Transcript of speech given at the closing plenary session of the Now We The People conference, 24.8.03 University of Technology, Sydney

Kerry Nettle

Thank you, I will speak briefly, because I've spoken here before, and I'm speaking in place of Sylvia Hale, who couldn't be here today. I wanted to give a little bit of a case study about working in alliances, because that's part of what we can do at the end of the conference, thinking about we work together with each of us on the campaigns we're working on into the future.

And I want to do that through, I've been in Parliament for a year and had the opportunity to work with a whole lot of different groups, I wanted to give you some insights and see if we can draw together from that some lessons about how we interact with different groups of people. I think that as activists we do our best work when we work with people that we wouldn't traditionally work with. I think we do our best work when we are working in situations where it is difficult. For example, I really enjoyed (it's actually a couple of years ago now) but doing work with the forestry division of the CFMEU, the union where we worked together on coming out, having public meetings, and making statements to say we oppose power stations powered by the burning of native forests across this state.

So to come together with this union who people might see traditionally as the other side of the political spectrum to the Greens, and to be able to work together, I think that's where we are doing some of our most effective work. And it was something that Tanya Plibersek in the panel I was on yesterday talked about is that we need to listen to the talkback radio stations that we hate, and ring in our feedback, so that progressive voices are heard in that environment. I think it's often in those environments where we seem least welcome that we can do the most effective work.

And part of the reason why that's most effective is because we break down people's stereotypes about who we're prepared to work with. When we show that we're prepared to work with people who would put us in completely different baskets, then that's where we break down other people's stereotypes of ourselves, in being pigeonholed into a particular box, and show that we have the capacity to work with different people, and together to put forward solutions to problems that we have.

When we do that, when we work with people who we may be on the other end of the political spectrum to we're not going to agree on everything. , and I think the message is there are issues on which we can come together, and work together. There's a whole lot of things that the Greens will fundamentally disagree with the forestry division of the CFMEU, that doesn't mean that we can't come together and do some positive things, in terms of saying "we don't want to burn native forests for electricity in this State." So when we do that sort of work there will be things we agree on and things we disagree on.

I've had the opportunity in the time leading up to the election campaign when I got elected and since then, of working very closely with the Muslim community in Australia, and that's been a community where I've really enjoyed, I suppose you can see it as going out onto an edge, but I don't think it is so much now, but it has been, broadening people's understanding of the progressive politics that the Greens stand for; going into a community where people have very little understanding of who we are, and what message we have to spread.

And this is the same for everyone; obviously I speak from a Greens perspective but in terms of progressive politics, we can spread our progressive politics into communities where we won't agree on everything. We've got very different ideas on relations in terms of homosexual Australians, or a whole range of different issues, but there are w hole range of things where we can explain and share our understanding and belief and respect for humanity, and respect for the treatment of asylum seekers.

Again, finding opportunities to go and speak to audiences that haven't heard our message and that don't know: last week I had the opportunity, and it was a great pleasure to go and address the ACTU Congress that took place in Melbourne. And I spoke at that congress about the Royal Commission into the building industry that's taking place at the moment, which is a complete ideological witch-hunt against building workers in this country and against the trade union movement generally. And there were a lot of people there who had never heard a Greens MP speak before, and who had no idea what we would have to say on this issue. And it's just finding those forums and creating those opportunities for people to hear that we have views on a whole range of different issues. And for people who work on a particular issue, it is the issue that you're involved in and campaigning, but that doesn't mean that you don't have broader interests and knowledge and experience. And you don't necessarily campaign on all those issues, but you do have the opportunity to interact with those other campaigns.

Sometimes we work with groups we least expect we would work with, and that comes out of the campaigns you're working on. One of the campaigns I'm working on closely at the moment is about the free trade agreement between Australia and the United States. And I'm on a Senate inquiry from which we heard evidence given by the Australian chicken meat industry. Now that's someone I wouldn't have guessed that I would have had anything to do with or work with, but they are really concerned about he quarantine measures we have in place which are about scientific measures to stop poultry diseases coming into this country through the export of chicken meat from other countries. There's an alliance where we can work together in ensuring that Australia's quarantine measures are not broken down by the free trade agreement.

When we work in coalitions where we don't agree on every fundamental point, we need to be clear when we make those coalitions about what are our common goals, and what are our objectives that we seek to work on together.

Kerry Nettle is the Federal Greens Senator for NSW

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