Brown has a bob each way and is left with no place to stand on Iraq

These nifty shifts in ideological emphasis demonstrate that Brown possesses “enviable intellectual suppleness”, to use the immortal words of Sir Humphrey Appleby. But surely Brown’s environmental views are just as fickle?

Who can forget the sight of the committed environmentalist Brown, striding almost arm in arm with Mark Latham through the Tasmanian wilderness in March? In front of a media scrum in the Styx Valley, Brown lauded Latham as a “Prime Minister in waiting” and insisted that "a political leader doesn't come into the thick of a forest controversy like we have here without being fair dinkum about trying to get a good outcome for the nation”.

Fast forward a few months and Brown, peeved that Labor has welcomed Green-friendly Peter Garrett into its ranks, dismisses Latham as being “tied to the last-century belief that the best jobs are attached to chainsaws”. The Labor leader, according to Brown, was no longer an admirable visionary, but a dangerous reactionary.

And what of Brown’s own recruitment practises? Earlier this year he happily endorsed Andrew Wilkie - a career army officer and spy - as Greens candidate in John Howard’s Sydney electorate Bennelong.

Not quite the portfolio of experience one would expect Brown to value so highly, especially when one considers Wilkie’s CV also boasts a stint at one of America’s largest arms manufacturer Raytheon, where to use Wilkie’s own words, he acted as a “gun runner”.

Far from regarding Wilkie’s employment history as a matter of concern, however, Brown insisted it was all the more reason to conclude his new recruit was a “fantastic candidate” and claimed his career in armaments facilitation had been a “bonus” for the Greens. The only thing more absurd than Wilkie joining the Greens would be Adolf Eichmann joining the editorial board of Commentary.

But the Bob Brown show will go on, and inevitably he will attract the publicity he craves, no matter how many beliefs he has to ditch or reinstate along the way.

Australian democracy ultimately benefits, albeit unwittingly, from the opportunism of Bob Brown, who continues to air the sort of alternative views that need to be heard.

Let’s all hope he continues, with all the fanfare we’ve come to expect, to make his self-serving little stands, no matter how contradictory and unprincipled they may be.