Confessions of a Clean Up Oz Day candidate

My confession is that I'm a big fan of the warm and fuzzy feeling.

Clean Up Australia is one of those events that you can’t help get a warm a fuzzy afterglow from. This Sunday ranked highly on the Clean-upometer. We cleaned up a wetland, nature’s filter. This wetland had been filtering plastic bottles and Styrofoam. We collected bags of bottles and plastic bags full of plastic bags. No matter when you decide to do Clean-Up, you’re always guaranteed of finding a plastic bag to put the rubbish in.

As I was carefully and creatively swinging through the mangroves (to avoid damaging the roots) I was thinking about the beauty of these amazingly diverse ecosystems and wondered where would we be without our wetlands?

Wetlands are fish nurseries. Some of the items we considered cleaning up had been in place for so long that they had become habitat, a plastic bottle with a hole in both ends is probably considered quite an up market crevice in the Piscean community. There were lots of little fish flitting between the mangroves, and this was just a small patch of wetland. In Lake Macquarie where recreational fishing is a major pastime, wetlands contribute to the local economy too.

Another item which was left for habitat purposes was a length of silt-mesh, a fabric designed to stop soil particles from entering the stormwater system or water ways, it had been in the water for some time, the mangrove roots were growing through it and there were a few crustaceans clinging on. The irony here is that wetlands are the best sediment stoppers we have. Wetlands trap the soil, that’s why they grow on the edges of rivers and lakes and why in some places they are becoming more abundant. As sediment stabilisers, wetlands contribute to the water quality of Lake Macquarie.

Wetlands also act as natural flood mitigation devices and foreshore protection. They slow the peaks flows and hold the water. These wet patches of paradise provide abundant food and shelter for a huge variety of animals. Wetlands, because they are a combination of wet and land mean that birds can nest and dine alfresco as they desire. Wetlands are some of the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems around, they contribute to the abundant wildlife we have in Lake Macquarie and they also have a role in preventing the foreshore from disappearing.

Wetlands have had a hard time in the past though. They have suffered from ‘reclamation’ for residential, commercial and recreational purposes. The Toronto Workers Club and the fields use to be a part of the local wetland system. Wetlands have suffered agricultural and industrial pollution and invasion by exotic species and mining, some of these impacts are now being addressed by the Coastal Wetlands Park proposal in eastern Lake Macquarie.

Wetlands continue to cop a bashing too. At Teralba they are being treated as dumping grounds by a local industry who thinks pushing mountains of dirt into a wetland is a good way to gain a few extra meters of space. Many wetlands are now severely stressed by the drought, you can see the high and dry not-so-wetland from the Five Island bridge that is feeling the heat.

The Greens recognise wetlands as a vital component of our environment and the policy identifies areas that we will work towards including

• action against land use which results in degradation of wetland areas such as grazing, stormwater pollution and nutrients from runoff and other sources;
• increasing the participation of local communities and community-based groups in wetlands management;
• education of the broader community about the important functions of wetlands;
• encouraging management and recovery plans for all degraded wetlands with funding to implement plans prepared under the NSW Wetlands Management Policy;

Confession #4 I’ve been SCAMming

Tonight was Southlakes Communities Against Mine’s Annual General Meeting and public forum. My first speaking adventure into the great unknown with the other candidates Greg Piper (Independent Mayor), Jeff Hunter (Labor) and Ken Paxinos (Liberal). I was nervous so I prepared a few points. A valuable lesson I learnt was if you do make notes it’s sometimes helpful to remember to take them with you.

Congratulations to all the SCAMmers who were re-elected to their positions with the hope that in the very near future there would no longer be a need for the organisation and the high conservation land of western Lake Macquarie would become part of the Green Corridor as a park for perpetuity.

There was a lot of discussion about Frank Sartor’s Part 3A powers that allow him to rezone and approve anything he deems of State significance. There was a general feeling from the other candidates that in exceptional circumstance the State probably does need to have that power and as long as it’s used wisely. There was a general feeling from the meeting that Frank was taking it a bit too far and who could you trust to do the right thing in the future?

The Greens were the only ones with a firm policy to restrict the Planning Minister’s ability to call in and approve developments and we were the only ones who mentioned the importance of banning developer donations because they compromise democracy.

Some of the points that I covered in my talk were

The greens are a party where decisions are made locally. Grassroots democracy is a foundation along with social equity and economic justice, peace and non-violence and ecological sustainability. These principles underpin everything we do, so we do things a little bit differently

When we look at the coal industry we don’t just consider export dollars, we consider the social impacts on the communities around the mines, and the environmental damage, and the long term impacts on the region and the country.

The Greens are not compromised by donations from big business, developers or banks, our backers are the people, so people come first.

The Greens have people in the NSW Upper House who have a proven track record of influencing and improving government policy. Lower house candidates can make a difference too by introducing private members bills to open up discussion.

Voting Green is sending a clear message to the major parties that you want a different agenda on the political platform. Climate change is upon us and we’re all a little bit responsible because we’ve kept people in power that refuse to even look to making a plan for a transition from coal to renewables for a better future regionally and globally.

Confession #2 Green is more than a colour

The world has changed a lot since our parents voted for the major parties; green was still a colour then.

But now it’s a way of life. Green bags, say we’re thinking about the environment when we make our purchases, green power is a way of fuelling our energy needs sustainably, we even put out green waste to reduce landfill, and not too long ago a greenie was a ‘tree-hugger’ now they are environmental activists.

Being a Greens candidate is about providing people with a choice to have representatives that care about the long-term impact of our everyday choices.

The Greens aren’t afraid to stand up and say it’s time to change the way we do things. We’ve been saying it for a while, only now a lot more people agree. We’ve spent a lot of time developing policies too, and costing policies and we know that there is a way to have a future that we can live with.

There is the potential within this region to maintain the energy production focus without destroying our environment in the process. The Greens are about creating an alternative relationship between the State and its energy objectives. Greens believe in a jobs rich future driven by renewable energy technologies, their production and distribution throughout the country and the world.

The Greens already have people in the State Government who know how governments work. Governments can work by having Green issues on the agenda and by encouraging green policies that offer different way to think about our future. Our Upper House representatives Lee Rhiannon, Ian Cohen, Sylvia Hale have been putting out a different viewpoint and it makes a difference to what gets discussed, new thoughts, about a better future.

If you want to know the detail have a look at our policies, they are a great read because when you read them you sense there is hope. It’s a different paradigm, a different way of thinking about how we do things. It reminds me of the wisdom my 94 year old friend, tread lightly, use what you need, respect each other and don’t take what we have for granted.

We’ve taken water for granted for far too long, strange really when we live on the driest continent on earth. For a long time we thought about water as just coming out of a tap, now it can come out of a tank too. We need water, reliable and reusable. Tanks for toilets should be a priority. The Greens aim to support personal actions that make a difference.

In this election people might feel they’re a little green around the edges, a bit inexperienced in understanding the way Greens think. But this is an opportunity to learn about different policies that can affect the future in terms of more than election cycles.