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Greens Regional Meeting a Great Success

2nd of June 2007: On a wonderful sunny winter weekend five North Coast Greens groups held a Regional Meeting at Woody Head near Maclean. The groups represented were: Tweed , Byron-Ballina, Northern-Rivers, New-England, and Clarence. They gathered to discuss what happened in the State election , to plan stategy for the coming federal election, ways of working together and creating a regional feel. It was very valuable to connect and build a better connection between the groups.

John Kaye gave a carbon trading debriefing.

John said, "There has been a shift in the Greenhouse  debate. The opposition and the Government have shifted their positions. Kevin Rudd has positioned the Labour party  towards addressing something about Global Warming. However, the policies are vague. What about energy efficiency and a price on carbon?"

He continued, "The Government's  policy  has been written by the heavy polluters. The problem is both parties do not address coal, and their policies are a gift to polluters. As a result, The Greens could be squeezed out of the climate debate. To avoid this, and get the upper hand,  we need to stress the merits of  a carbon tax vs carbon trading.
The relative merits of each approach are as follows:"

Carbon Trading vs Carbon Tax

Trading

1. Issues permits to pollute
2. Trade permits (supposed to be a cap on permits)
3. Someone must constrain the number of permits to have any effect
4. Many escape clauses and exemptions
   
5. Can be fiddled
6. A licence to pollute
7. Corruption as in Europe

Carbon Tax

1. Dollars per tonne very simple use.
   
2. Use the tax for funding renewable energy sources
3. $35 per tonne would raise $4 bill which could go towards solar panels etc.
4. Perceived  as bad because it is called a tax
   

The damage from doing nothing is estimated at $103/year per tonne of CO2 (Stern report)

Approximate Figures for Australian  domestic CO2 pollution (560 million tonnes per year).

1. 30% Electricity generation
2. 5% Steel and concrete
3. 5% Escape from mining coal
4. 40% Agriculture
5. 8% Transport
6. 8% Forestry and land clearing

Coal exports generate  600 million tonnes per year.
John Kaye Video(windows)

Further debate

The major parties have taken over the greens agenda, so we need to point out that we are a third alternative. The Greens policy is 'NO uranium mining and  NO nuclear and we have NO allegiances to unions or mining companies'.

John Kaye and  Helen Caldicott  were in Kempsey in late May presenting  an anti-nuclear event. They filled the local hall  (including a lot of younger people) which is most encouraging. It was suggested that they hold these events in other north coast centres.

Report on the NSW State Election by Lesa De Leau

The NSW state election was our best result ever. Four seats gained over 20% of the primary vote, and we now have 4 members in Upper House,  but we can do better. Lesa also said that our drugs policy has been mis-represented. The Greens need to present  our drugs policy better (harm  minimisation), maybe work more with the  medical profession and release it sooner.

As the Richmond electorate takes in three groups, and the Page electorate takes in two, a decision was made to set up campaign committees with members from the relevant groups, with Byron Ballina taking responsibility to set up the committee for Richmond, and Northern Rivers for the electorate of Page.