The campaign against woodchipping of old growth forests has given rise to a heightened public awareness and concern about environmental issues. Green Left Weekly's REBECCA MECKELBURG spoke to CHRISTINE MILNE, leader of the Tasmanian Greens, about the Green Party and strategies to win environmental campaigns.
Do you think the anti-woodchip campaign provides more of an opportunity for green and progressive alternatives in Tasmania and nationally?
Yes, I do. It was very encouraging to see around 50,000 people on the streets expressing their strong opposition to woodchipping old growth forests. Many of those people attempted to put pressure on the federal government in all sorts of ways and ultimately with their street marches, and yet the federal government has turned its back on them.
Keating is not interested in the environment. He epitomises a political system which sees the economy as the be all and end all; he doesn't recognise that politics today is about community and how the economy can serve the community, not the other way around.
People are now looking for a political alternative, a third force in Australian politics. They're saying we need to vote for people who believe in something. I do think we're going to see a heightened public campaign on environmental issues resulting in votes being delivered to parties other than Labor and the Liberals.
What are the main social justice issues you think the Greens need to address?
Moral cowardice is one of the best ways of describing how the Liberal and Labor parties behave in Tasmania; they're not prepared to take a stand on social justice issues if it is deemed to be unpopular.
From our point of view, gay law reform, Aboriginal land rights and the broader issue of addressing the increasing gap between the rich and poor are important. We have to review community services like education, public health, primary health care and make those services available to everybody, not just people in the major urban centres.
Given the recent national mass mobilisations, what role do you think grassroots political activity plays in winning campaigns today?
The grassroots is the great strength of the green social movement. Unlike the Liberal and Labor parties, which see political change coming from the top, the green movement is interested in cultural transformation. It's vitally important for people to change themselves first, then their families, then their communities, then the state, then the nation and then the world.
The wonderful remobilisation on the streets is going to translate into people going back to their local communities and doing more. The huge numbers involved in land care projects, in local clean-up campaigns, in ongoing involvement in environmental issues, suggests to me that mobilisation is on the increase, even apart from the street marches. People taking personal responsibility for making a difference is an increasing phenomenon and a huge challenge to the Liberal and Labor parties, which depend on public apathy.
What is the relationship between elected green parliamentarians and the broader green movement?
The green social movement can be viewed as a web where all the strands make an important contribution. If you lose any one of those, the whole movement is weakened. The green politicians are really only a strand in the web doing the green, social and cultural transformation at a political level, [just as] others are doing it by organising direct action campaigns, or consumer campaigns, or helping to change things at home.
In Sarah Parkin's book about Petra Kelly and the German Greens, it's interesting to note that the problems in the Green Party started when the preselections were held outside the grassroots movement. It's a very important lesson for us.
What are the main challenges the Green Party faces in establishing itself as a national electoral force in the next federal elections?
The Greens started as independents in Tasmania. We formed a political party only two years ago and haven't yet faced an election as a party. That's happened at the same time as the formation of the Australian Greens, which is a federation of state parties: Queensland, ACT, NSW and Victoria and Tasmania are part of the Australian Greens, with the NT looking to affiliate. The WA Greens are still separate.
We've just had success in the ACT elections and hopefully Ian Cohen will be elected in the NSW upper house. At the federal election, we'll be running Senate candidates in each state and hopefully the Australian Green Party will get a few more senators in. The exciting thing is that so many of the Greens are women. We've got the two in WA, two in the ACT and three in Tasmania.
Being green is a philosophy of life, a holistic philosophical view which says we have to look after each other and rebuild a sense of community in the context of interdependence with the ecological system. That's why Greens have a stronger position on public education, primary health care, fairness and equity, woodchips and river pollution as well as on issues of gay law reform and Aboriginal land rights. If we can't get it right in terms of caring for each other then we're not going to get it right in terms of caring for the planet.