Flannery can’t count – Brown

The call by scientist Tim Flannery for the Australian Greens to support the Rudd government's 4% emissions trading scheme legislation and ‘get it through' lacked maths and logic, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"Professor Flannery should respect our politics as much as we respect his science," Senator Brown said today.

"He has invented a new Senate maths which makes 32 plus 5 equal 39. That is, he calculates 32 Labor plus 5 Greens equals a Senate majority, but it doesn't. You also need Senators Xenophon and Fielding and I wish him luck with the latter.

"I would like to see Tim get behind the Greens' efforts to get the Rudd government to improve its ETS legislation so that the Great Barrier Reef and the Murray Darling Basin are protected.

"Professor Flannery also said on Lateline that the arrest of climate change protesters was ‘utterly immoral and despicable'. However, his call to the Greens would demoralise those same people," Senator Brown said.