From global crisis to Green future

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay tribute to their history, their culture and their ongoing contribution to our community. Also thanks to the SEARCH foundation for organising this event.

The left's strategic direction is not just in need of an oil and grease. It needs a thorough tune up as we need the left's engine running at full steam.

I imagine most of us would agree that left strategy has been missing in action for quite a long time. Now the good news is there’s been lots of action. There have been excellent campaigns and I’m sure many of them have been discussed and chewed over this weekend. Your Rights at Work, saving Sydney’s ferries, we had the excellent outcome last week with River Red Gums, and there’s been so much work around renewables.

But, our left strategy has been light on, and I’m referring here to a lack of planning; a lack of coordination; a lack of vision for advancing the far reaching changes which I believe we are all committed to in terms of progressing our society.  For the Greens, a left strategic direction is about transition plans for an ecological sustainable future that encompasses a fair distribution of wealth, equality and participatory democracy. Fairness to future generations has to be a framework to our strategy and for our day to day campaigns.

So, what to do? We need to do the organising so clearly spelt out by David. We need to identify where we have unity. We need to get on the front foot and be confident about what we’re putting forward. We must stick by our principles when the inevitable attacks come on us and we need a theoretical base to our strategy.

In recent years you’d have to say the left's influence on the public debate on key issues has been largely muted in the face of conservative commentators. The shift to the right is real in terms of public discourse and outcomes. Neo-liberalism successfully advanced many of its key tenets – downsizing governments with the accompanying privatisation of public services and institutions, casualisation of the workforce and dominance of individualism.

What we are working for - transforming society into a fairer and a more just community - directly challenges these neo-liberal changes and the corporations that are used to getting their way.

In essence, when the left is strategic we court a powerful enemy. The intensity of the criticism of the Federal Labor Government’s recent mining tax is a reminder of where these attacks come from and how they play out, and certainly how quickly they can be unleashed against us. The attacks we will face as we become more strategic are a reminder of why we need to build our numbers.

History tells us that it is mass movements that drive progressive change. I think we all know that. We know that we need to build those mass movements, and we need to determine what the issues are that we work on. Before I get down to the how and the what of left strategic action I did want to explore the need for theoretical understanding of the political, economic and social influences that shape our society and impact on the use of power, determine the significance of the new media and lots more.

One of the speakers on this panel is Ben Eltham, from New Matilda. This week we’ve heard the regrettable news that New Matilda is going to fold, which is a setback for our movement. I wish to thank Ben and the New Matilda team for all that they’ve achieved.

We have lost a platform that assisted the progressive end of the political spectrum reflect and analyse the trends in society, the forces we are up against. We need more platforms for theoretical analysis. This is key to the left re-establishing influence in public discourses and assessing the many challenges we face.

The Australian left has rarely embraced progressive intellectuals and that needs to change. If anything, our collective attitude mirrors the mainstream in favouring the overseas imports rather than the local product, and I’m thinking about the 1990s when Noam Chomsky would come to town and thousands would turn up to see him. That was excellent but I reckon many of us would be uncertain who our homegrown intellectuals are who can assist us to reflect and analyse our struggle. I am giving emphasis to this point because without a theoretical basis to our work it is much harder to move past the reactive process of developing campaigns to this and that cause.

Our society and our planet need a lot more than just saving what we have. On the ground action is obviously critical but our organising, our actions need a theoretical framework and right now we are lacking in that area. This problem has dogged the left for most of its existence in this country.

Moving onto the how and the what of our strategic direction, we need to do more to successfully integrate our work for ecological sustainability and social justice. I acknowledge that considerable work has been done in this area by left groups and the standout is obviously the Green Ban movement.

However, we all know that integration between our environmental, social justice and industrial relations wings is still minimal and that has to change. The environmental crisis is with us, and the disadvantaged here and in other countries bear the brunt of air and water pollution, climate change induced sea-level rises amongst many other environmental issues.

When we advance measures to reign in greenhouse gas emissions or protect the natural or the built environment part of our campaign must address industry restructuring that include measures to ensure that no-one is out of a job. That was part of the successful River Red Gum agreement just concluded with environment groups, the Greens, and Labor – industry restructuring including jobs for displaced workers was part of the deal. Now this provides a very good model.

Another area where we need to inject left strategy into the debate is how we manage our oil-constrained future. Australia is very vulnerable to peak oil because there is a high level of car dependency.  We very much rely on imported oil, so we need to build a public discourse on how we handle oil supply shortages and consideration of how we reduce that car dependency and promote public transport. Cycling and pedestrian facilities, and how we build our homes and plan our communities in ways that address our oil vulnerability.

Relevant to this debate is our wider vision for a just society as public transport is an essential component of social equity and rail and bus manufacturing projects can provide jobs particularly in regional areas. Right now the New South Wales government is sending contracts for rail infrastructure overseas.

Within all of our campaigns we need to look for how we can address environmental, social justice, human rights, and job creation as well as participatory democracy. This lays the basis for a more representative set of demands and helps attract a diverse set of allies which is always critical to building our campaigns and our movements for social change.

The shift from coal mining and coal fired power, one of the most critical changes needed to address climate change, provides enormous opportunities for workplace democracy as well as developing and helping communities and there are some really excellent initiatives. One that we don’t hear so much about in New South Wales is with the CFMEU Victoria where they have a project called Crisis in Power that promotes the development of a business plan for solar powered hot water systems. This is actually a social enterprise model supported by the union - a few decades ago that would have been called a workers cooperative now the language has changed but the intent is still there. This project has many of the themes that are so central to our vision around the environment and social justice.

So our industrial campaigns need an environmental justice component, and our environment work needs to interface with human rights and equity demands. These integrated campaigns need to be a foundation of our strategic direction.

At the start of the 21st Century I do think the left is well placed to more successfully influence public debate. There is a diverse range of public movements active on the ground as well as utilising a myriad of social networking options. Over all there is a positive and respectful relationship between progressive movements and somewhat between left political parties.

For the first time in Australia’s history there is a party to the left of Labor, the Greens, that is building a parliamentary presence while continuing to work with a range of activist groups.

This plays out in obviously different ways and we’ve got some challenges coming up with the coming federal election. While the Greens could certainly improve our strategising I believe the key to ensuring left parties maintain a principled position on all the challenges that political life throws up is the active role of strong social movements.

I can’t emphasise that enough having been in the Greens for 10 years. The challenge to keep the Greens left is huge and I’m convinced social movements are the key to that. This is the way to keep the pressure on left parliamentarians so that they work to advance the social objectives of our movement not just their party's political interests.

Differences between our movements and the Greens and Labor are part of the political landscape. Positive outcomes can evolve from these differences. The key is that we resolve the differences in a respectful and constructive way not in an antagonistic way.

So we need to build our cooperative approach, because the challenges are enormous. Part of the challenge is how we live within the ecological limits of our planet. We need to think about and foster a prosperity that goes far beyond our material needs to address our relationships, our work satisfaction and our ability to participate fully in the decision making about our future.

Thank you very much.
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