Regional and Rural Senate Committee.  She campaigns for a better price for the food farmers produce, works to raise consumer awareness of the supermarkets duopoly in Australia and its negative impact on farmers.

There is tremendous support for farmers in our cities and towns. People want fresh, local, seasonal food and they want to support our farmers to produce it.

The Greens recognise that a major problem is that farmers often do not receive a decent return for the food they grow. Fair prices vanish under pressure from cheap overseas imports and the Coles and Woolworths duopoly.

It is tough or impossible to negotiate a decent price when you are up against powerful processors and supermarkets.

We need to change the World Trade Organisation rules that are currently stacked against Australian farmers because farmers in other countries can subsidise their products with low wages and poor environmental standards. It is disappointing that the Nationals in the federal parliament have not joined with the Greens in challenging free trade agreements, a mechanism that dogs farming life every day.

And now the price of land is being driven up by 100 per cent tax deductions for managed investment schemes. These schemes are designed by the city for the city and it is time the government and the opposition parties put in place the required restrictions.

These policies are leading to more foreign interests coming in and buying Australian land and water rights.

It is time the Foreign Investment Review Board actually took an oversight of who's already bought up the land and water because in the long term this is about making sure we grow food for ourselves as well as to export.

We need a national register of foreign purchases of land and water in rural Australia.  It was pleasing to see that when Senator Bob Brown called for this register a few weeks back the Opposition's spokesman on agriculture and food security, John Cobb, backed his call.

There are reports of increased interest from private and institutional investors from UK and US in quality strategic rural properties in NSW. Chinese interests are buying farms at Watermark, the  Qatar Investment Authority  (a Middle East property developer) has purchased $40 million sheep properties in Queensland and Victoria.  In WA an Indian Government backed company is building a fertilizer plant which will send 90% of its production back to India.

Now some say it is ok to allow foreign companies to buy up our land as no one else is interested. I am sure there are many locals interested in buying Australian farms but high land prices make it impossible for many, particularly young farmers.

The Greens think we need to look at a range of ways to assist farmers - low interest rates to enable people to actually start up on the land; and we need long-term leasehold arrangements.

I know some of you also have concerns about the estate tax and I am happy to take questions.

The Greens position on climate change has also been misrepresented. We need to rein in human induced climate change. Failing to deal with this challenge will have enormous impacts and costs on farming communities.

Bringing in policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions does not have to be a cost burden on farming communities.

Surprising that the Nationals have failed to provide leadership by backing renewable energy targets that would bring clean energy to rural areas and provide opportunities for farmers to become even more self sufficient and in many cases provide a means to develop a supplementary income.

A key aspect of the Greens climate change policy is for a planned transition away from a reliance on coal fired power. This is not about closing down coal mines. It is about not opening up new coal mines and switching government support from coal fired power to renewables, energy efficiency and smart grids.

This form of energy delivery holds great potential for rural communities as energy creation and delivery can be decentralised and offers enormous opportunities for farmers to supplement their income.

Our commitment to protecting farms has been well demonstrated in our work in NSW to protect farming land from mining

When the federal Labor government introduced the Water Bill in November 2008 Senator Bob Brown moved amendments that once adopted would have required the protection of aquifers. This held enormous significance for the Breeza Plain and the plans of mining giants to explore for coal. With the support of the Nationals and the Liberals the Greens amendment was passed.

But to our shock the next day Senator Fiona Nash announced that the Nationals had decided they had made a mistake and the amendment was recommitted and the vote was lost with the Nationals receiving support from the Liberals and Labor to overturn this protection. This change of heart was music to the ears of the mining industry. Mitch Hooke from the Australian Minerals Council was reported to have met with Nationals MPs to lobby for this reversal.

Similarly in the NSW parliament we had an opportunity to defeat the Land Access Bill outright if the Nationals had voted with the Greens.

This Bill was one of the last dirty deeds of the former mineral resources minister Ian Macdonald. When the Liverpool Plains farmers won their Supreme Court case to stop coal exploration on the prime agricultural land of the Liverpool Plains, the minister tried to rush through legislation overturning the decision in one day. The Coalition, the Greens and the other cross benchers voted together to stop this push.

We clearly had the numbers to defeat this bill. So it was disappointing that the Nationals worked on a few amendments and then allowed the legislation to pass.

These two examples demonstrate an unsavoury aspect of National Party actions when the interests of their two key constituencies – farmers and miners – they go with the mining multinationals.

Farming land. We can’t afford to lose prime agricultural land to mining and development.

Food security should be a top priority of all governments and protecting farming land is critical.

We are ready to work with Nationals when their policies work for farming communities. When the Greens put up legislation in NSW to protect prime agricultural land we voted together. When we lost that bill by one vote the Nationals said that they would bring forward their own legislation. That bill is now more than six months overdue and I urge the Nationals to bring it forward to the state parliament before the end of the year.

What do Greens bring to the table and the farmgate when we consider issues that impact on the life of farming communities?

We bring a commitment to work with farming groups and other political parties on the critical issues of food security and protection of farming land.

The Greens have representatives in local government and state and federal parliaments already taking up these issues. We will continue to do this. 

And we bring links with city folk who want to break down the divide between city and country. Farmers’ markets are booming across our city suburbs. People want produce that is fresh and seasonal. These people are shocked when they hear that there is no legal protection for farming land. 

There is growing awareness that farmers deserve a fair income, which in some parts of this country is not possible on the land.  The Greens recognise the need for Land Stewardship where farmers are rewarded for sustainable management of land for food and fibre.

What we eat and much of what we wear is entwined with the land. We have to get this relationship right. I think Greens policies can make a significant contribution.

If I become a Senator I will continue to travel into regional and rural NSW, and where we can work together I will take your voices into the federal parliament on key issues like protecting agricultural land and water resources and regional public services.

My time in the NSW parliament has come to an end, but my colleagues will carry on my work.  Jeremy Buckingham is the Greens candidate for the NSW Upper House in the March 2011 state election.  He is a stonemason from Orange, has been the Greens NSW Rural and Regional spokesperson for many years, and he will be a strong voice for farmers and regional NSW.

I thank you again for this opportunity and I hope that you will come away from today with a broader appreciation for the values and the work of the Greens.

The world is watching how the plain smoking packets are accepted and the impact on sales. For the tobacco industry they are looking to use this election to overturn the legislation due to take effect next July. And their great smoky hope is Tony Abbott.

Simon Chapman, Professor of Public Health at Sydney University, has detailed that the whole purpose of stopping companies promoting their cigarettes through packaging is about reducing the number of smokers. Under the new plan the brand name will be uniform on all packets appearing in a small panel at the bottom of the pack.

For the Greens Democracy4sale project the decision of Liberal strategists to help out the tobacco industry’s attack advertising campaign is not surprising.

Our political donations work reveals that nationally the Coalition have taken $2.2 million from tobacco companies over the last 11 years. This dwarfs the money to Labor that comes in at under $700,000.

The Coalition has taken $318,000 from big tobacco companies since the 2007 election.  Nearly half that money was taken by the Liberals in NSW - $145,000.

If Tony Abbott does not publicly back plain cigarette packaging the take home message is the big tobacco companies have bought Liberal support. You would have to think that the tobacco industry would judge the $2.2 million donated to the Coalition parties as a worthwhile investment.

Mr Abbott could clear this up by publicly declaring that he backs plain packaging for cigarette packages. Anything less is weasel words
that delivers for Liberal Party backers and betrays an important public health policy.

So beware of Liberal and industry advertising that argues plain cigarette packaging is not in the interests of small retailers. This
is just a tactic from the tobacco industry trying to use small business as cover as they know they are so publicly discredited.

Small retailers are flourishing across this country - convenience stores are proliferating - and any problems they may have cannot be
attributed to difficulty in selling plain packets of cigarettes.

The whole purpose of the change in marketing at the point of sale is to reduce tobacco use. The fact that the tobacco industry is ready to put $5 million into their own attack advertising shows that they are worried the new policy will work and there will be fewer smokers.

The Daily Telegraph

I had to leave the candidates workshop early. Lesa, our campaign coordinator, told me that all up we had just over 30 in attendance including 19 candidates from across the state. Their enthusiasm and focus on the campaign provided quite a buzz to the day's events. We touched on critical issues of climate change, refugees, the mining tax and a number of local issues.

It was an opportunity for campaign teams to polish up on their social networking, media work and public speaking with our campaign staff holding a range of skill sharing sessions.

In the early evening we moved onto  the Mori Gallery for our forum – Tip the Balance for Public Education.  Many delegates from the NSW Teachers Federation Conference dropped in for a drink and to check out what the Greens are up to.

John Kaye, the Greens NSW education spokesperson introduced the event, and then I had the opportunity to speak on one of my favourite topics – public education.

It was widely agreed that this is a critical election for public education as both the Prime Minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott are pushing the same destructive plan to reframe the debate to make out that public and private schools should be treated the same.

Thanks to everyone who joined us and added their name to our growing list of volunteers to assist with the election campaign.

Thanks to Lynn Joslynn, Kilty O'Gorman, Col Charlton, Malcolm Crook for all their work in making this event such a success. And particular thanks to Steve Mori  - having his gallery for Greens events is such a boon.