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.

The last three days have been quite a revelation of exactly what's going on in Tasmania's forests. Regardless of the rhetoric of sensitive management of the forests, the real story is one of wantonly sending species towards extinction and viciously attacking those brave souls who stand up for protection.

On Monday, Bob Brown launched a new report by Margaret Blakers and Isobel Crawford into the state of the Swift Parrot

I was very pleased today to launch an excellent new publication by Rod Randall, from the Weeds CRC, which will be an invaluable tool in the fight against weeds in Australia. It's a book, but it's also free to download online!

Everyone knows that weeds and feral animals - alien invasive species - stand beside habitat destruction and climate change as the main drivers of biodiversity loss worldwide. But many people don't realise how widespread invasive species are in Australia.

This was published in Crikey this afternoon. My release from today is here.

Professor Garnaut’s much-awaited Draft Report [huge file here if the Garnaut website is still down] is, in general, strong on the architecture but terribly weak on the big, over-riding issue – preventing runaway climate change. His policy prescriptions are completely out of step with his science.

When we were looking for a transformative vision to take Australia into the post-carbon world, we got an incrementalist approach with a slow start and even a step backwards on the 2050 target.

Let’s firstly look at what Garnaut got right.

Penny Wong released the official greenhouse inventory for 2006 this morning, and you can read and study it in all its glory here.