Senator Brown says Australian Greens’ policies are much closer to mainstream Christian ideals than the Sydney Archbishop’s ideas.

He was responding to criticism of the Greens by Cardinal Pell in an opinion piece published in News Ltd newspapers yesterday.

Cardinal Pell wrote the Greens were hostile to the notion of the family and the party would allow marriage regardless of sexuality or gender.

He said the Greens were “thoroughly anti-Christian”.

Senator Brown, in reply, said Cardinal Pell’s “anti-Christian” claim was a lie, and that he had fallen out of touch with his people.

“The good archbishop has forgotten the ninth commandment, which is ‘thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour’,” Senator Brown said.

“He’s lost the ethic of the golden rule and the Greens have kept it.

“The Greens are much closer to mainstream Christian thinking than Cardinal Pell.

“That’s why he’s not standing for election and I am.”

The Catholics the senator spoke to support an end to discrimination, he said.

“They support compassion to asylum seekers and they support the BER (Building the Education Revolution) scheme, like the Greens do,” he said.

“Cardinal Pell opposes those things.”

Senator Brown said the archbishop’s views on gay marriage were “discriminatory and biased”.

“The majority of Catholics support equality in marriage (as do) the majority of Christians in Australia,” he said.

“The Greens are with the majority but both the big parties, like Cardinal Pell, are opposed to 21st Century majority thinking in Australia.

“He’s lost contact with his own voters … his own Catholic majority in this country.”

In his article, Cardinal Pell wrote the Greens’ once claimed that humans are simply another smarter animal – an ethic designed to replace Judeo-Christianity.

He said some Greens are “like watermelons, green outside and red inside”.

“A number were Stalinists, supporting Soviet oppression,” he wrote.

Senator Brown said Cardinal Pell had “taken up the rhetoric of the extreme right in Australia”.

“That is not new but he has become very politically active against the compassion and the environmental commonsense of the Greens policies,” he said.