The Murray Talk 2026
Optimism and Defiance in a World of Tyranny
By Bob Brown
The 2026 Murray Talk will be held at 11am on Sunday 19 July at the Mildura Arts Centre.
Tickets are free but essential. Book through our ticketing system.
ABOUT BOB BROWN
Bob Brown's credo is 'one person, one vote, one value, one planet'.
In 1976 Bob hosted the first meeting of the Wilderness Society at his home beside the Liffey River in Tasmania. In 1990 friends helped him set up Bush Heritage Australia which now protects one million hectares of high-conservation lands across Australia.
Bob was in the Tasmanian Parliament from 1983 to 1993. He led the five Greens in the balance of power in 1989 when the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area was doubled in size and new national parks created.
Besides being jailed for 17 days during the Franklin River blockade in 1982, Bob was locked up for 11 days, and strip-searched five times in 1995 for joining a blockade of bulldozers in the Tarkine rainforest. He’s been shot at and beaten up by vigilantes. In 2025 he was convicted on the criminal charge of ‘trespass’ for standing in the way of loggers destroying a forest in which critically-endangered swift parrots were nesting.
In the Senate from 1996, Bob and his fellow Greens failed to convince either of the two old parties on equal marriage, euthanasia laws, compensation for the 'Stolen Generation', humane treatment of refugees or ending junk food advertising in children's TV hours. He challenged President George W Bush in the Australian parliament in 2003 after the illegal invasion of Iraq. In 2011 his Greens team negotiated world’s-best climate change legislation with then PM Julia Gillard.
Bob’s partner is Cygnet farmer Paul Thomas. They gave the property at Liffey to Bush Heritage in 2011. Bob’s books include Lake Pedder (1984), Tarkine Trails (1993), Memo for a Saner World (2003), Earth (2009), Optimism (2014), THERA (2023) and Defiance (2025). Bob and Paul are in ‘The Giants’, an award-winning film about forests.
The Bob Brown Foundation, set up in 2012, takes peaceful direct action to stop environmental vandalism. It campaigns to protect Tasmania’s Takayna rainforest, end native forest logging nationwide, remove Atlantic salmon fish farms from Tasmania and to protect Antarctica. Our motto: ‘Don’t get depressed, get active!’
