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The Australian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Australian
Chris Kenny: Greens are lost in a wilderness of ideological causes
Before it became fashionable, I was a bit of a greenie. But that was when they focused on the environment – you would not want to identify as green now. In the early 1980s I wore bib and brace overalls, a homespun woollen beanie and sturdy hiking boots as I surveyed plant and animal species in the Mount Lofty, Flinders and Gawler Ranges. Back before he founded his political party, I was a fan of Bob Brown and had a 'No Dams' sticker on my little four-wheel-drive. Obsessed with the bush and Australiana as a boy, I read widely not only about the early explorers but also the 20th-century legends such as Bill Harney and Douglas Lockwood. Thinking back this week, a favourite book about exploring the Northern Territory loomed large in my mind but I could not remember the title or author until some rummaging in my bookshelves turned it up, a Christmas gift from Mum and Dad in 1973 – Quest under Capricorn, by none other than David Attenborough. The wonders of the Australian natural environment were endless and still being discovered in the post-war decades, usually with help from local Indigenous communities. Nearing the end of my school years I was aimless and uninterested, scoffing at teachers who suggested I might study law. Then I heard about a course in wildlife and park management, a career pathway to park ranger, and I had my goal. The course included field trips of various types to wilderness areas and it led to short-term contract work for national parks in the Adelaide Hills, including as a fire-spotter over summer. We students convinced the then Liberal state government's environment minister, David Wotton, to visit us for a formal question and answer session, and given the lack of attention on environmental issues I asked why it would not be in his own political interests to elevate the importance of his portfolio. This was the Franklin Dam era, and we felt we were part of a wider awakening about the importance of the environment, especially habitat preservation, native species protection and conservation of rivers. Still, full-time park ranger jobs were few and far between (what with the environment being such a low priority) and I decided to scratch my news junkie itch, returning to university to study journalism. Despite serving as an adviser for state and federal Liberal politicians and working as a generally right-of-centre commentator, I still regard myself as an environmentalist. The critical importance of conserving the environment, native species and special places remains – it is just that the so-called environmentalists hardly ever focus on this stuff. All they blather on about is climate change. Every environmental issue is linked to global warming, all aspects of climate are exaggerated in alarmist ways and the only solutions proposed, such as the renewable energy transition, will be unworkable, wildly expensive and ineffectual. Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, a committed environmentalist, demonstrated the point when he spoke at the National Press Club last week. 'Instead of affording protection from wild weather events, the natural environment is now their accelerator,' he warned. 'We've turned nature against us.' This is shrill, emotive and nonsensical – anthropomorphising nature. 'Our destruction of the natural environment now poses an existential threat to everything that we value' – this stuff is indistinguishable from Greta Thunberg's teenage rantings. Henry was speaking as chairman of the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Council and, to be fair, he did mention some of those critical issues such as land clearing and habitat preservation. But it was overshadowed by climate fearmongering: 'We are passing to future generations a legacy of unsustainable plunder compounded by the impacts of a rapidly changing climate.' If you read the science on climate carefully you will be concerned about possible trends but overwhelmed by the uncertainty. And given the climate is always warming or cooling, we can never be certain about the extent of any human impact on global climate, beneficial or deleterious. Our position on all this should be governed by scientific scepticism, honest examination of empirical facts and sensible caution about those things we can control, such as carbon emissions and deforestation. Instead, we get catastrophism and the subsuming of all environmental challenges to the climate cause. Henry demonstrated this when discussing South Australia's algal bloom, a terrible but natural occurrence. 'It's well past time that we and others in the world dealt properly with the threats of climate change and the warming of the oceans,' he said, 'which I think from what I've read lies at the heart of the catastrophe that's occurring there.' Predictably, he and others take a leap of faith to blame a natural disaster on climate change. This is speculation at best and, as we have seen with previous claims about 'unprecedented' bushfires, floods and cyclones, it can often be simply wrong and misleading. Even if we assumed Henry was right and algal blooms occurred more often with warming oceans, exactly how would spending $1 trillion on switching our national grid to renewables help? Australian emissions reductions are portrayed as the panacea to fires, floods, droughts, cyclones, sea levels and now algal blooms; soon we will be told they will win us The Ashes. On current projections our renewables transition will only impoverish us, create more environmental destruction as solar factories, wind farms and transmission lines alienate vast areas of agricultural and bush land, and it will have no impact on the climate because global emissions continue to rise by vastly greater amounts than our meagre 1 per cent share. When environmentalists lurch immediately to climate change as the problem and emissions reductions as the solution, they really offer nothing beyond ideological posturing. Even if the world went net zero tomorrow, the climate still might warm and, regardless, we still will have algal blooms, droughts, floods and fires anyway. We had best learn to deal with natural threats in ways that involve science and logic. On algal blooms we might consider factors such as the management of the Murray-Darling Basin and the possible impact of fertilisers and other nutrients washing into the ocean at the Murray mouth. Former fire chief and now Climate Council activist Greg Mullins warns before every summer that climate change could deliver severe bushfires – that is always a safe prediction. We have always had catastrophic bushfires and we always will – and no firefighters or water bombers will stop them. Suggesting that lowering emissions will reduce the threat is ludicrous. It is a sure-fire way to distract from meaningful and achievable protections such as fuel reduction, sensible planning and diligent hazard management. Likewise with flooding; we know where the risks are and how to avoid them but we repeatedly build out the flood plains and hope for the best. It is best we deal with the perpetual threat of natural disasters rationally, and not through the political prism of climate posturing. When was the last time you heard environmentalists or Greens politicians talking about what was needed to preserve our small native mammals and their habitat? When have you heard their ideas for tackling the scourge of feral cats, foxes, goats and pigs? Do they care about our wild rivers any more, or do they want to follow up Bob Hawke's pledge to plant a billion trees? Instead of blocking hydro dams in the wilderness, greenies now use climate scares over dams never filling and rivers running dry to push governments into wasting billions of dollars on electricity-guzzling, superfluous desalination plants. And they cheer the billions wasted and the landscapes despoiled by Snowy 2.0 and its transmission links, while raising nary a whisper about wind farms on pristine ridgetops or solar farms on rangelands. Brown's political party has now lost its way. Co-founder Drew Hutton declared in The Australian this week that a 'transgender and queer cult' has taken over the party after he was expelled for supporting debate on women's rights. On Sky News he told me that 'right around Australia trans activists, zealots and extremists have taken over the key committees in the Greens'. He expanded on how the party's mission was being lost. 'When Bob (Brown) and I were working back in the early 1990s setting up the party we felt we had an historic mission to help the planet to move to a position of ecological sustainability,' he said. Hutton said a lot of people in important positions in the party did not have that same vision. 'Their vision is one where particular identities prevail, and the rights of those particular identities are far more important than any other issue that the party addresses,' he said. Apart from being preoccupied with climate at the expense of all other environmental concerns, and obsessed with trans activism, the Greens also have become a hotbed of rabid anti-Israeli activism. Their deputy leader, senator Mehreen Faruqi, was censured by the Senate this week for disrupting the Governor-General's speech with a placard demanding sanctions against Israel. The Greens have been unwilling to condemn Hamas, repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and supported ugly anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian protests. One protest in Canberra this week paraded a poster of deceased Hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the October 7 atrocities. All this is a far cry from protecting the Tasmanian wilderness and, worryingly, the Albanese Labor government needs to Greens to pass its agenda through the Senate. In parliament, as in the bush, ferals can do a lot of damage. Read related topics: Greens Chris Kenny Associate Editor (National Affairs) Commentator, author and former political adviser, Chris Kenny hosts The Kenny Report, Monday to Thursday at 5.00pm on Sky News Australia. He takes an unashamedly rationalist approach to national affairs. Politics The steelmaking giant will have access to rival proposals for the SA facility under a 'right of last offer', giving it a significant advantage over competitors. Politics The UN climate change official issuing doomsday appraisals of Australia's future should spend more time lecturing the world's biggest emitters in China, India and the US.
AU Financial Review
5 days ago
- Politics
- AU Financial Review
Why the Greens are in real trouble
In an exquisite piece of political timing, the Queensland Greens chose the weekend before the new 2025 parliament resumed to expel Drew Hutton, the man who in 1992 co-founded the federal party with Tasmanian Bob Brown. This is the same Drew Hutton who was the Greens standard bearer in Queensland for decades, until his 'retirement' from politics in 2010, when he set up the Lock-the-Gate movement with farmers to slow the encroachment of mining and gas exploration on prime farming land.
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Yamaha Motor Manufacturing enlists 3PL to manage distribution operations
This story was originally published on Supply Chain Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Supply Chain Dive newsletter. Yamaha Motor Manufacturing Corporation of America will transition its internal distribution operations to DHL Supply Chain, tentatively on Oct. 5, according to a July 15 press release. YMMC expects the strategic partnership to allow it to expand capacity, improve logistics transparency and speed up delivery to customers, the release said. The company does not expect the transition to disrupt customers' current service levels. "By enhancing our internal logistics capabilities, we're able to focus even more on our core strength — world-class manufacturing and creating Kando for our customers," Bob Brown, YMMC president and CEO, said in the release. Creating Kando, a Japanese word meaning deep satisfaction and excitement, is a pillar of Yamaha's corporate philosophy. YMMC will transition about 175 team members to DHL Supply Chain as part of the deal and continue supporting distribution operations, the company said. The workers will remain on-site at YMMC. The switch to DHL Supply Chain reflects YMMC's long-term strategy to build a more responsive and scalable supply chain, the manufacturer said. DHL's on-site support and logistics expertise position YMMC to strengthen reliability and increase flexibility, per the release. The YMMC partnership comes as DHL Supply Chain expands its operations. The company acquired Inmar Supply Chain Solutions in January, adding 14 return centers and about 800 associates. Recommended Reading DHL Supply Chain experiments with GenAI
Daily Mail
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Greens founder is booted from his own party as he takes a parting shot: 'I knew I was gone'
A founder of the Greens has been expelled from the party for expressing opinions critical of transgender ideology on social media. Drew Hutton, who established the Australian Greens in 1991 with future parliamentary leader Bob Brown, has been kicked out of the Queensland branch he had established following a state council meeting on Sunday. The 78-year-old environmental activist said the state branch he set up 35 years ago had been taken over by extreme transgender activists, who he argued had downplayed the dangers of puberty blockers and the need for biological women to have separate change rooms from biological men. 'The QLD Greens state council has just expelled me from the party,' he said. 'I knew I was gone the moment I walked into the room.' Hutton, who also set up the Lock The Gate alliance in 2011 to campaign against coal seam gas mining on agricultural land, said environmentalists were now outnumbered in the party he set up. 'Not one environmental activist in the room. The only issues the Greens are really interested in are queer and transgender,' he said. 'When people learn what they are really on about, the Greens will be lucky to ever win a seat again.' Queensland Greens convener Gemmia Burden said delegates had voted to expel Hutton for breaching party rules on transgender issues. 'Delegates from Queensland Greens branches have upheld the Constitution and Arbitration Committee's (CAC) ruling to expel Drew Hutton for breaching the Queensland Greens Code of Ethics,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'This decision reflects the Greens' position as endorsed by its membership - that trans rights are non-negotiable human rights, a position publicly reaffirmed in 2022. 'No one should be subjected to violence or hate speech on the basis of their gender, nor their race, sexual identity, ethnicity, or religion. 'Respectful debate is the fundamental basis upon which members of the Queensland Greens make decisions, and the vast majority of members do so without breaching party rules.' Burden said Hutton's comments 'went beyond respectful and robust discussion - they were harmful to the safety and wellbeing of people within the party and the broader community'. Greens leader Larissa Waters, who hails from Queensland, is declining to intervene to save Hutton's membership. 'This was an independent decision of the party, via the governance processes established by the membership, and with a clear outcome. Nobody is above the rules,' she said. The 78-year-old environmental activist said the state branch he set up 35 years ago had been taken over by transgender activists who had downplayed the need for biological women to have separate spaces from biological men (he is pictured protesting in 1983) 'Good governance means that people can put their case forward, including the right to appeal a decision. In this case the appeal was unsuccessful.' But former Queensland Greens senator Andrew Bartlett, who was previously also a party campaign convener, said Hutton's expulsion highlighted how Greens members were now self-censoring their opinions on transgender issues. 'I don't think the party has a good capacity for self-reflection and for handling differences of opinion that are seen as critical for those that are in control,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'Most political parties have a core group of people that have the main control and power over things, and I don't think they take criticism of them very kindly and that leads to people not speaking at all when they do have concerns; I think is unhealthy for any organisation. 'If they have some general concerns, they feel like they've just got to keep their mouths shut.' Bartlett said former Greens leader Adam Bandt, who said trans rights were 'non-negotiable', had set the tone of the party nationally. 'It's not unique to Queensland - it's a view amongst the wider party that we need to be unequivocal,' he said. He added Hutton's membership status should have been dealt with two years ago. 'It's been sitting there for like two years bubbling away - I think it's better if there's significant concerns about a serious difference of opinion that's seen as important enough, then it's better to try and bring it to the surface quickly,' Bartlett said. Hutton had a series of Facebook posts in April criticising the transgender movement in the UK, arguing biological women needed safe spaces from biological men and that puberty blockers were a bad idea. 'A recent YouGov survey in the UK showed huge majority opposition to biological males, self-identifying as females, having access to women's sport and change rooms,' he said. 'Also majority support for biological sex as the defining element of woman and almost universal opposition to giving puberty blockers to children. 'Any political party supporting the extremist trans agenda will be lucky to make double figures once their position is widely known.' Hutton said a Greens member of Chinese ancestry had written to him comparing his treatment to something out of the Chinese Communist Party. 'I'm getting many messages from Greens members expressing support for my appeal against suspension,' he said last week. 'Here is a particularly moving statement this Chinese-Australian member has sent to his branch reminding us that this is an issue about real people as well as principle.' Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's government won a landslide majority in the lower house of Parliament but needs the Greens in the Senate to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition. The Greens lost three of their four lower house seats at the last federal election in May, including the Queensland electorates of Brisbane and Griffith, as voters also kicked out former leader Adam Bandt in Melbourne.
The Guardian
12-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Drew Hutton helped found the Australian Greens. So why has the troubled party booted him from its ranks?
Drew Hutton had assumed he would live out his life a card-carrying Green. The 78-year-old retiree turned up to local branch meetings, staked party corflutes into the lawn of his home on Queensland's Sunshine Coast and handed out how-to-vote cards long after stepping down from active duty in the party. Given Hutton had been awarded life membership and his friend – and the Green's first national leader – Bob Brown had lauded him a 'towering figure in Australian environmental and social politics' who, 'more than anybody' (including Brown himself) was 'responsible for the formation of the Australian Greens', it must have seemed a safe bet. But, on 20 July, Hutton will stand before the Queensland Greens state council and plead his case that they reverse a decision by its Constitution and Arbitration Committee (CAC) to expel him. Hutton will argue that he has been purged from the party in a crackdown on free speech. The former lecturer of politics and history will draw on symbolically powerful support. Both Brown and the party's second national leader, Christine Milne, oppose Hutton's expulsion and have written to advocate that his membership be restored. The CAC, whose names are not publicly available, will argue it should not be, on the grounds Hutton used social media to provide a platform for transphobia. For Hutton, the choice those assembled branch delegates make behind closed doors next Sunday will mark a turning point in the history of the Greens. Not because he still wields great influence within it – his time of having an upfront role in the party, Hutton says, has passed. 'The important thing isn't me,' Hutton tell Guardian Australia. 'The important thing is the Greens. 'Are they going to be a dogmatic, authoritarian party that exerts all this top-down control over members? Or is it going to be the sort of party that people like Bob Brown and myself originally created with a historic mission to try to push the world to a more sustainable footing?' The CAC directed questions to the Queensland Greens' convenor, Gemmia Burden. In a statement, she wrote that details of all formal complaints were confidential but noted that party rules 'apply to all members equally', most of whom 'respectfully contribute a diverse range of views without running afoul of the code of conduct'. 'Respectful discussions of issues is the fundamental basis upon which members of the Queensland Greens make decisions,' Burden said. 'However, commentary that targets people on the basis of their gender identity is harmful, not respectful. 'The Queensland Greens believe that trans rights are non-negotiable, and we do not tolerate transphobia or transmisogyny in the party.' The official story of the termination of Hutton's membership begins on 21 June 2022 at exactly 3:50pm. It was a month to the day after a federal election which would prove a high-water mark for the Greens in Queensland. The party added to its one lower house seat with three newly elected MPs – all from Brisbane. Queensland Greens were euphoric, pundits agog. The talk was of a 'greenslide'; the state was, briefly, dubbed 'Greensland'. Hutton had been 'very pleased' to see how much the party had flourished since he planted its seed by founding the Brisbane Greens in 1984 beneath the gloom of authoritarian and conservative rule under Joh Bjelke-Petersen. But, with a click of a mouse, he was about to be embroiled in internecine war raging south of the Tweed. Then Victorian parliamentary leader, Samantha Ratnam, had just removed Linda Gale from her recently elected position as state convenor because of an internal discussion paper Gale co-authored three years earlier. The paper aimed to prevent what it deemed was a move to 'shut down any debate' on a 'critical issue in feminism and women's rights today': the definition of a woman. Ratnam labelled the paper 'transphobic'. In New South Wales, feminist lawyer Anna Kerr had her party membership terminated for disrupting Greens actions and discussion groups with what was deemed transphobic views, including being quoted in the media as being 'extremely disturbed' by a NSW Greens push to amend legislation to use the term 'pregnant person' instead of 'pregnant woman'. On his personal Facebook page, Hutton labelled these moves 'authoritarian and antidemocratic'. 'I believe in full human rights for trans people at the same time as supporting the right of women to be safe from patriarchal oppression,' he wrote. 'I am also prepared to say these things publicly. Unfortunately, in the Greens at present that would seem to make me a 'transphobe' … .' Two days later, Hutton wrote what he said would be a 'final statement' on the post before which he would close comments raging in the thread below, some of which he acknowledged had been 'hurtful and disrespectful'. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email In this lengthy statement, Hutton claimed his original post was not written because he wanted to 'say anything about the trans-gender issues themselves' but because 'deeply concerned' about party officials overturning the results of democratic elections and purging members for raising questions 'progressives should not be afraid to address'. 'I stand with all women, cis and trans in their struggle and recognise the many non-binary members of our party,' he wrote, signing off with a plea for 'inclusive, safe and respectful' policy and process discussions. This would not prove Hutton's last word on the subject. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion A year later, after a complaint lodged against him, the CAC suspended Hutton's membership until such time as he deleted a post criticising the Greens and removed comments made by others which it deemed transphobic. The committee rejected the allegation Hutton himself had demeaned trans women, but found he had provided a platform for others to do so. Hutton refused to comply, citing free speech – an issue for which he had once chained himself to a tree in Queens Street Mall and for which he had been thrown into jail by Bjelke-Petersen's corrupt police force many times as part of a broader civil disobedience campaign which was, eventually, successful in the form of the landmark 1992 Peaceful Assembly Act. A near two-year standoff ensued in which Hutton abided by the CAC's directive he remain silent. But the deadlock broke open on 15 March 2025 when the Saturday Paper ran the Hutton saga. He has not spoken to journalists about the matter before or since. But in the months that followed he began increasingly sharing articles and opinions on Facebook which critiqued what he called 'trans extremists'. Then, in the weeks before and after the federal election, Hutton spoke at two small rallies organised by a group called Woman Up Queensland, which describes itself as pro-women's rights but whose opponents label it as a Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist – or Terf – group. Hutton says his is not an isolated case, and claims he knows of more than 40 people who have been expelled or 'forced out' of the Greens after voicing their position on gender. 'Almost all of them are women,' Hutton says. 'They're second-wave feminists, for the most part. Some of them are lesbians. And they are outraged. 'Some of them are opposed to the medicalisation of kids for treatment for gender dysphoria. Others are just outraged that there is this move on to give rights to trans people, but take them away from women.' Most of those women don't want to be identified, Hutton says, for fear of backlash. One who does though, and who fits all the aforementioned categories, is Cheryl Hercus. In 2016, Hercus ran for the Greens in the federal seat of Goldstein in Melbourne. The retired feminist lecturer and author let her party membership lapse in 2019 after having to defend herself against a complaint that alleged she had 'proven intransigent' and that her 'promoting harmful transphobic views, articles and beliefs' online reflected her 'deeply held beliefs'. 'I could probably add another half a dozen to that that Drew doesn't know about,' Hercus says. 'Women who were involved in the Greens a very long time who've just resigned in disgust or disappeared'. By taking to the soapbox, Hutton succeeded in forcing the hand of CAC which 'terminated' his membership 'effective immediately' on 24 June. This opened the door for Hutton's long-sought appeal, denied him while his membership languished indefinitely suspended. But while Hutton may have found support in a cohort who had left or been forced out of the party, his standing with many inside it had now been utterly tarnished. High-profile environmental activist Ben Pennings was one with whom online exchanges had become personal and vitriolic. 'It's heartbreaking that Drew Hutton has left the fight for our precious places and a safe climate to become obsessed with a singular issue,' Pennings writes. And while the debate rages, Ty, a non-binary member of South Brisbane branch – Hutton's old stomping ground – who requested their surname not be published for privacy reasons, says they are the ones who live with the 'very real impacts' of Hutton's free speech. 'It's really awful,' Ty says of Hutton's posts and talks. 'To go back into a world where our roles are determined by our genitals is bizarre and creepy and intrusive'. A software developer in their 40s, Ty denies a generational rift between the Greens, saying instead the difference was between those 'who actually know and interact with trans people and people who don't'. Nor does Ty believe the outcome of Hutton's appeal will prove much of a turning point. 'Look, members who don't line up with the party's values that they commit to when they join as a member, including the social justice pillar … members leave when they don't share those values any more,' they say. 'Some are asked to leave because their values aren't compatible with having an inclusive party that actually focuses on actually doing the jobs the party was founded for'.
