Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown joined Greens Senator for Queensland Larissa Waters in Gladstone today to see the environmental crisis in the harbour firsthand and listen to the concerns of the Gladstone community.

"I am very pleased to be back here, getting a firsthand account from Queensland's most engaged Senator, Larissa Waters. A vote for either of the old parties is a vote for this mess," Senator Brown said.

"Some might call the predicted thousands of trucks descending on Canberra ending up as hundreds (ABC, 21/8/11) a ‘flop', but these Australians have every right to a peaceful presence on the parliamentary lawns," Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

"It seems like the prime qualification to be there is to be angry about something - these are Abbott's angry people," Senator Brown said.

"But it seems their views on some issues are fairly shorted sighted, very ‘me-now'."

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown says the oil spill catastrophe now threatening the coastline of several US states highlights both the vulnerability of the Australian marine environment to oil spills and the serious incapacity of the industry to control such events.

"A spill like that now unfolding in the US would decimate the Great Barrier Reef or Western Australia's World Heritage Ningaloo Reef for example," said Senator Brown.

"It's like looking down on an unclaimed bag in a subway," Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said today after flying over the coal tanker stuck fast on the Great Barrier Reef. Just one other small vessel is nearby.

From the air the pristine blue ocean dotted with coral ringed emerald lagoons of the Marine Park dominates, but the Shen Neng 1 sits below like an environmental time-bomb.

"I congratulate all those who are insisting no measure is too expensive to help rescue the Reef and coast from this threat," said Senator Brown.

Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown says the Federal and Queensland state governments share responsibility for the Chinese coal carrier Shen Neng 1 being without a pilot when it ran aground east of Great Keppel Island late yesterday, threatening the Great Barrier Reef.
"Despite calls for all such ships to have pilots aboard, both Canberra and Brisbane have bowed to the coal and shipping companies to avoid this common sense requirement," said Senator Brown.
"The failure to insist on pilots has been reckless.

The Member for Indooroopilly, Ronan Lee, is Queensland's first Greens MP. Mr Lee resigned from the Labor Party today.

Mr Lee, who won Indooroopilly from the Liberals in 2001 and then retained the seat in 2004 and 2006, says he will provide a strong, sensible response to the climate crisis for Queensland.

Mr Lee said, "Queensland needs to take advantage of its natural advantages to make our state the world's leading solar power economy".

"We also need to focus our infrastructure spending on building a world-class public transport system"

Rudd must lead globe towards strict targets

The weak targets advocated in the supplementary report from the Garnaut review released today are based on outdated science, risk catastrophic climate change and will undermine global negotiations towards an effective climate treaty, Australian Greens Senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne said today.

"Professor Garnaut concluded that it 'is worth paying less than 1% of GNP as a premium for the 450[ppm] strategy'. Surely, then, this should be our starting point, not our ultimate goal," Senator Brown said.

**REVISED**
The 2006 State of the Environment report is more sceptical about climate change than John Howard.
 
It headlines the topic as 'Australia's variable climate' and excuses the Howard government for a decade of inaction:
 
"It is increasingly clear that the last 50 years of experience with rainfall patterns is not a sufficient time span to plan and design an adequate response to climate variability and change" (p20).