I want to start by acknowledging that we meet on the land of the first nations. And to also say that this time next week I go back to Canberra - the first sitting of Parliament after we lost the one Indigenous member that we had, Aden Ridgeway, Democrats Senator who lost his seat at the last election.
I was thinking before as Frank said that non-Indigenous people make up 98% of the population; that leaves the 2% unrepresented in our Federal Parliament, you realise that, and it also means that we probably should have five Indigenous members of the Federal Parliament. So I would all urge all of you, if your members of the Labor Party or other parties to make sure that good Indigenous candidates are elected. I think it bears thinking about that we are, not just a Senate which is controlled by this awful Government, but we are lacking in a very important sector in our community.
I want to congratulate the conference organisers who have obviously put together a fantastic platform of speakers to talk with you. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to be here but everyone’s buzzing and they are talking about how good it’s been. So well done. The briefing papers I did read and I thought they were fantastic. It seems to me that you need the ingredients of great speakers, a lot of people coming to the conference and you need the information. So all of you can now go out well informed about the issues that have been brought up here and become good spokespeople for a better way of doing things.
Before I started I wanted to say to Rob, ‘be warned about the TGA’, Our TGA has managed to demolish our complementary health sector pretty much so far and it’s a great pity that New Zealand has seen fit to join Australia in adopting TGA approaches.
I thought I’d start with something that’s been in the news this weekend. The Age yesterday reported that it was Exxon Mobil, BHP Billiton, Alcoa, Rio Tinto and other energy giants who influenced the Governments energy white paper. That’s the one that gives back $1.5 Billion in excise charged on diesel fuel. It’s also the one that puts our entire trust for the future and reducing green house emissions into geo-sequestration – this is a process of shoving it underground. You know, ‘bury the problem’, is the general theme. And the reason for that is we want to keep on burning coal and we want to do a lot more of it that we currently are. And we want to ignore the alternatives which are infinitely safer and more sound. In the same article the Minister for the Environment was quoted as saying that more than 20 coal fired power stations will be built in the coming years. And not investing in clean fossil fuels would be environmental vandalism. So let’s be clear here. The Government is trying to sell us this unconvincing line that yet to be developed technology with doubtful application in Australia is preferable to the already highly sophisticated wind and solar powered technology, which if greenhouse pollution was factored into the cost would be hugely cheaper than power that comes from fossil fuels.
In today’s AGE, Gwen Andrews, the first head of the Australian Green House Office and you remember when that office was created the Government said we are the first Government to set up a whole Department independent of the other departments, called the Greenhouse Office. She headed it up, but she admits now that she was never asked to brief the Prime Minister. Her views were not sought in the deliberations on ratifying the Kyoto protocol. She says from the UK, where she now works ‘in my view, large energy, mining and resource interests in Australia had a disproportionate effect on Government policy making with regard to energy and climate change. With few exceptions they had little commitment to the concept of sustainable development, their definition of economic interest was constrained by their businesses and shareholders.’
The reason I start with this is because I want to make the point that we all need to face; why it is that the right decisions are not being made when all the evidence is there to show that way. Do we need more persuasive evidence? I don’t think so. Do we need better accountability of government to expose the factors that give rise to influence on government that’s not in the overall interest in all Australians? Absolutely. Do we need better mechanisms to limit that undue influence? Definitely.
We need to remember that incumbency is a very, very powerful position to be in, in this country. And becoming more so all the time. Billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent since 1996 promoting or defending party policy and there’s very little within our laws that can stop this kind of misleading advertising. We have millions of dollars that flow into party coffers, some of it disclosed a lot of it hidden by third party entities. Why is it in this country that there are no caps on election advertising or political donations as there are in other countries? New Zealand leads the way again on this issue. What was the purpose of public funding in the country of election campaigns if it wasn’t to get rid of undue influence? I think these are the questions we need to be posing to people in the two major parties.
This conference has a very broad agenda of values and visions but I think they come down to four main areas. The public good; justice and freedom, environmental sustainability and truth, democracy and accountability. And it just so happens that the Democrats have adopted those four themes in going forward. We said to ourselves, what is different about us and the coalition. In fact the ALP for that matter. And I think it comes down to values. It’s time you and we started expressing those values - very loudly and clearly.
The last two decades have seen a massive amount of corporatisation and privatisation of public assets, services and infrastructure. And that’s rarely been in the interest of the public. Our vision for Australia is a confident public sector that has the drive of the corporate sector but acts in the interest of the public rather than the share market. I think the public good is served by the government being responsible for a robust public education system, a well-funded, high quality community based health care system, affordable housing, child care centres, telecommunications, transport of the public variety and other proper infrastructure.
So whether public, private or community sector delivers those services the government must assert the public good. We never hear that from John Howard. We never hear it from many of the leaders at that level. So despite our higher wages and supposedly lower unemployment in this country, inequities are still growing. Our vision is an Australia that distributes income more fairly, upholds international law, works for international peace and protects the interests of its citizens, asylum seekers and all. We want for justice for children and not just not those living in poverty by 2025 but to be in safe nurturing families whatever their make up.
Also in the paper today was a report that the Government is setting up Family Centres. What we say is that child care, decent living conditions and a life that’s free from violence are some of the pre-requisites for strong families.
We want the freedom for citizens to choose publicly funded transport, reproductive and sexual health, mental health, dental health and so many others. Our vision for Australia is for a prosperous economy that vales the natural environment and commits to long term targets such as reducing green house emissions by 80% by the end of the century and an end to our loss of bio-diversity.
We need long term planning and management of finite resources. A tax and regulatory system that encourages jobs and works within the limits of those natural resources. We want to give high priority to laws that ensure government institutions and people act honestly, ethically and transparently. What we need is a democracy that is robust, transparent and accountable to the people - to we, the people. We want government that works to create an economy that has a social conscience and that requires those in government institutions and big business to act with integrity, ethics and accountability.
I wanted to focus on the environment. And that debate about the environment and how it can be protected if we are going to have economic growth, and other economic considerations – jobs and the like. Those two objectives are always seen as being in conflict with one another. But I don’t think they need to be. The other problem is that those arguments about the economy and the environment almost never take into account the future generations. What we know is what we do effects their lives into the future. The third principal of the 1992 Rio Declaration said that economic development should done in such a way as to not harm the opportunities of our successors to make use of the environment. In other words, today’s generation shouldn’t ruin the chances of later generations to also benefit from development. That means we’ve got an obligation to look after our life support systems, soil, water and air. We need to make plans for bio-diversity and use natural resources sustainably. In the thirteen years since Rio, sustainability has been taken up in the rhetoric - we even hear the Environment Minister talking about it - but little real progress has been made. We can do more, we produce more pollution and bio-diversity is still very much in decline.
Dr Keith Sutter said on ABC Radio this week that we have the new environmental ethic but government and citizens have been reluctant to make the major changes required to save the environment. Governments are still locked into a system of national sovereignty and can’t be forced into accepting any international agreements, like Kyoto, and voters are unclear about environmental issues and think that legislation reduces pollution rather than them having to change their lifestyles. And of course governments are usually unwilling to have business and consumers pay the full environmental cost of their activities. So for 300 years we have built infrastructure and chosen technological paths like fossil fuels without taking into consideration their long term environmental impacts. The solutions do already exist. All we need is a unified sense of urgency and the will to change. I would argue that we need collaboration. It needs to involve everybody. We need governments, industry, academia, farmers, consumers and we need researchers. And I don’t think we can leave out corporations whether they’re global or otherwise. If we don’t get them to the table there is not going to be any change.
The landcare agreement in the 1980’s was a result of agreement between the NFF and the ACF, which has changed very dramatically attitudes and practices on the land. A lot of that money was wasted and it didn’t all go to the right thing, but none the less it has made an enormous difference to those attitudes. I think churches, schools and institutions need to be part of a whole of society change in culture and attitude. The Netherlands has worked out how to achieve a 90% reduction of their environmental load over the next 50 years. And so can Australia. But we all need to know it’s possible and we need to spread that message much more widely than it is.
I’m sure I’ve gone way over time, so I’ll stop there. Thank you.