The People That You Meet (a Bluesfest follow up)

Do you have an opinion on Coal Seam Gas? Chances are, unless you've been hiding under a rock, you've developed one over the last week. And even if you have been hiding you might be wondering about the toxic concoction bubbling to the surface under your rock...

A recent episode of '4 Corners' on ABC TV entitled Gas Leak! has created an tide of media scrutiny over the processes and effects of coal seam gas on the environment. The '4 Corners' story, and much of the subsequent media, has focussed on the lack of any truly independent research into the environmental fallout from the coal seam gas industry. This lack of transparency by the industry is exacerbated by claims that environmental impact reports were fast tracked, with approvals being granted before all the information was known.

Meeting the Stop CSG team at Bluesfest

Only a few days before the program screened I was at Bluesfest talking with the volunteers and activists involved with the Lock The Gate Alliance. Lock the Gate are a group involved in protecting Australia's environmental, cultural and agricultural resources and they are particularly interested in the potential harm of coal seam gas extraction.  It was a fascinating conversation, especially considering I spend perhaps too much of my time engaging on the wrong side of this keyboard in front of me.

Prior to meeting the group at Bluesfest I had read a little about Coal Seam Gas and found myself generally confused by the wealth of contradictory information available. When I'm uncertain or feel ill-informed on an issue I tend to shy away from getting involved until I know more.

Getting information is not always easy though. Especially when your average Google search returns hits in the millions (21,800,000 when I searched 'coal seam gas') That's where talking to people who are passionate and involved can really help. Here's a little of the information and perspectives I was offered by Melissa & Elly whom I chatted with:

• Only a small percentage of Australia's land is used for crops - One of the big reasons Lock the Gate are locking their gates is because of concern for the viability of agricultural land. Coal seam gas extraction has the potential to contaminate bore water and significantly decrease the available ground water. This may have devastating effects on the 6.5% of agricultural land used for crops

• The effects are being seen on the ground (literally) - while we talked I heard about farmers in the Northern Rivers region who had seen bubbling in rivers and other previously unknown phenomenon. Now I can't report my personal experience of these events, but as a bystander with a vested interest in food production (we all need to eat!) I believe there is reason to be concerned.

• Alternate energy sources are being explored - the team at Lock the Gate are actively involved with groups researching solar energy production. Put simply, they are not blind to the fact that Australians consume energy. They just believe that coal seam gas and the hydraulic fracturing that assists it's extraction are dangerous, environmentally irresponsible ways to meet our energy needs.

Those three short points I've discussed are in no way the full story of coal seam gas and the Lock the Gate Aliance's work. I would encourage anyone interested to click on the links I've provided and gather information for yourself. When I chatted with the group though these three points of information were the ones that tipped my opinion in their favour and convinced me to sign their petition. 

Now I write often on social justice issues and the need for average people to be involved. Increasingly the most accessible and efficient way for people to engage is via the internet. My experience up at Bluesfest has reignited for me the power and potential face-to-face engagement. The Lock the Gate Alliance are real people working, fighting and winning battles in their communities for the right to a safe, sustainable future.

It's been a few days now since the end of Bluesfest and the good vibes and music are still running high. I'll continue to write and sign petitions online. But I'll also be wandering up to people with clipboards more often and asking them the hard questions. If they answer as eloquently as Melissa and Elly, they'll get my support too...

To #Spill once may be regarded as a misfortune, to #spill twice looks like carelessness*...

Here we go again.

The Australian Labor melodrama has gone from speculation through tension and drama, depositing us all on the other side with the status quo. It's the volvo with bad suspension of all roller-coaster rides!

It seems to me that in the ADHD, 24-hour news cycle of Australian politics leadership speculation has become the treat you enjoy between meals without losing your appetite. When all the talk of elections, budgets, even policies gets a little boring there's bound to be a new poll out asking whether someone else could do the job better. And we love it!

For the punters all this speculation is like a cross between backseat driving and shouting at the television. We know we're unhappy (with something, anything?) and so we take a few moments to dream of a different world. But it doesn't achieve anything.

Our democratic system has taught us that the power is in our hands! I'm not talking about political elections; reality TV and mobile phones let us make the decisions. Live! People seem to view the Labor caucus as something like the 'Survivor' island or 'The Biggest Loser' at weigh in. Worse the members of that caucus obviously feel the same way.

There is a different way for people to engage with politics. Getting involved through online activism, protesting wrongs where you see them or writing letters to your local member give everyone a chance to enter the political debate. Me I write this blog, as well as email, tweet or facebook anyone I think will listen.

Polls are only meant to gauge our opinion on a given day, yet we treat them like de-facto elections. Writing a letter or getting involved in a campaign might not give you the same instant gratification but it will ensure you're playing a part in something real. Not just the latest headline beat-up...

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* Most sincere apologies to Oscar Wilde!

Marginal or Vulnerable?

So Julia Gillard has hit town in Western Sydney...

The story, as I understand it, is the PM will address the concerns of some of the most vulnerable; families, single parents and low income earners, telling them her vision for the west. The other story, as I understand it, is the PM will be attempting to shore up support in eleven marginal seats. The price of failure is an election loss come September.

Nothing particularly sinister here, especially if you're in western Sydney and have the ear of a politician. Except that between Abbott and Gillard western Sydney must be feeling like the birthday kid that everyone wants to sit next to, just to get a bigger piece of cake!

'Battlegrounds' is what the yanks call it, we prefer terms like 'safe' and 'marginal'. But be they regional, inner city, battler, conservative and green, these are all voter groups whose votes are being courted or ignored in the lead up to the election. The politicians will talk; promising and politicking about why they are best, and expect us to listen.

So how does it feel to be a demographic more than a person?

I find it alienating and also a little confusing. I mean I feel strongly about human rights issues, rent and think infrastructure development around the country is important for all Australians. That barely begins to describe my opinions but buggered if I can find someone speaking to me.

Come election time I'll have to make a choice that may not address all the issues that concern me. Other people may find themselves making a choice over one issue that concerns them.

If you choose based on which party is addressing child payments and tax cuts maybe you're identifying with the 'families' demographic. But if you're voting on environmental action and the carbon tax, you're more of a 'green' demographic. Perhaps you're concerned about financial regulation and your investments from a 'conservative' demographic position. There are other positions though.

Consider those who don't get a vote...

Kids don't get a vote, hell even young adults don't have the chance to poll their opinions which sucks if you've left school and are working and paying taxes but not yet eighteen. This means that parents must give some consideration to their youngsters when they think about who to give their vote to. Childcare and education become issues long after school. Not to mention the health care system and welfare.

Foreign aid, development as well as asylum seekers takes in thousands of people who do not get to vote in our elections. As a globally engaged country Australia is committed to initiatives overseas as well. Holding a seat on the UN security council, more than ever we have an obligation to consider how we act on behalf of refugees, people in crisis and those in war torn nations.

One vote and then three more years. Whatever 'demographic' you ostensibly fall into that's not enough and there's so much more we can do. Don't wait to be a demographic the politicians need to win, demand their attention now.

The people in western Sydney didn't have to wait for the PM to visit. At any time they could write, email or tweet:*

The Hon Julia Gillard MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
email: 'Contact your PM'
twitter: @JuliaGillard

Or perhaps the alternate PM:

The Hon Tony Abbott MHR
Leader of the Opposition
Parliament House
RG 109
Canberra ACT 2600
email: 'Contact Tony'
twitter: @TonyAbbottMHR

Or even the balance of power in the Senate:

Christine Milne's Office
GPO Box 896
Hobart TAS 7001
email: 'Contact Christine Milne'
twitter: @senatormilne

Once every three years we vote to give them all a job. Let's not forget that the rest of the time we can hold them accountable for doing it.

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*All contact details were taken from the relevant pollies website and twitter pages. Apologies if they are not correct but good on you for trying to get in touch to try them out!

Recognition...

Yesterday I flew in to Sydney with that fantastic feeling of returning home after eight months. Now as any returning Australian, or visitor knows that feeling is significantly mitigated by the cramps and insomnia of more than thirty hours of flights and transfers. Trying to write last night I was overcome with langour and that strange displaced feeling of being somewhere both so familiar and a little foreign...

Catching up later on the news I'd missed that fantastic feeling returned while reading of the passage of the 'Act of Recognition' through the federal Parliament. The Act commits Parliament to working towards the inclusion and recognition of Australia's Indigenous people in the national constitution. It is significant that this process has begun just as it is shameful that it has taken so long.

See names are important and if that sounds familiar it's because in my last post I talked quite a bit about names; the way they can be used to convey power and status, or attempt to remove it by belittling someone. Names are the way we recognise who someone is and if we don't give them to ourselves someone else will find one for us. How much more difficult then to not have a name?

Indigenous Australians were recognised as citizens and given the vote in 1967; essentially acknowledging that them as members of Australian society. As important as this act was it reads more like a 'welcome to Australia' for a people whose existence on this continent predates European settlement by thousands of years. Compare this relationship with that of the Maori and the British in New Zealand.

The Treaty of Waitangi signed between the Crown and Maori leaders in 1840 began a collaborative, albeit uneven at times, relationship between indigenous New Zealanders and those who would wish to be their sovereigns. No such treaty exists in Australia and collaboration between indigenous leaders and the Federal Government seems bereft of direction. Indigenous Australians have been denied their identity just as surely as they were denied their lands. Colonial policies of integration threatened to wipe out language and cultures tracing thousands of years of history and this continues to happen when we denigrate these memories as 'black armband history'.

While traveling through Europe I was constantly amazed by the depth of history that permeates the land. I was also shocked that this jarred so starkly with my perception of Australian history. My shock was not because we are a 'young' country as is often repeated, but because we are old and this history is not well known. As former NSW senator Aden Ridgeway acknowledges in his recent editorial, constitutional recognition expand our national history from a few hundred years to many thousands of years. It enriches us as a nation and paves the way for a more complete understanding of our history; hopefully, one day I'll have kids who will grow up with a broader knowledge of all Australian people.

Constitutional recognition also offers us the opportunity to remove a stain from the constitution in the form of the so-called 'race powers'. Section 25 and section 51(xxvi) are provisions for both state and federal governments to make race specific laws. These do not exclusively refer to Indigenous Australians, but may do so. The implications of such provisions are frightening, even if they sit unused, and the presence of such provisions is a blot on the most powerful document of a supposedly multicultural country.

The Act of Recognition is only the beginning of the story. If nothing else it means that we can expect a referendum on constitutional change to occur after two years. The 1967 referendum on indigenous suffrage garnered overwhelming support and was passed. This should and must happen again, but it can't be guaranteed unless all Australians get behind it.

If you're reading this then you have some of the story; check out the guys at 'Recognise', from whom I got a lot of background information, and who offer you the opportunity to sign up for the cause of Recognition. Let's make this story our national story...

Chomsky vs. Twitter

Last time I wrote I threw in a quote by Noam Chomsky regarding the de-facto mental slavery we are subject to when powerful interests are allowed to dictate the narratives, the advertising, the media we consume. If you haven't come across Chomsky before I'm going to let you Google him, but suffice to say that I've heard him described as the most influential intellectual of the last fifty years (more than once). Chomsky writes passionately about the individual in the face of larger corporate, political and media influences. He is an advocate of individual action and thought free from coercion. 

I'm a fan of Noam, but in my reading for the last post I also came across some comments he made about social media and Twitter. It seemed he was not a fan of the brevity or relative flippancy of tweets and their limited character. He has also described in interviews a view that communication via devices tends towards the "superficial, shallow, evanescent" while Twitter perhaps "draw(s) people away from real serious communication". 

Let's face it, he has a point and in Noam's defense these comments were made around the same time Charlie Sheen was lighting up Twitter with a very dim bulb. At it's worst social media is people you've never met telling you they're hungry and then posting a picture of what they're eating (before anyone says anything I do realise that the worst is more like racism, sexism, trolls and attitudes best left in the middle ages). Beyond the shallow though Twitter et al. is also a democratizing force as it allows the audience to decide which voices are heard through comments, critiques and simply by ignoring the undesirable.

If we accept the premise that Twitter is often heavy with trivia and ephemera, this does not exclude the possibility for meaning within 140 characters. Brevity seems to be a particular bugbear for Chomsky as he feels it negates or sidelines controversial, non-mainstream discussion. But 140 characters is merely a window to another world that people may choose to explore at the cost of a mere click. Personally I am drawn back to tweeters who lead to me to more interesting information through links.

As a gateway social media has as many doors to Narnia as it does to last seasons Kardashian closet. The mere presence of crap does not negate it's power to distribute voices however. Just as the printing press gave us newspapers it also helped fill them with comics and personals. We have the opportunity to control the content as it evolves and part of that evolution is engaging, discussing and aggregating voices towards social causes. Daily people create their own content and distribute it via the interweb and social media is a resource they utilise to get word out.

Is there anything to say though?

Embedded in the technology is the mechanism that (hopefully) will see us guide this evolution towards a positive channeling of public voices; Twitter and other microblogging sites are equipped with functions to retweet, comment or simply stop following. While publishing may be free and easy, editing happens at the hands of the public at large. This means that the network of users vote with their 140 characters on whether an opinion expressed is viable. I wrote recently of my first experience with a truly abhorrent Twitter post and how at the hands of the 'Twitterverse' the poster was duly chastened. 

In one of the interviews mentioned above Chomsky describes a 'good public citizen' as one "who participates in the management of public affairs". Amongst the idle thoughts and tummy rumblings social media offers a platform for participation that is open and uncensored as yet. Entry criteria for participation is the possession of an online device, and this can be a steep price in some markets, as I've discussed in a previous post. This is changing though and with access comes a proliferation of new voices. For those that can afford it, this is cheap compared to running for office in a developed western democracy.

These technologies offer both shallow, narcissistic interactions and the potential to engage in the public sphere like never before. It requires a little creativity to straddle the line and becomes a daily commitment if you really intend to engage, but I've found it worth the effort. In a future where this technology will become second nature I wonder if our questioning it's validity at length (longer than the aforementioned 140) will seem quaint. Till then I choose to embrace the voice it affords me.

Trust...

The opening salvo of election 2013 has been fired.

Tony Abbott has declared the election to be about trust. In this statement he has sought to frame the whole election race; if you trust me then you will make me your prime minister he says. What he doesn't really clarify is what this elusive virtue trust is, or how we might apply it to politics.

Fool! 

(I hear you loudly declare) 

Trust is simple and you have it or you don't; that PM we currently only kinda, sorta like betrayed our trust when she kept promising things and then changing her mind.

That statement sounds so obvious that I refuse to trust it without giving it a good once over. That's the thing trust, it shouldn't be given blindly. Things are rarely what they seem (especially in politics) and if someone is shouting loudly trying to get you to look at what they're doing with their right hand, there's a good chance they're robbing you with their left.

Firstly let's consider the 'trust me, I don't lie' claim. Every election, large or small, parties (frequently two) claim and counter claim against their policy platforms. They announce plans and schemes for what they will do when they obtain office. The thing is only one party will get into office and that means only one party will be judged on whether they come good on their plans. This makes it simple for the other party to say trust me; they haven't yet been tested. If elections were decided on trust and this was the standard we used it is likely we would swap governments every election. Trust has to be more than simply tallying the plans not enacted because the incumbent will never win.

But ol' Tony may still have a point, Julia did use words like promise and pledge when she was talking about the carbon tax and the budget surplus. Were they promises she could reasonably make? Did she jump, or was she pushed? In both these situations, circumstances outside the party lead to them abandoning their earlier statements (read: breaking their promise). The Greens compelled a scheme that put a price on carbon as part of forming a minority government and global finances, particularly a downturn in China forced a recount of the pennies in the piggybank.

Don't even get me started on whether these 'broken promises' were a good thing. A mechanism for forcing polluters to pay for pollution - tick! A reevaluation supported by the majority of economists - tick! Do we really want politicians of any colour or flavour that are unable to respond to changing circumstances?

So the second point to consider is whether election platforms are the sort of promises that are brought down from the mountain in stone or whether they might be something else. At present the coalition are fairly thin on the ground when it comes to presenting policies. Tony Abbott's reputation as 'Dr No' stemmed largely from his lambasting government policy without offering alternatives. Such a position, viewed in the light of the argument above, seems shrewd. No promises, platforms, positions then there's no chance of being accused of lying if you have to change track. The coalition is waiting for the best time to announce a platform they know they can back. Now we already know the world isn't always kind like that, so let's hope nothing comes up to surprise them.

Even the Greens, ever the hardline, firm statement types have announced a new policy platform filled with 'aims and principles'. Sounds like they know what they want to do, but are smart enough to give themselves a little wriggle room just in case reality gets in the way. 

Sounds like Tony Abbott's trust platform isn't quite what it seems. I don't want a politician so set on a particular agenda that they ignore the rest of the world. Our democracy only allows us to personally effect change once every three or so years. In between I want to be able to trust our politicians to think about the issues and move with new circumstances.

Political mistrust seems more the domain of back-room dealings and corrupt politicians. We've seen plenty of that across the board over the last few years, with both parties splitting at the seams on more than one occasion. As far as trust goes though, I'd rather see this election run on policies...