UPDATE: Australia Greens Leader Resigns; No Change To Support Of Government
April 13 2012 - 12:41AM
Dow Jones News
Bob Brown resigned Friday as leader of Australia's increasingly
influential Greens party and will leave Parliament in June after 16
years.
The surprise resignation won't alter a deal agreed in 2010
allowing the center-left administration of Prime Minister Julia
Gillard to form government with a one-seat majority, Brown said.
His resignation also will not force a by-election as his seat will
automatically be filled by a Greens party member.
But it does leave a big void in left-of-center politics, where
Brown, 67, is widely credited with steering the Greens from a
minority environmentalist party a decade ago to an emergent third
force in politics, winning a record 12% of the vote in the 2010
federal election.
The party has nine seats and holds the balance of power in the
country's upper house Senate, up from just one seat a decade ago.
It also won a seat in the lower House of Representatives in
2010.
"The Greens have such a depth of talent and experience lined up
for leadership--I could only dream about that a decade ago," Brown
said Friday. "It is prime time to hand over the reins."
Christine Milne, 58, a fellow Senator for the island state of
Tasmania, will take over the leadership.
Milne has been a vocal advocate for policies like a tax on
greenhouse-gas emissions and the profits of mining companies that
convinced the Greens to back Gillard's Labor government in 2010,
over the conservative Liberal-National coalition led by Tony
Abbott, after a hung ballot left neither of Australia's two major
political forces with enough votes to govern alone.
"The mining boom will end and climate change is coming. And with
the big end of town more aggressive than we've seen for decades in
demanding weaker environmental protection and weaker industrial
relations laws, our country faces a stark choice between two
futures," Milne said.
"Will we choose to put profits ahead of people and planet,
digging ourselves deeper into a hole? Or will we prepare our
country for the enormous challenges of the 21st century while
building a better quality of life and a fair go for all of us?,"
she said.
Australia's mining industry earlier Friday launched a
pre-emptive strike against the threat of further tax increases,
resurrecting the "keep mining strong" slogan used two years earlier
to thwart a proposed super profits tax.
The Minerals Council of Australia began running full-page
advertisements in newspapers cautioning against possible new or
increased levies in the Labor government's next budget, due May 8.
The ads are set to run in major papers over the coming days into
next week.
The council--which represents major minerals producers including
BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), Rio Tinto PLC (RIO) and Xstrata PLC
(XTA.LN)--had agreed an advertising truce with Gillard in mid-2010
after its intensive campaign against the planned super tax rattled
support for the government and led to the ouster of then Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd. Gillard went on to water down the mining tax
and narrowed its focus to coal and iron ore after consulting with
the industry.
-By Rachel Pannett, Dow Jones Newswires; 61-2-8272-4684;
rachel.pannett@dowjones.com
--Robb M. Stewart in Melbourne contributed to this article
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