Greens MPs

This is a speech I delivered to the Sydney Institute last night. You can also listen to it here or download a pdf here.

Sydney Institute, October 27th 2008.

Green Politics, the Balance of Power and the Green New Deal.

Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this evening about Green Politics, Balance of Power and the twin global meltdowns of climate and finance. There has never been a more critical time to be a Green and there has never been a time when the philosophy and experience of Green politics - based on forty years of environmental, social justice, peace and democracy campaigning - has been more important. The decisions that will be made in the next five years are crucial for the future of life on Earth.

In excellent news this morning, The Age reports that Christine Milne's amendments to the Luxury Car Tax, exempting fuel efficient vehicles from the levy, are already having an impact!

Ian Porter writes:

"THE changes made to luxury car tax have already started to influence the design of premium cars, with Audi announcing plans to install smaller diesel engines in some of its models so they consume less than seven litres per 100 kilometres - and become exempt from the tax."

Audi Chief Joerg Hofmann is quoted as saying:

So the day after tomorrow (ah that hoary old Hollywood chestnut...), Penny Wong will finally release the government's Green Paper, to which Professor Garnaut is one of many 'inputs'. Most of the others being big business.

While it won't be anything like final design, and it won't include any emissions targets or trajectories, the paper should give us a much better idea of what the government's thinking is on emissions trading. We'll have more of an idea of whether it'll be something The Greens can support with amendments. The signs thus far are that it should be supportable, but there is still the chance that it'll be so full of holes that we'd be better off without it.

Here's some notes we've put together on some of the key issues with emissions trading that we'll be looking out for.

ABC TV watchers amongst you may have seen the promos already for Christine Milne on the newish Q&A program this Thursday night, July 10, at 9.30 pm.

She will be on the panel, focussed on 'Welcome the new Senate', with Senator Helen Coonan, Minister Craig Emerson, author Linda Jaivin and everybody's favourite opinionated columnist, Andrew Bolt.

As well as watching the program, please think about asking questions of Christine and the other panellists - about the Senate and balance of power, about the Garnaut Review, about appropriate responses to climate change, peak oil and the transport crisis, or anything at all that interests you!

To further explain the implications of The Greens holding balance of power in the Senate, we are proud to bring you the following presentation...

A hi-res flash version of this is also available at greens.org.au

In 2004, even though the Greens, Greenpeace and others were warning of it, Australia largely sleep-walked into a Howard controlled Senate. It's been really pleasing to see how much more attention has been focussed on the question of the Senate and balance of power at this election than there was last time.

We welcome the following submission to GreensBlog from Giz Watson - WA Greens MLC in Western Australia

The WA Greens have been in the balance of power in the Legislative Council (Upper House) since May 1997 to the present day. For the first 4 years that balance was shared with the Democrats. In the last 6 years we have exercised it in our own right. I have been a Member of the Legislative Council for the Greens continuously over this period and have both seen and been a part of the outcomes of this balance of power.

1997 was the first time in the history of the Legislative Council (over 100 years) that the Council became a fully functional house of review - neither a rubber stamp for the Government of the day nor a block on progressive legislation. Despite claims that the Greens would stop Bills, be disruptive, promote extreme policies and that we would use our position irresponsibly - this hasn't happened.