ACT Greens Podcast

Ft: Emma Davidson MLA,

In early 2020 I got stuck in New York as the world came to grips with the COVID pandemic. I had been supporting a group of Aboriginal and Pacific First Nations women who went there to tell their story and build relationships internationally, in their work to end violence against First Nations women. Over the month, I watched the city go from business as usual to what looked like the beginning of the apocalypse.

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Read the article in full at: https://greenagenda.org.au/2021/06/has-covid-19-made-women-more-insecure-at-home/

Ft: Shane Rattenbury MLA,

Jaguar recently announced that it will no longer manufacture petrol or diesel vehicles from 2025 but will focus exclusively on its range of electric vehicles (EVs).

Since the cheapest Jaguar currently starts at around $60,000, and you can pay over $300,000 for a top-of-the-range model, this might not seem like headline news. Barring an unlikely lottery win, most of us are never going to buy a brand-new Jag no matter what fuel it runs on.

But it draws attention to something that governments around the world need to think about as we travel down the road of the EV revolution: The upfront purchase price of EVs risks locking out the very people – those on low incomes – who would benefit the most from the cheap running costs of EVs. This is especially so in Australia, where the Federal Government's failure on EV policies has left us at the back of the pack, with a poorly developed EV market.

Governments need to recognise this problem of EV equity and take steps to make EVs more accessible to more people.

Ft: Shane Rattenbury MLA,

Address to the Smart Energy Conference 2021

Ft: Shane Rattenbury MLA,

Australia's so-called "gas led recovery" is shaping up to be even more hazardous than we thought.

The Climate Council has today released a report Kicking the Gas Habit on the harmful health effects of gas, ranging from the hazardous substances used in unconventional gas extraction to the health consequences – particularly for kids – of using gas in our homes.

New research estimates that living in a home with gas appliances is responsible for 12 percent of childhood asthma, a comparable risk to that of living with a smoker. When ventilation is poor, levels of harmful contaminants can reach concentrations that significantly exceed safe or legal limits.

Ft: Jo Clay MLA,

I've worked in the recycling industry for over a decade. When I began, the buzz was all about zero waste. This focussed on the linear goal of keeping waste out of landfill. No one much minded where it went so long as it didn't cross a weighbridge. Exciting times!

The ACT set the world's first big target in the 1990s, proudly painting No Waste by 2010 on all the garbage trucks (presumably to promote their upcoming redundancy). Jurisdictions around Australia and the world followed with their own zero waste targets. But no one has ever delivered on the promise of a waste-free society.

Ft: Andrew Braddock MLA,

To paraphrase the late American R & B musician Luther Ingram, If Loving Trees Is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right.

Maybe not everyone is willing to wear their tree-hugging heart on their sleeve like I am, but is there any real disagreement on the benefits of trees, not just in the bush but in our urban landscapes?

They provide shade in our parks and over our streets and pathways. They cool our homes and beautify our suburbs. They reduce air pollution and help remove not just CO2 but nitrous oxide, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide and ground-level ozone. They provide habitat and enhance biodiversity. They can provide wind-breaks and shelter from rain.

These benefits are nice to have. They're also, if you're inclined this way, able to be expressed in an actual dollar value. For example, New York's urban trees remove enough air pollutants to provide an estimated $9.5 million of value to the city every year. Across Australia, homes with trees in their gardens or in their street achieve consistently higher sale prices than homes without.

The ACT Government needs no convincing on the tree thing. It has already set a target of 30% urban tree cover by 2045. The question now is not a matter of whether or why, but how?

Ft: Andrew Braddock MLA,

Almost one in five Canberrans lives in Gungahlin.

Or to be more accurate, one in five Canberrans sleeps in Gungahlin.

More than 25 years after the first houses went up in Ngunnawal and Palmerston, there's still no cinema (you'll have to wait another year), no hospital (unless you're a pet) and not nearly enough jobs for the 76,088 residents who call Gungahlin home.

This is a problem, but I see it as a great opportunity.

Ft: Jo Clay MLA,

November this year will mark the centenary of the opening of the train line from Cooma to Bombala. It's a sad anniversary, to be honest, because trains stopped running beyond Cooma 35 years ago this month. An enormous amount of work and expense went into creating a major piece of transport infrastructure that was only used for 65 years. We need to start asking serious questions about what we want to see happen with this important infrastructure.