No one, but no one, will ever forget Bob Brown and his “fellow Earthians” speech. “Why aren’t the intergalactic phones ringing,” he asked back in 2012.

“Surely we are not, in this crowded reality of countless other similar planets, the only thinking beings to have turned up. They have extincted themselves. They have come and gone. And now it’s our turn.”

Peter Whish-Wilson, however, the man who succeeded Brown in the Senate, isn’t so sure.

In a blink and you would have missed it moment in Estimates last week, Whish-Wilson quizzed RAAF chief Air Marshal Mal Hupfeld about the declassified American report into UFOs released in June by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Was Australia undertaking anything similar, he asked. Could our Jindalee over the horizon radar detect UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomenon, to use the term deployed when you don’t want to appear clinically insane?

“I’m not familiar with, nor have seen any reports or information regarding UAPs in an Australian airspace context, and there’s no air force-led task force that looks into this phenomenon,” Hupfield responded.

What could have sparked Whish-Wilson’s interest? This isn’t just a matter of watching too much X-Files in his university years.

The Greens are utterly obsessed with identity politics. Greens and little green men are a perfect mix — although Section 42 issues might make their election to the Commonwealth parliament problematic? Perhaps the Greens want an Alien Voice to Parliament?

The truth is out there and, we suspect, a little more prosaic.

Whish-Wilson is guilty of three of the greatest crimes to the Greens. He’s white, a man and over 50.

The Greens, however, depend on various forms of fearmongering, hysteria and out and out lunacy to win support.

Whish-Wilson knows he can survive by alerting his party faithful to the alien menace.

Are they double-jabbed, for example — and just what fuels all those UFOs? Are they low-emission? Carbon-neutral?