Sandra Running in Ashgrove

Please go to Sandra’s campaign site for the Queensland state seat of Ashgrove.

On now to Walter Taylor

Following the election of Jane Prentice, the city has called a by-election to replace her in the ward of Walter Taylor, which falls within the boundaries of Ryan.

Go to our campaign site for the by-election to see what’s happening.

If you voted Greens for the first time this last federal election, take a close look at what the Greens offer at city level.

Over to you

The Greens Ryan campaign recently had a phone call from a retired stockman and Vietnam vet, who used to live in a community that voted solidly National. He’s now living in Ryan, and wanted to tell me how profoundly impressed he is by Bob Brown. This is one of many calls we’ve had from people who never before contemplated voting Greens.





This of course has the other side worried, and true to form they are resorting to dishonest attack ads, claiming that the Greens are trying to stop recreational fishing. The truth is that the Greens want to limit recreational fishing in scientifically determined biodiversity hotspots – a tiny fraction of the coastline. The only change most recreational fishers will see is improved catches resulting from better management of our natural resources.

We of course do not have the funding the anti-environment campaigners can throw at the last days of the campaign, but you can make a difference. All it takes is this:

Compose an email in your own words, explaining why you switched to the Greens, and send it to all your contacts that may think the same way as you do. And ask them to do the same. Here are a few things you could point them to:

http://www.greens.org.au/larissawaters
http://greens4ryan.org
http://greens.org.au/policies

You may also want to point at some of the score cards we’ve accumulated on this site:

http://www.greens4ryan.org/p/scorecards.html

If you want to be part of the change that’s sweeping the country, do this now. There’s no time to waste.

Send out emails, use Facebook and tweet. Let’s turn the tide.

Not A Greens Ad

The following appeared on the ABC’s Gruen Nation on 11 August 2010, as an example of how the Greens could advertise themselves. Since the ABC has refused to allow it to be sold as an advertisement, we present it here as an example of the TV advertiser’s craft.

What do you think? Comments welcome.

Economy and Environment

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville hung a sign in his campaign headquarters:

The economy, stupid

Many people still are stuck in the mindset that we can only protect the environment at the expense of the economy. The Greens disagree. And we don’t like calling people stupid. We prefer this new adaptation of the Clinton mantra:

The economy and environment

Older voters will remember a world where computers were an expensive novelty, only affordable by governments and the biggest businesses. Today, people wear fashion accessories that play music with more powerful computers in them than those early behemoths. Cars too have improved almost beyond recognition over that time.

The world younger voters face will change much more over their lifetimes than over any comparable time in human history. Just as the countries that failed to anticipate the massive changes over the last century were left behind and lapsed into relative poverty, any country that today fails to adapt to change will be in deep economic trouble.

Adapting to Change

There are two important questions in terms of how Australia is tracking in terms of adapting to change:

• Are we addressing the changes made inevitable by the depletion of cheap oil, and the need to prevent harmful climate change?
• How are we positioned relative to the rest of the world?

On the first question, we know how the Labor government has stepped back from an evidence-based approach, supported by the best available science and economic knowledge. Instead, they advocate asking a cross-section of the public. The Greens have a specific position on why the previous ETS failed, but Labor is not going to this election with a promise to pursue an evience-based approach. The Liberals position is even worse, with their leader on record as describing the science as “crap”. A refusal to accept the existence of a problem is a poor start at finding a solution.

On the second question, even though Copenhagen was a failure, other countries have not stopped investing in renewables. According to a recent report in the Guardian, Australia is near the bottom of a league table of G20 countries in terms of 2009 investments in renewable energy, behind countries like Mexico and Turkey, let alone industrial giants. While Mexico and Turkey have bigger populations than Australia’s, their GDP is comparable (Mexico’s almost the same, Turkey’s about 70% of Australia’s). While the annual growth in renewables investment in Australia last year was an apparently impressive 62.5%, this was off a low base, and one of the lowest growth rates of the G20 countries.

Factors forcing Change

We have heard a lot about climate change. The vast majority of Australians are concerned about climate change, and agree we need serious action. The short summary is: errors in the science that make things seem less serious get much more publicity than findings that show the science was too optimistic. Mass of major ice sheets is collapsing at an accelerating rate, something no one predicted. Sea level rise is happening faster than the IPCC predicted in 2007, with scientists recently predicting rises of over 1 metre by 2100 – a fact not widely reported. The first half of 2010 was the warmest January-June period in the instrument record.

Other governments around the world are by and large advised by competent scientists. Australian resistance to reality is futile. We no longer have a George W Bush administration in the US, and even the newly-elected Tories in the UK are serious about moving to renewables.

Another important push factor is peak oil, the depletion of cheaply-extractable oil. We are currently burning through oil about a million times faster than it’s produced in nature, and some estimates put us at or close to the turning point where production will fail to meet demand. The global financial crisis (GFC) slowed demand, but a worldwide economic recovery will hasten the day when oil supply becomes a serious problem. The oil price peak of close to US$150 per barrel in 2007 was a warning of things to come. Allied to peak oil is frontier oil, oil drilled in increasingly precarious environments, like the deep ocean and the Arctic. As the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill this year demonstrated, the economic cost of mistakes in frontier oil are enormous – as are the environmental impacts.

The Way Ahead
None of this represents insurmountable problems. Many renewable technologies are ready to use. Energy efficiency can win big rewards – up to 20% with relatively slight investment, with an economic benefit of ongoing reduced costs. A shift to public transport and to rail freight is not rocket science, though the massive investment we continue to make in the wrong kind of infrastructure – such as billions spent in Brisbane on car tunnels – makes the transition harder.

We need to start retooling our economy the way leaders like Denmark (rated as one of the best countries in which to do business) and Germany have. We need to stop frustrating our best scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs into giving up and moving offshore. And we need to stop spending tens of billions of dollars on the wrong kind of infrastructure: roads promoting urban sprawl, coal export infrastructure and subsidies on inefficiency (such as our crazy fringe benefits tax on cars, which gives you a bigger tax break if you do more kilometres).

And finally, we need to couple putting a price on carbon emissions with steady, increasing investments in alternatives, like solar thermal and hot rocks geothermal power.

Australian scientists are already world leaders in the development of clean energy technologies. Our society as a whole is ready for change. All that’s lacking is the political will to make it happen.

Your Lead Senate Candidate

Larissa Waters is the lead Greens Senate candidate in Queensland. Let’s let her speak for herself.

Introducing your candidate

Dr Sandra Bayley has lived most of her life in St John’s Wood (SJW), which is a small district within Ashgrove and in the electorate of Ryan. She schooled locally and began her career as a teacher at The Gap. She then headed south, travelled and changed career direction and for the last 15 years has worked as a GP in Alderley.

In 2007 she devoted herself to reading the science behind the changing climate. She had always cared about the impact of humans on the environment but had not until then realised the extent to which human actions have altered the composition of the atmosphere. This de-stabilisation is wreaking havoc with eco systems, the oceans, the forests, the predictability of weather and our survival prospects. She felt deeply affected by what she now understood and knew these global issues would occupy her for the rest of her life.

At a local level she initiated the formation of SJW Sustainability in 2008 which attempts to raise awareness and involve the suburb in practical sustainability…. They are an active group and in that context have become quite well known around the transitioning communities of Brisbane with links to Transition Town initiatives from Kenmore to The Grove.

Standing for a political party had not been on her agenda. But she often finds herself saying “some things matter more than others”. The Greens are the party willing to speak out on the vital issues like peace, justice and economic principles that don't violate the environment that is our life blood. Their Climate Bill addresses the broad spectrum of changes that need to happen if we are to have a safe climate now and in the future. It has troubled her that there aren’t more people deeply concerned about these issues in positions of power in government. So she agreed to stand as a candidate for the Greens in Ryan.

Sandra has for many years been involved in wildlife rehabilitation. There is always a selection of orphaned or injured wild birds in her care, awaiting release.