KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: The first opinion polls immediately after Julia Gillard became Prime Minister showed a large bloc of voters who had deserted to the Greens, disillusioned with the Rudd Government, coming back to Labor with a rush. One poll showed Green support almost halving. But will they stick? Having seen the Gillard compromise with miners on Kevin Rudd's resources tax, they'll presumably be wary of her promise to toughen up Labor's policy on asylum seekers and whether she'll stiffen her party's commitment to establishing a price on carbon after postponing the ETS timetable. It's a dilemma for Greens leader Bob Brown, who on the one hand wants a better relationship with Labor than under Kevin Rudd, but on the other hand wants every vote he can get to win the balance of power in the Senate and possibly even a historic Lower House seat at Labor's expense.

Bob Brown joins me now from Brisbane.

Bob Brown, one of your senators, Sarah Hanson-Young, has described Julia Gillard's recent comments on asylum seekers as dog-whistling and the lowest form of politics that she's seen played for a long time by the Labor Party. Now that is a very strong statement. Do you agree with it?

BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: It's a very strong statement, but when you hear the Prime Minister of the nation saying that she's not going to support political correctness, that's a direct put down to people who do believe in humanity, in decency and in legality in treating the people who fear persecution and come to our shores as asylum seekers.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But isn't there fault on both sides in a very emotional debate? Do you acknowledge - do you acknowledge the right of - or do you understand why some people might develop an anxiety about the issue without being racist and without the right of others to call them racist?

BOB BROWN: Yeah, of course I do, but there's a lot of xenophobia being traded on by both the big parties here. You've only gotta listen to Scott Morrison in action to understand that. And what we're missing here and have missed for so long in this country is leadership, Kerry. Four per cent of the migrants to this nation in the last six months came in boats. 96 per cent didn't. But we're not hearing a debate about them, nor about the 50,000 overstayers on visas who came by plane and who are illegal in this country. What we're getting is the debate honed in on these unfortunate people seeking refuge with their families, escaping persecution, coming to our shores and being denied their proper legal access and then this political debate, which is all about winning votes, at their hapless expense. This is the nation of a fair go; you wouldn't think so listening to Julia Gillard and you wouldn't think so listening to Tony Abbott and his crew.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And yet when Julia Gillard became Prime Minister you described her as straight-talking and honest and direct in her dealings with you. Dog-whistling is hardly honest. Do you believe that she's undergone some fundamental change from the perspective you developed about her in so short a time?

BOB BROWN: Well I was very surprised to hear what she had to say yesterday. I thought it was a very poor show of leadership from Julia Gillard and it corroborated that warning given by her predecessor, Mr Rudd, about he was not going to be pushed to the right on this issue. Well, there is a move to the right in the Labor Party and it's very frightening, very worrying indeed. Look, yes, I do have direct and honest relationships with Julia Gillard, but she's not going to - a dog whistle's not going to work with me, Kerry. Out there with the wider voting public, John Howard has shown it can work, it can change votes at the expense of decent human beings who don't deserve that sort of vilification-by-inference that we hear from serial political leaders in this country.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But you obviously have a sympathetic view to boat people. A the same time, the Government says that 50 per cent in the recent past - 50 per cent of Afghan asylum seekers have been found not to have a case for refugee status in accordance with the UN convention. Now do you accept the Government's right, ethical right, if an asylum seeker does not have - is not granted refugee status, and including - and has their appeal rejected, that the Government has the ethical right to return them to the country they came from?

BOB BROWN: Kerry, we've always said, and Sarah Hanson-Young, our spokesperson on this, has always said that people who are not asylum seekers should be sent home. That said, it is curious, passing curious, that 99 per cent of asylum seekers from Afghanistan up until April were found to be genuine refugees. And here we have a situation in which this government, which Julia Gillard endorses with Minister Evans, has decided not to process the asylum applications from people coming from a country where we've deployed our troops, which has a war and a terrifying civil death toll. But our government says, "That's no worry. We'll stop processing asylum seeker applications from that country." Now you don't have to be very smart to understand that that is wrong.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And what is the ...

BOB BROWN: That that is a politics of illogicality as well as inhumanity.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Well you could also apply the logic that says, well, if there is so much danger in Afghanistan, every person in the country who has any sense of danger has a right to leave and seek asylum somewhere else in their hundreds of thousands. I mean, where do ...

BOB BROWN: Kerry, there's two million of them in Pakistan and there's hundreds of thousands in Iran, and that just shows the danger that they've left in their homeland of Pakistan. Let me remind you here that Australia takes a tiny fraction of the asylum seekers that go to Canada, that go to the United States, that go to Italy or France. This has been pushed up, quite concocted by the big political parties at the expense of unfortunate asylum seekers who have a right, a legal right under the international refugee convention to seek asylum on our shores as if it was the biggest issue of the day. Four per cent of immigration in the last six months; the other 96 per cent ...

KERRY O'BRIEN: You've said that.

BOB BROWN: ... and then add - yes, but I make that point because it's very important to understanding the failure of leadership here by serial leaders including now Julia Gillard.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And what if the UNHCR, the United Nations body for refugees, says it is now safe for Sri Lankan asylum seekers to return home? Do you accept the Government's right to send Sri Lankans home in those changed circumstances?

BOB BROWN: Well, firstly, the Government decided before that news that it would put a block on Sri Lankan asylum seekers. Kerry, as a journalist you'll be aware of the ongoing assassination of opponents to the government in Sri Lanka. It is a very dangerous country. The United Nations may have made that judgment, but everybody seeking asylum from Sri Lanka, as with China, has to have their individual application and their special circumstances looked at by government. It's not a wholesale one country is in and one country is out. Every person has to have their reasons for seeking asylum in this country properly around legally processed.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Even if the numbers of asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat are still relatively small, they do still represent a big increase. Would you argue that every asylum seeker arriving here by boat should be accepted no matter how much the rate of arrival escalates - there were 160 boat arrivals I think in 2008, 2,726 last year and already 3,500-odd this year. What if that rate keeps escalating; is there no point at which you would acknowledge the Government's right to limit asylum seeker arrives?

BOB BROWN: Well, let's not talk about hypotheticals, let's talk about the reality. 180,000 immigrants have come to this country in the first part of this year. It is a very tiny number. Let me again say: do we accept the 50,000 overstayers who've come by plane about whom there's no debate. And let me also put it at - the numbers forward, where we've got a humanitarian program in this country which is very tiny compared to the rest of the program. Sure, that may need to be adjusted, but the time has not come for that yet, Kerry. What has happened here is this concentration on this, on this ...

KERRY O'BRIEN: What limit would you put on it? At what point - where would you draw the line?

BOB BROWN: What do you think it should be, Kerry? What do you think the population of this country should be? Governance takes the circumstances at the times and calibrates it.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You're the elected senator. You're the party leader; I'm asking you.

BOB BROWN: Well I'm telling you that the 6,000 people who have come by boat to this country should all be processed legally and accepted into this country if they're genuine refugees, and the majority of Australians in the most recent opinion polls agree. They believe that genuine asylum seekers should be brought into this country and made part of this country's future, made productive citizens of this country, and I agree with that majority.

KERRY O'BRIEN: OK. You've been upfront that you want to gain the balance of power in your own right in the Senate at the next election. That's an understandable ambition. So presumably you want to differentiate the Greens as much as possible from both major parties. Is that why you've also had harsh words to say about Julia Gillard's changes to Kevin Rudd's mining tax?

BOB BROWN: Well, the presumption's wrong. You know the differentiation between the Greens and the big party grows every day as they move to the right. But, yes, the mining tax; I wrote - I was very public - I wrote to Kevin Rudd when that was announced and said that we Greens would support it. We could see that there could be some adjustment made. We wanted a sovereign fund for this nation's future. But the monumental backdown by Prime Minister Gillard and her Treasurer and her minister for Mining in the last few days where they cut the rate from 40 per cent to effectively 22.5 per cent, I think, Kerry, will lead to somewhere - we'll find this out from Treasury; I've asked for a briefing - about $4 billion being stripped out of the budget per annum for the coming decade after the first couple of years. Now that's money not available ...

KERRY O'BRIEN: And yet the figures that have been given suggest $1.5 billion less. Now the question is would you consider blocking this in a Senate where you had the balance of power after the next election if it meant having no tax at all rather than having the tax the size you want?

BOB BROWN: No, that's the Abbott Coalition position: block everything. They did it with the stimulus package. We'd be in recession if it had been left to the Opposition. We Greens altered that, we got a jobs dividend for rural and regional Australia, we got a much better terms of reference and we helped save this nation from recession. Instead of double digit unemployment, we're headed for 4.75 per cent unemployment this year. Now, the same with this tax. We - I can guarantee you, Kerry, that we will ensure a curry comb is run through this tax with a very close Senate scrutiny. Let's have small business in, which is going to, as a result of last year's - last week's backdown being pay one per cent extra tax every year in the coming years because the miners peeled it back.

KERRY O'BRIEN: But there's a difference between a very close scrutiny and rejecting. Are you - would you say on the table that your ultimate weapon is to reject this tax, or will you stop at close scrutiny and support whatever deal you can strike at the end?

BOB BROWN: Well, my experience is we'll get a better deal out of it, and that means for small business. Let me tell you ...

KERRY O'BRIEN: Very quickly.

BOB BROWN: ... it is not my intention to block it, but to make it better, as we did ...

KERRY O'BRIEN: OK.

BOB BROWN: And that's a responsible economic position for the Greens to be taking, Kerry.

KERRY O'BRIEN: OK. Personal question before you go: you've been leading the Greens in the Senate for 14 years now; you can truly be termed a veteran. You turn 66 later this year. Do you see yourself staying on indefinitely?

BOB BROWN: I do. I'm very, very happy. I've got a great team of senators. I've been travelling around with Larissa Waters in Queensland - and I hope she'll be the next Greens senator for Queensland - in the last few days. Look, we are a hugely important alternative for voters. If we get an Abbott Senate, there'll be gridlock; if we get a Green senator - Senate in the balance of power, there'll be a much better dividend for voters. So I'm here to get people to vote Green in this election, Kerry.

KERRY O'BRIEN: OK. What a surprise! We're out of time. Bob Brown, thanks for talking with us.

BOB BROWN: Thanks, Kerry.