This is nothing like the lynching the Mirror had been hoping for.

But despite the dour reaction the room is full of colour. The blue clad Brown, leader of the Greens takes the stage in front of a sea of orange. Those simple fluorescent uniforms symbolise so much. Once the working class, it’s the colour of the new rich, a breed of worker born by the mining boom. Years ago the miner was a man of broken dreams, struggling against the privileged. Now they’re an upper class of their own, pulling in six figure wages, with no slow-down in sight.

Only one thing stands in their way.

The man on stage is the personification of all they hate, fear and don’t understand - a homosexual southerner with leftist politics who probably can’t tell a Ford from a Holden and doesn’t even care.

Mayor Howard takes the microphone first, still wearing a broad bush hat that makes him look more like a gunslinger than the seasoned public servant he is.
“I’d like to welcome you all along tonight, I have to say that the turnout isn’t as great as we might have hoped, but I’m sure you’re all very keen on hearing what Bob, ah, Senator Brown has to say,” he says.

The pretty brunette from the ABC nudges me.

“Who’s that?” she whispers.

“Bob Brown?” I smirk.

“No the other one, the cowboy.”

“That’s Gary, he’s the mayor round these parts.”

She quickly scribbles something, Gary with two Rs. She’s not to know.

“We’ve asked Senator Brown here to tell us why he hates the coal industry so much, this industry that gives us so much, that gives food to our families. We want to know why he wants to shut us down,” Howard says.
This stirs something, everyone in the small crowd inches forward on and closes their fists ever so slightly.

Lighting and thunder roar outside.

“It’s taken a lot of courage to come here tonight, we have to give him that, but now I’ll welcome Bob to the microphone,” Howard says.

The clapping sparks up again, now with a few confident boos.

Brown extends a warm smile and readies his papers to speak.

“What have you got to say for yourself?” a man shouts.

“Well,” Brown says, “I was just about to get to that”.

“I’d like to start off by saying I was misquoted in the Courier Mail. That was a cowardly act by a shameless editor who didn’t want to put their name to it.

“I didn’t say the coal industry should be shut down tomorrow, that’s just a crazy notion. Coal is powering these lights we are using right now. Of course we can’t just shut it off, but I do think the coal industry needs to look long and hard at itself if it is to go forward in the future.”

This puts the crowd back on its heels. They don’t know how to respond. They’re not equipped for a fight unless it’s a 2am on a Sunday morning after a dozen cans of Bundaberg Rum and Coke.

“Climate change is real,” he said.

“It’s here and it’s not going away.”

More half-confident boos.

“If you want to keep your jobs things will have to be done a different way. Coal is not what’s bringing you all the prosperity you enjoy. You’re all skilled people, you could work in any industry anywhere and this is an industry that is killing our planet and your children’s futures.”

He goes on to outline the countless reports, investigations, findings and evidence and people begin to lose interest in the boxing match they came to witness. Brown speaks with ease and eloquence, rarely referring to his notes except to read dot points that spur him to list facts and figures that fall from his mouth like breath. He says clean coal may be a fine ideal, but money has been wasted pursuing it at the expense of “clean technologies that are here now”.

He says radical change is needed and finishes with a sobering conclusion: “We’ve had a prime minister who has had years to give you people the help and support you deserve. This irresponsible and negligent prime minister has instead buried his head in the sand and done nothing. Only we Greens can help you, only we Greens have a plan for your future.”

In the thirty minutes since he began a new group has slinked into the back of the hall. Three young women, one I recognise as a trainee teacher at the local high school, stands and applauds franticly. A welcome contrast to the fluorescent orange miners, she seems just as unquestioning and narrow-minded as they.

When did politics become a team sport, as partisan and arbitrarily followed as Saturday afternoon football? She can only have heard ten minutes of one-sided debate and absorbed little of the whole argument.

Again the brunette nudges me.

“A teacher,” I say.

Surely enough ‘teacher’, and nothing else, goes down on her pad.