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Green and ‘teal’ politicians are expected to be one of many challenges for the Albanese Government when parliament opens on July 26. New Greens Senator David Shoebridge shared his views on First Nations people, democracy and climate during the election campaign.
By Jackie Pearson
During the election campaign in May, former NSW Member of the Legislative Council and Greens Senate candidate, David Shoebridge, made clear his opinions about justice for First Nations people, the state of democracy in Australia and climate change.
Here are some of the key quotes which give an insight into how the newly elected Senator Shoebridge may conduct business in the nation’s upper house. The full video can be viewed on our youtube channel.
“We are all coming together and speaking about social and environmental justice and that really does come with First Nations Justice ,” Shoebridge told a community forum held on the NSW Central Coast during the federal campaign.
“If we don’t acknowledge the fundamental truth that First Nations peoples have lived on this country for 60-, 70-, 80,000 years in a culture that understood the rhythms, strengths and vulnerabilities of this landscape and have the longest continual culture on the planet, a culture that makes the pyramids seem like very recent inventions.
“What an extraordinary opportunity it is to work with First Nations peoples and I continue to be humbled by the fact that First Nations people welcome us onto their country despite two and a half centuries of violence and dispossession and that is continuing and we should acknowledge that is continuing and we should also acknowledge the richness of a culture that despite that continues to welcome us on to country.”
Fixing democracy
Shoebridge told the crowd there was a reason he had put his hand up to run for the Greens in the 2022 election.
“I have spent the last 11 and a half years as a state MP and one of the reasons I got into state politics was I looked at the state of state politics and I don’t know if you remember back in 2007-10 [there was] this collapse of integrity at a state level – ICAC inquiry after ICAC inquiry, scandal after scandal – and I would complain regularly to members of my party,
“And they said well stop complaining and get in and fix it and that is part of what we are doing here today, not being bystanders in democracy but coming in and insisting that this is a collective job to come and fix the broken democracy we have,
“I’ve got to tell you federal politics at the moment, the pretend competition we are seeing between the Coalition and Labor is a demonstration of politics being pretty fundamentally broken at a federal level.”
How broken is politics?
“What if dealing with the climate catastrophe, which we are facing, and I am sure many of you have seen the images – you must have seen the images from Lismore – and the thought that tens of thousands of our fellow Australians have been savaged by the climate induced flooding extreme event.
“I would have thought that those [climate induced extreme weather] events if nothing else would have changed federal politics and make Labor and the Coalition wake up and realise this cannot continue.
“Business as usual is literally threatening our very existence on the planet and both of them have policy positions committed to opening up at least another 114 additional coal, gas and oil projects; both commiting to more, more of that and indeed, worse still, using our public money, using tens and hundreds of millions of our public money – $50 million just for the Beetaloo basin, to actually open up new coal and gas projects and make the situation worse.
“How broken is politics that it is delivering that kind of pretend competition and pretend solution? Well it is very broken because we know that both of those parties’ campaigns are funded by corporate Australia and particularly funded by the fossil fuel industries. They get the best democracy they can purchase which is delivering for them.
“We have the absolute arrogance of those two parties that are polling each of them about one third of the electorate saying they might support them saying the deserve absolute control over the next parliament. Well they bloody well don’t.
“They need to persuade a majority of MPs about the common sense of their policies. They need to be subject to the power of a progressive cross bench in both houses of parliament to actually break that aweful deadlock.
100% renewables by 2030
“That is extremely achievable. That means shutting down coal-fired power stations in the Central Coast and in the Hunter and getting to 100 per cent renewables by 2030. It means getting to net zero by 2035 and it means spending the next decade ending the thermal coal industry in Australia and ending thermal coal exports.
“One of the things I am most proud about the Greens policy we are taking in the transformation agenda is we have a job for job guarantee for coal miners in coal mining dependent communities.”
What you can do?
Watch the whole Shoebridge video
Write to your new or re-elected MP or state Senators and ask them what they are doing about First Nations justice, the state of our democracy and climate change
Watch the opening of the Commonwealth Parliament on July 26, visit aph.gov.au to find out more.
Take a closer interest in federal politics over the next three years. Think about the promises that were made in the campaign and what actually gets delivered.
