The following is new Greens senator Kerry Nettle's first speech to
parliament, made yesterday. It's well worth the read.
Apols for x-posting. Please circulate widely....
Chris Chaplin
Preston, Vic
----------------------------
Senator NETTLE (New South Wales) (10.31 a.m.) --
I revel in the opportunity to deliver my first speech during a debate
about bargaining fees, where people on this side of the chamber rise
to speak in the defence of Australian workers being able to organise
collectively in the workplace. I start by paying my respects to the
Ngun(n)awal people, the traditional owners of this land. I acknowledge
the pain and the suffering that so many Indigenous Australians have
suffered as a result of the European invasion of this country. I
acknowledge that the price for the prosperity and the peace that we
enjoy today has been overwhelmingly borne by the first Australians. On
behalf of the people that I represent in this parliament, I say sorry
for these past injustices. The Greens look forward to continuing to
work with Indigenous Australians to address both past and current
discrimination. Only when Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
work together can the true potential of our multicultural society be
realised.
The Greens bring a vision to politics in Australia and around the
world that is based on four core principles: social and economic
justice, ecological sustainability, peace and non-violence, and
grassroots democracy. Communities in Australia and overseas are
increasingly turning towards the Greens because we offer an optimistic
and caring vision for the future. People are sick of a lack of choice
at election time. They are sick of an emphasis on self-interest and
the predictable surrender to the power of profit. Increasingly, there
is a need to restate the fact that we are not simply a collection of
individuals but people who live in a society where a sense of
community strengthens our connection with humanity and the environment
on which we depend.
As a young activist concerned about issues such as public transport
and proposals to extend the tragedy of uranium mining in Kakadu
National Park, I became interested in the Greens, because I saw the
Greens as a political party that was made up of community
activists--people who were interested in the same sorts of issues as I
was and who brought an activist approach to the work that they did in
parliament and also in the community. I define this activist approach
as a belief that progressive social change is not only possible but
vitally necessary. I see this approach reflected in the work of Greens
MPs in chambers across this country and on every continent. Greens MPs
are community activists first, before they enter this chamber, and
they bring that energy, passion and commitment to their parliamentary
work.
History shows us that social change does not start in chambers like
this; it starts in the hearts and the minds of committed and
passionate individuals. It builds strength on the streets and in the
community and only then can it enter this chamber. I recognise and I
celebrate the symbiotic relationship between activism inside and
outside parliament, and I look forward to playing my part in achieving
progressive social change through the work that I do in this chamber
with other Greens MPs and the work that I continue to do in the
community.
The enormous array of community activists that I have had the
opportunity to work with over the last few years has been a constant
inspiration to me. The commitment of individuals working in local
resident action groups across the country truly reaffirms one's belief
in community spirit. Every weekend, countless Australians engage in
activities in their local areas and people daily in the management of
their land show that they care and recognise the need to live
sustainably with the planet. The dedication from grassroots
communities on environmental issues is not in question, but we are yet
to see genuine commitment from the government and corporations to
addressing the environmental crises that we all face.
I would like to draw this chamber's attention to the shameful fact
that Australia has the highest land clearing rate of any developed
nation. Over 500,000 hectares of native vegetation are destroyed in
Queensland each year. In my home state of New South Wales,
agribusiness is bulldozing rare woodlands and wetlands with no
intention of complying with federal or state legislation. This archaic
approach to environmental management must be stopped, and the
government must play a key role in ensuring that this happens. For
every tree that community or government programs plant, 100 more are
bulldozed.
The community cannot respond to this unprecedented disaster alone. We
need national legislation to end land clearing, especially in key
areas such as the Murray Darling Basin. But we must not stop there. We
need to go further and embark on a program of land rehabilitation.
This means financial incentives to assist farmers in making the
transition to sustainable agricultural practices. The ecological
vandalism that is inherent in our current land clearing patterns is
part of a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly familiar to all of
us. It is part of the economic fundamentalism that has blighted much
of Australian society and rages now at a global level through the
destructive policies of the World Trade Organisation, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Again, it is the tireless work of community activists who are
attempting to halt this ever increasing drive towards the corporate
free-for-all that has misleadingly been dubbed `globalisation'. This
process is, in fact, not globalisation but centralisation--the
centralisation of power into the hands of a small group of corporate
elites. There is nothing inherently global about this transfer of
economic and cultural power. A diverse multitude of people have taken
to the streets to raise their voices against this corporate takeover
and they look on as vitally important decisions are taken out of the
hands of representative, democratically elected parliaments and placed
into the hands of unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats and CEOs of
transnational corporations. Many people are outraged about this loss
of democratic control over decisions that affect their lives. This is
an issue about which parliament should be ecstatic. People are
actually jumping up and down about the importance of parliament and
yet our legislatures are complicit in the silencing of the elector's
voice.
The rise of corporate globalisation is the greatest threat to our
current democratic systems, and the increasing role of corporations in
our governments and our democratic institutions amounts to nothing
less than a creeping coup d'etat. At the moment on the horizon sits
the General Agreement on Trade in Services. The neo-liberal ideologues
have repackaged and expanded the Multilateral Agreement on Investment,
which was defeated by community pressure in 1998. The new brand name
is `General Agreement on Trade in Services'. It is back on the
international trade negotiating table, to which you and I are not
invited. The Greens are a part of that same international community
movement that defeated the MAI in 1998 and we are back preparing to
defeat those same ideas as they appear in the General Agreement on
Trade in Services. GATS is a treaty which seeks to bind national
governments to deregulating and privatising their public services.
Public ownership has historically proven to be the only way to ensure
that essential services are provided to all citizens in an equitable
way. This is done by providing the service on the basis of social need
rather than trying to pursue private profits. The Greens recognise
that the seemingly endless pursuit of privatisation is a form of
social theft on a grand scale, with the transferring of wealth from
the citizen to the already rich. Decisions that are made on trade
issues have a very real effect on people's everyday lives. Yet this
government continues to shroud these decisions in secrecy. The
Australian government is going to the next round of negotiations at
the World Trade Organisation behind an absolute veil of secrecy. It
will not allow this parliament or the Australian people to know which
of our public services it intends to trade away. Final decisions that
affect our basic services will be made in the cabinet room--or perhaps
in the corporate boxes--but not in this parliament.
We already know that the government intends to sacrifice Telstra at
enormous cost to the bush. And from leaked EU documents we know that
it is under pressure to trade away Australia Post and our water
services. But we do not know at the moment whether health and
education are also at the top of the government's hit list. We know
that this government favours private education and private health over
the provision of these public services, but does this government
intend to make public funding of schools and hospitals effectively
illegal by labelling it as an unfair subsidy under WTO trade rules?
GATS is designed also to remove the rights of nation states to set
environmental, labour, local content or human rights standards. This
will lead us to a situation where it becomes impossible for Australia
not to accept an international nuclear waste dump.
Australia has the opportunity to take a progressive role, to show some
leadership and some courage as a responsible global citizen not only
on trade issues but also in relation to international conflicts. Right
now, more than at any time in our recent history, it is vitally
important that we speak out in the name of peace and that we
articulate a message of true global justice that is based on equity
and not on power. It is nearly a year since we were all horrified by
the attacks on Washington and New York. The time immediately after
September 11 could have been, and still can be, an opportunity to
reflect calmly and rationally on the reasons behind the attacks on the
World Trade Centre. We need an international effort that recognises
the growing inequities between the haves and the have-nots of this
world and then seeks to redress these imbalances. Instead, we have
seen an arrogant unilateralism from the United States through their
so-called war on terrorism and the response of the Australian
government has been sycophantic. In trying to out-swagger the cowboys
in Washington, we have only succeeded in making ourselves look foolish
at a time when we could have and should have been a calming voice in
our ally's ear.
A war on Iraq cannot be justified. The hypocrisies and the
inconsistencies of such an aggressive policy are obvious for all to
see. We do not live in George Bush's comic book world of goodies and
baddies. Trading with oppressive regimes is commonplace, and more
weapons of mass destruction are developed and held illegally in
Western countries than in any axis of evil. A war would also be
blatantly naive in a political sense. It would be tantamount to
throwing a Molotov cocktail into the Middle East peace process. On a
practical level, armed intervention simply will not achieve its stated
aim of establishing democracy, and it is even more unlikely to achieve
its strategic aim of ensuring total US dominance in the region. It is
certainly not going to win any peace, love and freedom for the people
of the US or the people of Iraq.
A war on Iraq would be illegal under international law; it would also
be blatantly inhumane. The Greens will continue to fight any extension
of this so-called war on terrorism. We recognise that we need a
program for peace, not a rush to war. The first step in this program
for peace is for John Howard, Alexander Downer and George Bush to step
back from their warmongering rhetoric. There is a place for weapons
inspections in all countries that develop weapons of mass destruction,
but there will be no lasting solution in Iraq or similar countries
until we restore their dignity and their autonomy so that their people
can pursue democracy and prosperity like any other nation.
The Iraqi people must be given back not only the right but also the
capacity to decide their own rulers, without intervention from the
United States, who firstly armed and supported Saddam Hussein and who
are now only interested in controlling oil supplies, not in achieving
democracy in Iraq. We need an international effort to rebuild Iraqi
society and infrastructure, which was deliberately destroyed to
undermine the civilian population. Sanctions that have caused
immeasurable suffering must be lifted. Peaceful solutions will always
seem more complex than a simple attack, but it is only through
peaceful solutions that we can achieve long-term success.
Of course, these solutions do not apply only to Iraq. It is our
responsibility to address the appalling inequalities wherever they
occur around the world, and the way to do so is through support for
local communities and their organisations so that they can determine
their visions of democracy for their country. I had the honour
recently of meeting a 24-year-old Afghan woman by the name of Tahmina.
Tahmina and her organisation travel around the world speaking about
the need to liberate the women of Afghanistan. They have the solutions
to the problems that affect their everyday lives. They suggest a range
of measures, including ending the international financing of
fundamentalist schools on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I
have not met the Tahminas of Iraq, but these are the voices that we
should be listening to in the current debate--the local voices that
have the solutions to the problems in their community.
I find it constantly inspiring to be around so many people, Greens and
others, who believe that progressive social change is not only
necessary but is possible and who work so hard to achieve that end. I
would like to say thank you to all of the Greens' campaigners and
supporters who have made it possible for me to be part of striving for
this change, not only in the community but now also in the parliament.
Social change has always happened because of committed and hardworking
individuals, working together to achieve change. That is how we will
achieve change now. Together with my colleagues, inside and outside
parliaments around the world, I am proud to be part of a movement that
is about so much more than opposing the self-interested and
profit-oriented views of the major parties. Our movement is about
vision, responsibility and an optimism for the future. I look forward
to working with Bob Brown to present the Greens' vision in this
parliament and to building a movement that strives for a more just,
equitable and sustainable society here in Australia and around the
world.
********
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