The other occasion was when Mr Barns joined a friend and I briefly at a café in Salamanca Place. Each of these encounters was brief, and I believe, perfectly pleasant. But during none of them did I share with Mr Barns any of my opinions or beliefs.
Thus I find myself somewhat perplexed at his presuming to know the contents of my heart and mind. In response to his comment piece, submitted to the Tasmanian Times, I would like firstly to clear up an error of fact.
I have not, as Mr Barns says, withdrawn from the Pacific Prize, since I don't yet have a published novel that I could have entered. I simply chose not to participate in the Tasmanian Readers' and Writers' Festival, although I very much regretted that I was forced into a position where I had to make that decision, and look forward to future festivals free of the controversies of this one.
In relation to his personal comments about me, I would just like to say that I am unclear how Mr Barns has reached the conclusion that I am a "deep green fanatic" of a particular personality type. I am not "deep green", nor am I fanatical about anything.
Nor do I consider Mr Barns – on the basis of a few brief meetings and his awareness my decision not to accept an invitation to a festival – qualified to discuss my personality. Mr Barns' problem with the Greens seems to be that he believes they are blinded by the current forestry issue to other social evils.
I don't believe this is the case, but even if it were, on what basis does he include Richard Flanagan and I in his target group? Richard has been at least as vocal on the issue of refugees – which I understand Mr Barns holds dear to his heart – as he has been on forestry.
And Mr Barns wouldn't have a clue where I stand on other issues. The fact remains that I was invited to participate in a festival sponsored by Forestry Tasmania, not a festival sponsored by John Howard's Treatment of Refugees Pty Ltd, nor a festival sponsored by the International George Dubya Arselicking Project for that matter.
And Mr Barns has not asked me how I might have responded if I had been. Overall, Mr Barns' critique of the Greens is disturbing. He writes that the Greens need Gunns and the current forestry regime because they provide them with political oxygen. But this implies that it is political survival that is to be valued above all. Does it follow that Mr Barns needs Woomera for his own political oxygen?
Does it follow that he wants refugees to continue to be mistreated by Australia just so that he still has a soap-box on which to stand? Or do such questions strike him as being as shallow and stupid as his assertions must seem to the Greens?
I think the real sticking point is that Mr Barns believes that to care about the environment is somehow illegitimate when there are people to care about. But I don't see why the issues should be mutually exclusive, or even in need of ranking.
There is room for many issues, side by side, in our newspapers and within the individual human heart. For my own part, I believe that humans exist within nature, not above it, and to try to disentangle the two is to unravel the fabric of our very being. And trees are not, by a long shot, the only victims of current poisonous forestry practices.
If Mr Barns is interested in what is really in my heart and mind, and not merely in his own misinformed assumptions, then it is this: would it not be wonderful to have a world free of the greed, fear and stupidity which causes the leaders of our country to mistreat those who come here seeking asylum from terrible suffering?
And would it not be wonderful to have a world free of that same greed, fear and stupidity which causes the leaders of our state to allow the wholesale plundering of our beautiful forests? And would it not be wonderful to have a world free of the same greed, fear and stupidity which could lead us into a new world war? And I would ask Mr Barns, if it is truly a better world he seeks, and not simply a seat in any Parliament on the coat-tails of any party that will have him, why is he carping at those who would be his best allies?