Author: admin

This year, we signed a 37 billion dollar natural gas deal with China to supply 3.5 million tonnes of natural gas every year for up to 20 years.

This has been touted as a great boost to the economy and a great example of why we need the economic wizadry of the establishment parties.

It is important to take that deal apart.

It is a twenty year deal to sell 85 per cent of the gas from the largest field in Australia at $200 a tonne. The spot price for natural gas today is $381 per tonne. The price of all fossil fuels is fluctuating wildly due to demand outstripping supply. We are selling off our gas reserves at a bargain basement price, just when the world is running out of natural gas and the price is going through the roof.

That is not smart economic management.

But wait, there’s more.

The Western Australian government stepped in early this year and said to Woodside Petroleum, “Hang on. That natural gas is an important resource for the people of Western Australia, we want to guarantee that the people of Western Australia have natural gas into the next century. We only want you to sell half the gas to China.”

Woodside went to the Federal Government and the Federal Government announced that unless the China deal went ahead it would use the corporation powers – yes those same powers it used to pass the WorkChoices legislation – to remove the power of Western Australia to control its gas reserves.

The compromise reached is that Woodside will only sell 85 per cent of the natural gas to China at half the current world price, over the next twenty years. The people of Western Australia will have natural gas for the next 25 years.

That is not smart economic management.

We are digging up and selling our resources as fast as we can to make the short term economy look good. This is not smart economic management.

This is a short term spending spree that will at best, bankrupt us in twenty years.

Not only that, the resources boom is dependent on a bouyant world economy. The minute the economic boom slows down, the resource boom becomes a resource slump and we end up washing dishes for rich tourists from Asian nations that invested in manufacturing and education while we were sat back and pissed the proceeds from our giant quarrying operation up against the wall.

The Greens have been attacked for suggesting that we wean ourselves off coal.

Coal is responsible for about 11 percent of our export earnings. We are mightily dependent on coal. It has taken us decades to build our coal industry into the giant powerhouse that it is now.

Last year, the Chinese domestic coal industry grew by more than the entire Australian coal industry.

In one year, they passed our efforts of decades. Any time they do not like our pricing structure, or transport costs get too expensive, or there is a slowdown in the global economy, they can stop buying our coal all together. It only sets them back for one year.

The Greens plan to phase out the coal industry and replace it with a renewable energy industry is not an extreme, idealistic response to climate change, it is the only responsible economic plan for the coal industry put forward by any political party in Australia.

If you want a vibrant, robust and viable economy for the next ten years, you will not vote for one of the establishment parties on November 24, you will Vote one The Greens.

 

Representative democracy

Why do people love American Idol but hate politics? The answer is probably simple. With American Idol you see the results of your action, immediately. By contrast, people feel disempowered by the political process. “I wouldn’t vote for any of those ratbags. They’ve all got their nose in the trough.” “It doesn’t matter who you vote for you end up with a politician.”

In general, people view politicians with contempt.

Heroes and bullies

This is not new. People have resented their rulers since the first ruler ruled. In fact, the history of government is the history of popular uprisings. When rulers become too greedy and ordinary people suffer beyond endurance, governments eventually fail. Of course, rich, greedy and powerful rulers have never handed over the reigns of power because they saw the logic of a good argument. They generally have to be forced and people do not fight and put their lives at risk unless they have basically nothing to lose.

So history is cyclic. Oppression, revolution, oppression, revolution. Each revolutionary government gradually becomes a part of the establishment.

The devolution of power

Underlying this great cycle of exploitation and uprising is another trend. Each wave of idealistic revolutionaries, builds on the past. Every revolution gains more freedom, for more people. Over millennia, power has shifted from tribal leaders where the toughest men ruled, through kingdoms where one family ruled to representative democracy as we know it today.

 

Democracy, was invented by male, landholding, slave-owning Greeks. Tired of royal families dragging the cream of Greek youth off to settle family disputes in remote wars they decided to resolve problems with discussion and agreement. The rule of the aristo (best) was replaced by the rule of Demos (who I suspect was an early ancestor of Demos Roussos.)

 

Modern democracy is founded on the Magna Carta or The Great Paper. That document enshrines the subservience of the constitutional head of state to the rule of law. Nixon is the proof in our times that a head of state, whatever he might think, is subject to the laws of the land.

 

Not only has civilisation restricted the power of rulers, it has also extended the right to vote, and the protection of the law, to increasing numbers of people. Governments have become accountable to and responsible for, the welfare of an ever greater percentage of the population.

 

Roughly 250 years ago, the liberal humanist ideal of the freedom of the individual came to the fore. Child labour and slavery became unpopular and the republican revolutions in France and the US were born. British gaols were emptied and our glorious prison farm, I mean great nation, was born.

 

In 1891, a group of shearers in a paddock in Barcaldine near Longreach decided they could not take it any more and the modern labour movement was born. Over the last century Labor and social democratic parties has actively participated in government, on behalf of workers.

 

Each of these movements gradually became a part of the establishment they overthrew.

 

Now, a new era looms. Scientists and environmentalists have recognised that the natural systems which support civilisation are stretched to the limit and a global green movement has emerged to protect the rights of future generations and the environment that supports us all.

Powerlessness

Right now, we are all frustrated because the establishment parties pursue the holy grail of profit, ignoring our quality of life.

America kills its youth in unpopular wars over control of global oil resources. The Asian obsession with economic growth rides roughshod over minorities and democratic movements. Here in Australia, our health, education and industrial relations systems collapse in the drive for profit at all costs.

Governments around the world are out of touch with the people.

In response, some people talk of revolution.

More generally, though, voters switch off in droves. There are more votes for the American Idol than there are for the president.

The worst thing we can do, though, is to disengage.

If we give up, we leave the stage to the bullies. In the words of Edmund Burke, “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Do not give up now because the bullies have the upper hand.

Do not give up now because your heroes appear to face impossible odds.

Do not give up now because the system seems stacked against you.

Get out there and engage in the political process. Get involved in your school council, your professional organisation, your local council. Make your mark as vigorously and enthusiastically as you can.

If you can’t make your mark anywhere else, at least make it on the ballot paper.

Vote in every election you can. Because every time you vote, you vote One for democracy.

A forty thousand year old culture told us that this mineral could destroy the world, but we did not take any notice, “scientists had something more important than a myth about a snake.”

So where has this science got us?

Around the world millions of tonnes of nuclear waste sit in council dumps, in rusting drums, waiting for the world to build a nuclear waste depot. The Unites States alone produces 3000 tonnes of high level waste every year. Europe produces many times that. Now we are expanding the global nuclear industry and our land, Australia, is going to become the world’s nuclear waste dump?

Not on my watch.

The US government has spent billions planning a high level waste dump at Yucca Mountain and has abandoned it. Google Yucca mountain and read about how the government reached the conclusion that it is impossible to store nuclear waste safely. Impossible.

In May 2006, John Howard signed a deal with Canada and the USA that Australia and Canada, the two largest miners of Uranium, would sell their Uranium to the US, so that it could be leased to other countries as fuel rods in an exchange system that would prevent countries stockpiling uranium, or plutonium and making nuclear weapons.

Once used, the high level waste that was not required by the US military to make the bunker buster bombs causing all the birth defects in Iraq, would be dumped in Australia.

The Howard government worked with the mining companies on finding a suitable place and came up with Muckaty station. We all know how the politics works, how the mining companies throw money around and how they work to divide the people from each other and get someone to say yes.

We have seen it happen to the Mirra people up at Jabiluka, it’s all here in David Bradbury’s film. And even after those Mirra people won the fight at Jabiluka the miners are back now, 12 years later, saying it doesn’t matter, they are going to dig that uranium up anyway.

Not on my watch

The Gillard Government supports this policy. The Gillard Government has people like Martin Ferguson who think that digging up all the minerals in this land and selling them overseas is a good way to run the country.

They don’t care about the land. They don’t even care about feeding twenty million Australians. All they care about is money.

Now, we have to get together and say enough.

No nuclear waste for Muckaty, No Nuclear waste in Australia, No more Uranium Mining, in short, No Nuke.

Leave the Uranium in the ground.

So what is happening to that nuclear waste now?

We use it to build weapons. Uranium is heavy. It is heavier than lead and harder than steel. It makes great shell casings. Because it is so hard and because it is so heavy it is great for punching holes in reinforced concrete. Ever heard of a bunker buster? That is a uranium encased shell. Not only is it heavy, not only is it hard, but it is also incredibly hot. When it hits a concrete wall it heats up and explodes. It is not a nuclear bomb but it is an explosion none the less and it spreads radiation as it explodes.

If you look at the pictures of Bagdad being bombed on the nights of the invasion that toppled Sadaam Hussein, the sky is full of sparkles. That sparkly effect was not present in the bombing of European cities in the second world war. That sparkly effect is the tiny pieces of uranium shell exploding after they have shattered on impact. That sparkly effect is the radioactive elements being spread across the city of Bagdad and the nation of Iraq. That sparkly effect is the cause of a huge upsurge in deformed babies, so revolting that they cannot be shown on television or in the mainstream media because everyone would switch off.

We can watch torture, we can look at bodies piled up in the streets, but these deformed infants disgust us beyond belief. These deformed infants are the beginning of the revenge of the rainbow serpent. We have woken up the fundamental forces by digging into the treasure trove of the rainbow serpent harness the power within the earth.

And why are we doing this?

Greed. In an energy hungry world, we want money and power.

 

The voters, not just all of us here, but the ordinary mums and dads in all the suburbs of all the cities in Australia are completely sick of cynical politicians.

All of us are sick of political spin.

All of us are sick of policies invented by opinion poll.

All of us are sick of the manipulation of the agenda to suit vested interests.

 

We want action on climate change.

We want leadership by government on universal education and health care

We want a vibrant, robust economy built on renewable energy, regional industry and a secure food supply

 

The way to get these things is to put the Greens into the Federal Parliament.

The Greens have published policies that are developed over years from the grass roots up.

The Greens have dedicated, moral politicians who work for the environment, for future generations and for those without a vote.

 

And that is our unique opportunity here in the Byron Shire.

As part of the Richmond electorate, we vote around 40% Green.

If Byron was a Federal electorate, your votes would send me to Canberra.

The other end of the electorate, the Tweed end, votes around 7 percent Green.

Our challenge is to mobilise that vote in Tweed.

 

I’m offering to go to any community group that invites me and field questions about the Greens. I’m calling it the Grill a Green campaign. If you are a member of any group, get them to invite me along. Talk to me after this, or contact me through the website.

 

There are other ways that you can help

Get involved in the campaign. Add your name to this list.

Write letters to the papers reminding all unhappy voters that there is an alternative.

Display posters and bumper stickers, hand out leaflets for us.

Donate money to the campaign – we don’t accept corporate donations and need all the help we can get.

 

The most important, and the cheapest thing you can do though, is to get one non-Green voter to vote One for the Greens in the Federal election. If each one of you, convert one voter to vote Green for the first time, we could be the first electorate to vote Green federally.