Australian politics is gripped by a fascination with personalities, not policies, as candidates with false authenticity graft votes from their electorates, a former Greens leader has said.
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Launching her book at Old Parliament House on Tuesday in Canberra, Christine Milne cited politicians who began in student politics as an example.
"They're in there [Parliament] simply as a personal ambition ... the policy platform is irrelevant," Ms Milne said.
In her memoir, An Activist Life, Ms Milne points to US President Donald Trump as "the ultimate example of fake authenticity".
"A privileged, white, narcissistic, sexist, super-rich septuagenarian businessman pretending to know what it is like to be poor and marginalised in the United States of America," she writes.
"He has never done anything for anyone," Ms Milne said on Tuesday.
"That goes on in Australia too. So [One Nation leader] Pauline Hanson, I would argue, has the same sort of fake authenticity."
Another problem with politicians like Ms Hanson or former senator Nick Xenophon, Ms Milne said, was they drew candidates who cashed in on their celebrity status, drawing votes for a brand and not a policy platform.
"I really think it's got to the point where we need to get back to people thinking about politics as policy platforms they're voting for, not a celebrity," Ms Milne said.
In the book, she is more visceral with her description of populist parties like One Nation, saying they have "gone off like a skyrocket at a bonfire" before "falling to the ground as a dead stick".
As a female politician once in what she describes as a "male-dominated, testosterone-charged parliament" she said on Tuesday it's "tough being a female politician, but it's getting easier".
"As more women get into politics there's a recognition that we have a rightful place to be there," Ms Milne said.
She said her hopes for a parliament consisting of 50 per cent women would not necessarily make politics a kinder place.
"There are a lot of people in the community who think if only we had more women in politics it would be ... more generous to the less well off, it would be kinder to the environment. Rubbish. Total rubbish," Ms Milne said.
"Women have got a right to be there because we have, because we're 50 per cent of the population. We want women there but we need to vote for progressive women, you actually need to vote for the policy platform that they stand on."
"It's the policy platform that we need to get people focused on."
Speaking with Australia's former human rights commissioner Gillian Triggs at the launch, Ms Milne said integrity in politics was important.
"We're not seeing much of it," she said.
She also said Green politicians, by standing for policies, were activists in parliament.
Her audience consisted of Greens MPs, including the freshly minted senator, Jordon Steele-John and the man who replaced her as leader, Richard di Natale.
She described part of her motivation to write the book was to "set the record straight".
Tasmania's politicians, she said, enjoyed the credit for the environmental campaigns waged by Ms Milne and her colleagues.
"None of those people in Tasmanian parliament, in Liberal or Labor, ever lifted a finger to protect that wilderness so those stories are lost."
