The Greens leader, Christine Milne, has asked Australians to “trust their gut instinct” on Tony Abbott ahead of the WA Senate election, while predicting the tide has turned on the progressive vote.



“People’s gut instinct is telling them something is not right … Trust your gut instinct, fellow Australians,” she said. “The Abbott government is not governing for all Australians. He is governing for the greedy few, the vested interests of yesteryear, not the Australia of tomorrow.”



On the back of nationwide March in March protests against the Abbott government and WA Greens candidate Scott Ludlam’s last speech, Milne quoted a line from the Australian movie The Castle to describe the political feeling among voters.



“The vibe of the nation right now is something you can’t quite put your finger on but it’s there, it’s real, it’s powerful and it’s building,” Milne told the National Press Club.



“It is manifest in the thousands who gathered at the March in March rallies.



“It’s in the 850,000 people who have watched our WA candidate Greens senator Scott Ludlam’s inspiring speech to the Senate admonishing prime minister Abbott for his hollow three-word slogans and the intolerance, discrimination and climate denialism embedded in them.”



Milne was speaking in the lead-up to the 5 April election, covering climate change, coal seam gas, asylum seekers and the make-up of the Senate, tapping into themes evident on social media and acknowledging various protest movements around the country.



She rejected suggestions that the poor Green vote in Tasmania was a result of her leadership, claiming it was the low-tide mark and that the “tide was turning” on the progressive vote. She predicted Ludlam would do “very well”.



“People are telling me they are despairing, how they have stopped reading the papers or listening to the news because they can’t stand what the Abbott government is doing to our country and the speed with which it’s doing it,” Milne said.



She noted “the vibe” in the millions celebrating the international court of justice decision to stop Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean, the thousands standing up for “farmers’ right to say no” to coal seam gas and the support for action on climate change.



“And it’s there in the laughter and ridicule of the millions who now see Tony Abbott with his knights and dames and climate denial as yesterday’s man,” said Milne.



Milne said Tony Abbott was a “fool” to pretend climate change was not happening and listed decisions on dredging of the Abbot Point coal terminal and attempts to delist Tasmanian world heritage as examples of his “Old Testament, Bob Santamaria philosophical view”.

“People are beginning to be frightened of a reckless, cruel, out of touch government and a maverick PM. They are asking where are we headed as a nation?



“Are we headed back to the 1950s era of racist, anti-gay Australia where women were treated as second-class citizens, where LGBTI people hid, where abusive, racist name-calling was OK, an era dominated by ‘old rich white men’ born to rule?” Milne asked.



Milne raised the prospect of the influence of the micro-parties and Clive Palmer’s party, the Palmer United party, in the Senate, questioning Abbott’s ability to negotiate “in good faith”.



“It will be a crossbench which will put the last minority government in the shade and this will be Tony Abbott’s undoing,” she said. “He didn’t tell his own party about his knights and dames – how is he going to keep his word?”



Milne recounted her only meeting with the prime minister before the election over his promise to remove forest from Tasmania’s world heritage area. Milne said Abbott denied the plan and suggested the Coalition had only promised not to lock up more forest. Milne asked for the commitment in writing but never received it. She said Abbott announced his plans to go ahead with the delisting after the election.



“Having that one meeting, he told me something that he then completely turned on its head,” she said.



“If you can’t negotiate in good faith, you can’t be a prime minister managing the type of Senate we are now going to be dealing with.”

