Tom's first big political action was in 1981, when he was arrested for obstructing bulldozers on Mount Nardi in what is now Nightcap National Park. A campaigner on environment and social justice issues since the Franklin River campaign, Tom has participated in blockading shipments of uranium in the ports of Adelaide and Darwin and was arrested at a mass walk-on at the US spy base at Nurrungar.
He was a part of the national student campaign against the introduction of HECS, and is a former general secretary of the Flinders University Students Association. In the early 1990s, Tom campaigned for gay law reform with the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group.
An active trade unionist, Tom was a workplace delegate for four years with the Community and Public Sector Union. He believes that any strategy to protect the environment must also protect jobs and living standards and find ways to impose democratic community control on the big corporations. "For society to be managed in the interests of the majority, ordinary people must be able to play an active part in the political process", Tom argues. He currently works as a freelance proofreader and part-time recruiter for the National Tertiary Education Union.
He is a spokesperson for Lismore's No War on Iraq group and a member of the North Lismore Progress Association.
From Green Left Weekly, July 7, 2004.
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