The Honourable Dr Brad Pettitt MLC is the last Green left in the WA Parliament, and even then he only just scraped in to the upper house in the March 2021 election.
Why the virtual wipeout of the Greens? “The State election was a COVID election,” is Pettitt’s simple explanation.
And he is concerned that a similar result will be replicated at the federal election: “The danger for the Greens is that we will see a repeat of what happened in WA.”
However, the 49-year-old, Tesla-driving former dean of sustainability at Murdoch University and former long-term mayor of Fremantle is confident he can work with government members and members of other parties on climate change and other issues.
And that even includes the National Party, the official opposition party, which Pettitt describes as very different from the federal National Party: “The WA Nationals are much more inclined to see the opportunities around climate change.”
With “WA the only state where emissions are going up”, he says, the need for cross-party and urgent action is obvious and paramount: “Just as the science around COVID is very clear, a science-led approach to climate is also essential.”
Pettitt sees WA Labor holding government through the next two terms: “The WA Labor government has a great opportunity to make some of the big decisions that have to be made, and I put climate front and centre in that space. The decisions Labor makes in 2021 they will have to sell in 2029.”
The recent release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report not only provides the Greens with vindication of their consistent position on climate change but also will embolden Pettitt, National Greens leader Adam Bandt and the rest of the Greens to promote a radically different approach to climate change in Australia.
Selling the link between climate change and the economy as a mainstream issue will be the challenge, Pettitt says, reiterating what he said in his maiden speech to Parliament: “A sustainable future … has a triple bottom-line approach: economic, social and environmental.”
And that also means linking climate and jobs. “One of the things the major parties do much better than the Greens is jobs,” Pettitt said.
Agreeing with Kevin Rudd’s statement that “climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation”, Pettitt also said in his maiden speech: “There is perhaps no bigger or more substantive issue facing us right now than climate change.”
Addressing this task, he says, will be made easier with Labor in government: “Morrison will lose the next election with his inconsistent handling of COVID and lack of leadership on climate change.”
Reminded of former Labor finance minister Peter Walsh’s quip that on economic policy the Greens were like “fairies at the bottom of the garden”, Pettitt nonetheless insists that by the following federal election in four years’ time, COVID will be done and climate will be the focus.
Climate change is an issue of principle. As a pure issue, it can be argued to people in all walks of life, all parties and from all businesses. It is a long-term issue of historical importance. Attaching a religious or political issue (such as jobs or trees or biochar or renewables etc) to it almost guarantees that listeners will go deaf, dismissing the advocate as an axe grinder using climate change as camouflage.
Roger, I am not sure what you mean by a pure issue but it is one that needs an evidence based response that will include major policy changes to enable a transition to low carbon economy. Done well that can deliver jobs and more liveable places too.
Brad, the predictions of climate change are scientifically based. The assertion that – if we want to stop the temperatures rising we must stop all fossil emissions – is also scientifically based. The corollary is that any fossil emissions whatsoever (including “low emissions”) will doom our descendants to an endlessly rising temperature. That is solid science that can be argued to people, regardless of their position. What is political is “if we want to”. If you take a second look at the people around you who use the weasel phrase, “low emissions”, you will find people who are preying on our fears, making money pushing renewables (with “low emissions” backup). I urge you to back the science instead, we must converge on “zero emissions” by 2050.
Climate change is a political issue only, nothing else. If it wasn’t political, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
In the Netherlands, which is largely below sea level, everyone needs to pay an additional tax for maintaining waterways and mechanisms against floods and it’s being done since it’s not been made political – it’s just how it is and nobody loses. Everyone understands this after the floods in 1953. Why is this different from climate change? Because vested interests have made it so and mitigating it will cost large corporations and that’s unacceptable.
The Greens in Australia have an issue i.,e. they are a broad church which includes unfortunately many members and prospective candidates as ‘virtue signallers’ of the nativist and/or libertarian right or white identity.
One interstate candidate several years ago, a British immigrant, had little if anything to say on the environment except the need to stop immigration and/or population growth, later began citing the ‘great replacement theory’ while suggesting that immigrants were to feared and ‘Australians’ were morons.
In fairness the same person simply grasped an opportunity for preselection and ‘political career’, while the Greens had few if any other plausible candidates; backgrounded by inertia, apathy and libertarian instincts across all parties, media and society on any environmental initiatives, as undue economic risk or impairment.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Australians are the ‘new Americans’ who worship prosperity and obsessed with personal success versus their neighbours and own communities…. but especially outsiders.