Preface: worth recalling in the 1996 election a Democrat (?) aligned Australian Conservation Foundation leader (Jim Downey), and The Wilderness Society under guidance of then new director Alec Marr moved from a pro ALP position to at best agnostic or deliberately antagonistic.

This resulted in 'a moral chill' going out in the electorate which created a political space for the Howard led Coalition (pre Iraq war, pre the nuke love in) to harvest anti Keating sentiment. In other words, the ALP leader (read Rudd today?) lost his moral veil which all political parties need to garner broader support. Notice yesterday Downer announced a $400M AIDS package for the Asia Pacific region - that's the beginnings of a moral veil of sorts for a whole of govt election platform, similar to Premier Iemma budget allocations for health both prior and since the recent state election:

Also worth recalling, that earlier this year Rudd said he was guided by science on Tas forests but the science is all against him on this latest announcement as per 100 signatories of a top scientists letter in 2004 here

9/2004 - statement of Australia's best forest scientists on Tasmanian logging problem

Peter Garrett sounded shocking on PM show last night and on Glover political round up before that both for a very bad cold and for content around a shallow front man for a corrupt policy. Sings other peoples songs, but stands for very little himself. He's a joke compared to Bob Brown as here same PM show http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1986038.htm

And worth recalling that Kevin Rudd's good mates in the Forestry division of the logging union are responsible for this

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