a new parliament… a new chance to act on climate change

Today, the Uniting Church in Australia, together with 19 other major civil society organisations released a statement calling on the next Government of Australia to take serious, urgent and credible action to put a price on carbon.

I spoke at a press conference this morning. This was my statement.

The Uniting Church in Australia has long argued that to ensure the future of our planet, we need to take fast and serious action to reduce pollution.

We have witnessed first-hand, the devastation that climate change is already having on our neighbours in the Pacific and throughout the low-lying regions of South-east Asia. Our partner churches and the peoples of the Pacific are calling on Australia, as a wealthy neighbour and as the major polluter in the region, to take responsibility and act to reduce the effects of climate change.

While we all need to do everything we can as individuals, families and groups in community to reduce our own carbon footprint, this action alone is not enough.  The key to making a difference lies with the development of credible government policies designed to shift us to a cleaner, more energy efficient, more sustainable economy.

A price on carbon is not all we need to do, but it is one of the most critical tools.

First and foremost, the Uniting Church believes a price on carbon is necessary because within the context of a market economy, a price will act as a signal of the value we put on the environment for its own sake. The environment is not merely a resource for us to plunder. It is a sacred gift from God and if we don’t treat it as such, we risk the planet and our very own future.

Without a carbon price, there is no signal to industry to clean-up its act and no impetus for shifting to a low-carbon economy. Without a price on carbon our renewable energy industry will fail to grow and thrive, and energy efficiency measures will fail to deliver the big outcomes necessary. Without a price on carbon, we will find ourselves stuck in the dark ages of a carbon-based economy while the rest of the world has moved on.

It is time for us to take control of the market and make it work for us for a change. If we do it properly, the we can use the market as a tool to help us to ensure a healthy and stable planet for our children and our grandchildren.

A price on carbon will generate the funds necessary to drive us away from our reliance on fossil fuels and support the growth of clean and renewable energies.

We also believe that a credible plan would incorporate measures that support low income and other vulnerable households in Australia to ensure affordable access to the energy people need and to cope with other cost of living pressures related to the transition to cleaner energies.  It would incorporate additional development aid to help developing countries adapt to the effects of climate change and ensure their future prosperity in a low-carbon world.

This is not a matter of party politics. It has been extremely disappointing to see the issues of climate change, one of the greatest moral, social, environmental and economic challenges of our time reduced to such small-target, lowest common denominator politics.

It is also extremely disappointing to see our political leaders retreat to a position of waiting to see what others will do.

Climate change is a moral issue for all of us and as such our response should be driven by what we know is the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to act to protect the planet.

Addressing the challenge of climate change is the greatest challenge our politicians have faced.

We have come together today to call them to rise to the challenge.

It is time for Australian governments at all levels to commit to working with business, industry, environment, community and faith groups for the sake of our planet and all its people. Our future depends on it.

Protecting ‘The Australian Way of Life’

A number of times I have heard Julia Gillard refer to the Labor Party’s commitment to protecting ‘The Australian Way of Life’. Every time she mentions it, it comes capitalised and in quotation marks.

The most recent occurrence was over the weekend when she was out on the hustings with Peter Garrett, announcing that should the Federal Government be re-elected they would hand back Malabar Headland to the NSW State Government for public use. This was, apparently, an excellent example of the Labor Party commitment to ‘protecting’ The Australian Way of Life (TAWOL).

It appears that TAWOL is best epitomised by families picnicking on parklands near the sea at the weekend. Hmmm.

The Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia,  also over the weekend, released the 2010 Australian Work Life Index. As it was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald (‘A hard-working nation that’s losing its balance’, 1 August 2010), more and more Australians are experiencing a working life that increasingly impinges on the rest of their life. The work-life balance of many Australians is not healthy. Australians have accrued over $33 billion dollars worth of leave. I think that, at least for many people I know, a relaxed weekend picnic at a park overlooking the sea is more of a luxury than a way of life.

When I look around at TAWOL here are some of the things I see:

• the continued abuse by governments of the human rights of Indigenous Australians and Indigenous communities with no access to healthcare, running water and electricity
• overflowing prisons because it’s apparently better to be ‘tough on crime’ than it is to be focussed on rehabilitation and social inclusion
• $18 billion a year lost by Australians on gambling
• ANZAC Day as an occasion when young people around the country pay their respects to Australians who have lost their lives in wars by getting blind drunk (I know this as fact because I live in a suburb that has 2 pubs on every block)
• an ugly, soul-destroying, unplanned, ill-considered suburban sprawl that locks people into their cars for hours everyday
• a defence budget that is greater than any other department budget – we seem to be able to find billions for new fighter planes but finding a few million for health and education programs is much tougher.
• a political discourse of the disengaged and disenchanted that feeds off fear and plays on the small and insignificant while it refuses to engage with what will matter in the long-term (better to spend time playing on a weird fear of a few thousand asylum seekers coming by boat than tackle the legitimate fear of the climate collapsing)
• people who work too often on weekends
• already vulnerable and traumatised asylum seekers held in detention centres indefinitely because as a nation we seem to be incapable of imagining what it must be like to live in conflict ridden countries and suffer persecution. (Apparently The Queue is an essential aspect of TAWOL. Who knew?)
• welfare for those who work but not for those who struggle to work – let’s increase family tax benefits but ‘get tough’ on people who struggle to make ends meet on a pitiful level of unemployment benefits
• elderly parents who care for their children with multiple disabilities with little support from the community, desperate about what will happen to their children when they die
• small independent local businesses being swallowed up by large multinationals
• the rise of gated communities where we can be sure we only have to mix with ‘people like us’.

Are these the markers of TAWOL that our politicians are swearing to protect?

Or maybe they are thinking about our fabulously diverse multicultural and increasingly multi-faith society? Maybe they are promising to do all they can to foster a mature, vibrant society that upholds the dignity of all people, promotes justice and equity, celebrates and values its own diversity, values art and culture, science and scholarship across all disciplines, and promotes the development of green and sustainable cities and inclusive, life-affirming communities. This is the TAWOL that I value. Maybe they value it too and I’ve just missed it.

The campaign of the small

It seems like the debate (it really wasn’t) between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott last night has induced a severe epidemic of despondency around the country – political commentators and theorists, historians, church and community leaders, me and my friends and I am assuming probably you and your friends too. Pretty much everyone I am connecting with who is not involved in garnering the vote for one party or another is expressing some level of despondency about the state of Australia’s political life and the dearth of real leadership. The best that many can say about the election campaign is that it is boring.

For myself, I couldn’t wait until I could switch to watch the Masterchef finale. It was so much more fun. It was far more edifying.

‘Edifying’ may seem like an excessive descriptor for a reality television show but the behaviour of the contestants was a rare sight in public life. They were facing off against each other for a big prize, but they supported and encouraged each other and were genuinely pleased with each other’s success, even though they both wanted to win. This is not what we are used to seeing – in political life, on the sporting fields, in business board rooms. Grace and goodwill have become rare commodities.

How much better would the so-called debate have been had our political leaders determined to be creative, encouraging and  bold rather than small. There was nothing edifying about that political debate – not one half-decent vision offered for the future of this country, not one acknowledgement that the other party had ever done anything good in government that deserved to built on, not any hint that voters might actually be thoughtful people.

It was and continues to be the campaign of the small – small-mindedness, small little policy announcements, visions so small they are non-existent and very small opinions about us, the voters.

Come back Masterchef, I say.

The ‘make a difference’ vacuum

A few days into the Federal Election campaign and all the Australian citizenry has been offered are poorly developed slogans and a series of disconnected policy announcements designed solely to unbalance the opponent. It’s been nothing more than scrappy fighting over a very small patch of turf. How dismal! How utterly depressing!

We are being asked to choose political leaders but I’m not seeing any leadership on offer, at least not from the two major parties. I feel like I’m being given a choice between two politicians who are doing nothing more than playing politics with each other. I am a political junkie but this is not the politics I enjoy.

I have spoken to enough politicians, of all persuasions, that I can confidently say that nearly all of them go into politics to make a difference. And sometimes, even in past election campaigns, we get to hear about those visions or at least catch glimpses of them. But right now, it is a ‘make a difference’ vacuum.

So far in this campaign we haven’t heard anything approaching a long-term vision for our country. We haven’t heard any policy announcements that reflect any kind of moral commitment! The Government has dumped their moral commitment to urgently addressing climate change and the Opposition has dumped their moral commitment to a deregulated labour market (possibly, but who would know).

If Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard have a vision for the future of our country (and I find it hard to believe that they don’t) they are not telling anyone. Their visions have been abandoned in the quest for votes. Maybe they will pick up some votes with this approach but for what? What will they work towards in government? What will inspire and motivate them? In opposition, what alternative will they have to offer? How will they distinguish themselves?

And what about us? Well we are left with vacuous, lowest common denominator, short-term political point-scoring that means nothing, counts for nothing and contributes nothing meaningful to our lives as individuals or as a society.

How on earth did we get here? Oh… wait… yes… large scale, long-term political apathy and disengagement on the part of citizens coupled with a deeply ingrained individualistic, materialistic culture breeding gross self-interest.