\u201cMy experiences with Greenpeace read like a spy novel,\u201d she writes. As an initiation, she was taken into \u201ca wild sea\u201d off Sydney in a \u201crubber duck\u201d speedboat. Days later, activists planned to block outlet pipes from spewing chemical waste into Sydney Harbour, but \u201cthe waste backing up into the factory could have caused serious damage and even a threat to life\u201d. Her negotiations with the chemical company and the activists averted tragedy, but \u201cleft me being perceived by the Greenpeace activists as a wimp\u201d. <\/p>\n
Worse came soon after, at New Zealand\u2019s Port of Auckland, when French army divers blew up the Rainbow Warrior with bombs fixed to its keel. They wanted to stop it leading a protest flotilla against the French testing of nuclear weapons in the Pacific. They killed a photographer, Fernando Pereira. \u201cIf the crew had not unexpectantly gone ashore for coffee,\u201d writes Brown, \u201c12 of them would have died.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valerie Brown was head of Greenpeace Australia when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland Harbor, in 1985. Brown also ran a national drugs summit and was an early advocate for AIDS prevention. She was in numerous activist, cultural and social groups, and was patron of an anti-war and environmentalist choir.<\/p>\n She joins a long line of women who are under-recognised, despite their work changing lives and systems. Her book tells a fascinating story that will inspire those who want to build a better world. <\/p>\n A pioneering woman<\/p>\n University was a shock after her privileged, Victorian-style upbringing, which included meeting Queen Elizabeth when she gave her first garden party at Buckingham Palace. In about 1949, Valerie was arrested for \u201cpeddling pornography\u201d \u2013 a student magazine that talked about sex. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know what the offending words [\u2026] meant,\u201d she confesses.<\/p>\n Encouraged by her father, Valerie studied science \u2013 and would be one of three women science graduates, among 600 men. This was a time when a woman couldn\u2019t enter a bar or pour her own drink. \u201cWhen I graduated, I was denied field-based jobs. In my first job, I had to resign upon marriage,\u201d she writes. <\/p>\n Valerie Brown was one of three woman science graduates, among 600 men. As a tireless advocate for more autonomy for consumers, she helped produce a publication on contraception that was sold under the counter. Later, she changed health systems so they registered midwives, allowed rural nurses to give medical treatments, and successfully advocated for the removal of lead from petrol. Shifting from residential to self-managed health was another focus. <\/p>\n At her jobs and positions on boards in consumer and health organisations, including the National Health and Medical Research Council, she was often the only one to have read all the meeting papers. Some claimed she wasn\u2019t a \u201creal community representative\u201d, as she could read scientific papers! <\/p>\n Collective power, global projects<\/p>\n Informed by the research of design theorist Christopher Alexander<\/a> and anthropologist Gregory Bateson<\/a>, she empowered groups to find their own solutions to problems and work together to enact them.<\/p>\n Drawing inspiration from philosopher Isaiah Berlin<\/a>, she brought diverse groups of people together in hundreds of egalitarian workshops to solve wicked problems in seven countries. They used collective thinking and treated each participant as an individual with their own experience and integrity. <\/p>\n It was a revolutionary, but effective, approach. At the time, individual knowledge was regarded as subjective, and community knowledge as anecdotal. Holistic knowledge was dismissed as pie-in-the-sky.<\/p>\n Valerine Brown, pictured with Kevin Rudd, empowered groups to find their own solutions to problems. Starting with ideals, then facts, her groups worked together to generate their own ideas and actions, often producing effective partnerships in the process \u2013 on issues like raising women\u2019s status in Nepal, and enabling sustainable management in the Murray-Darling basin.<\/p>\n In working with Indigenous people and internationally, she quickly learned the importance of not being an \u201carrogant do-gooder\u201d. She strove to be culturally appropriate, rather than imposing Western models. Respect and ubuntu<\/a>, the African belief that all humanity is connected through a universal bond of sharing, were essential.<\/p>\n She also built bridges \u201cto link different worlds: science and creativity; ideals and practice; and the parts and the whole,\u201d as well as academic and everyday thinking. <\/p>\n Valerie helped to develop a new, holistic public health approach<\/a> that involved promoting \u201ccommunity, environmental, and social health\u201d. This encompassed issues like domestic violence, drug abuse, racism, sexism, as well as environmental pollution.<\/p>\n Her approach is now widely embraced, with communities realising<\/a> that the health of people, animals and the environment are deeply connected. <\/p>\n Fought sexism, but not a feminist<\/p>\n An astute leader, who found creative ways around the tough politics of public service and university departments, Valerie struggled against sexism all her life. <\/p>\n Given this, it\u2019s surprising she doesn\u2019t regard herself as a feminist \u2013 despite benefiting from and greatly contributing to feminism. She sees feminism as a \u201csingle-issue goal\u201d and is interested in equity. Surely that\u2019s the aim of most feminists, though?<\/p>\n Frequently changing career paths, perhaps she wanted to avoid labels. Her inspirations include activist Vandana Shiva<\/a> and poet Judith Wright<\/a>.<\/p>\n Valerie\u2019s writing on knowledge cultures, still widely cited today, inspired many change-makers, including Africans working towards decolonisation, and Charles Massy<\/a>\u2019s innovative work on regenerative agriculture, now taken up internationally. She supervised more than 80 doctoral students, with an overall theme of \u201chow to change existing social environments into equitable and sustainable systems\u201d. She writes: \u201cI still thought life should be fair.\u201d<\/p>\n A nature-lover, Valerie and her husband, renowned journalist Wallace Brown<\/a>, travelled widely and later built a \u201cno-cost cabin\u201d on a bush block from \u201cthrown-away timber, mud and bottles for walls.\u201d When he developed motor neurone disease, she and her family and many friends cared for him lovingly, until he died, aged 76.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/file-20260703-57-snd9pt.jpg\")
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