Garrett sells out

Greens Leader Bob Brown says yesterday's Tasmanian forestry announcement by the ALP shows Peter Garrett, the party's environment spokesman, has sold out.

"I can't comprehend how Peter Garrett can have gone through the pantomime of coming down here the day before, flying home again saying Kevin Rudd was going to make an announcement, knowing that announced the death knell for some of the most magnificent forest in Australia," Senator Brown said today.

"He should have stood up to it, but he has sold out on the forests," he told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

"I warned Peter that when he went into the ALP they would eat him up and spit him out and that's just what's happening."

Senator Brown said it was a myth that former Labor leader Mark Latham lost two Tasmanian seats at the last federal election because of a conservationist forest policy.

He said polls had predicted the ALP would lose three seats in the 2004 election so losing only two had been a nod to Mr Latham's policy.

"Kevin Rudd yesterday sold out on the Australian national heritage forest and world heritage value forest in Tasmania," Senator Brown said.

"It was a sickening announcement from Kevin Rudd, he hasn't been into those forests, he hasn't consulted with the people who are concerned about those forests and he hasn't read the polls which show 80 per cent of Australians want those forests protected."

Asked whether that was reflected in Tasmania, Senator Brown said polls he had read showed that 69 per cent of Tasmanians wanted the forest protected.

I just want to talk through paradise
I just want to see that clear clear light
Don't want to be a member of a species that's deceasing
Keep on making those promises that they aren't keeping

From the song pictures co-written by Peter Garrett as they performed in Canada in 1993 at an environmental protest in Clayoquot Sound to protest old-growth logging in the area. Pity he doesn't perfom to stop old growth logging in Tasmania.