Two weeks, two parliaments! One week we were in Canberra at Parliament House, the next week we were at the NSW Parliament in Macquarie Street. Nanna noise is set to keep getting louder until the government acts against coal and gas. More Nannas are joining us and our support from the community is growing.
Meeting with Crossbench in NSW Parliament
Sydney Nannas had a delightful time with most members of the NSW crossbench at an event on the rooftop of NSW Parliament House on Wednesday 5th June 2024, World Environment Day.
MPs working positively for the environment and climate change received a hand knitted climate scarf to encourage them to do more and to work together.
The climate scarf is from a graph developed by climatologist Ed Hawkins, showing the average global temperature from cool blue to warm red for each year from 1919 to 2021. Each four or six rows of knitting shows one year’s temperature. Despite jumping back and forth between hot and cold, you can see at a glance the warming of our planet.
Twelve year old Spencer Hitchen joined the presentation. He is a keen photographer campaigning to protect the Wallum ecosystem at Sunrise Beach , Noosa. He wants to save the Glossy Black-Cockatoo in the area.
Nanna Trish wrote a tanka for the occasion.
Our MC was Nanna Bernie and she presented the scarves with a little information about each MP’s achievements in parliament:
Abigail Boyd MLC Greens
Abigail is a former finance lawyer, holding big corporations and government accountable for harms and their contribution to the climate crisis.
Jeremy Buckingham MLC Legalise Cannabis Party
Jeremy has long campaigned against coal and gas, fish kills and destruction of the Baaka Darling River. His opposition to coal seam gas developments in NSW is legendary. Currently his advocacy for hemp growing promotes its carbon sequestration properties and its potential as an alternate building material making it an option to reduce our dependence on plastics and mining to protect our water tables from contamination.
Roy Butler Independent MP Barwon
Roy has campaigned against the Narrabri Gas Project and more gas exploration through aquifers and the Great Artesian Basin. “Gambling with water should not be considered when it is central to everything we do. There are alternate sources of energy – including better policy – but no alternatives for water.” He advocates for transparent water management and an independent review to protect rivers and flows and manage extractions.
Dr Amanda Cohn MLC Greens
Amanda has raised problems with waste incineration, and is supporting communities in NSW who are opposing energy from waste projects which include incineration. She advocates on air quality, waste and regional issues. She is a flood rescue boat operator.
Helen Dalton Independent MP Murray
Like the Nannas, Helen is very concerned about the lack of regulation in water trading and the level of secrecy surrounding water ownership. In November 2022 she succeeded in amending a parliamentary bill to ensure water ownership must be included on the pecuniary interest form for all NSW MPs. Also like the Nannas, she is an enemy of Flood Plain Harvesting. She wrote a powerful submission against it to the 2021 Inquiry. Helen has also advocated for Indigenous community consultation.
Cate Faehrmann MLC Greens
Cate has made significant contributions on water, koalas, healthy oceans and coal and gas mining during her time in the parliament. Nannas have noted that Cate pops up all over the state supporting communities to protect their environments.
Alex Greenwich Independent MP Sydney
Alex has asked questions in parliament on behalf of the Nannas about Narrabri Gas and the EPA’s role as the regulator. He speaks up about the need to transition away from coal and to stop new coal projects.
Judy Hannan – Independent MP, Wollondilly
Judy is the Chair of the NSW Parliament’s Koala Friendship Group. She speaks out against creating urban heat islands, and strongly supports a just transition to renewables in her electorate.
Sue Higginson MLC Greens
Sue is an environmental lawyer and former CEO of the Environmental Defenders Office. In the parliament and in the environmental movement she makes contributions on many climate, environment and human rights issues. Her active leadership in the movement to protect native forests from logging is a highlight of her work.
Emma Hurst MLC Animal Justice Party
Emma supports animal justice, koalas and stop logging habitat. She supports legislation to remove subsidies on industries that damage our climate, like – coal, gas and animal agriculture and for Investment in agriculture to farming communities, to transition towards plant-based farming enterprises that are healthier for animals, people, and the planet.
In September 2023, Emma was on an Upper House Committee on overhead power lines. She was part of a dissenting statement worried about the habitat of 82 threatened species.
Jenny Leong Green MP Newtown
Jenny speaks up on the climate crisis and calls out the capture of major parties by fossil fuel interests. She advocates for protection of native forests and koalas, and land and water from gas and coal mining.
Dr Joe McGirr Independent MP Wagga Wagga
Joe has worked with Lock the Gate and the North West Alliance fighting for a CSG free northwest NSW. He spoke about his opposition to the expansion of Santos’ operations in the Pilliga and north-west NSW at the big rally and march from Customs House to Parliament in September 2023.
Quoted in Renew Economy 9 May 2024, Joe said rural and regional communities were feeling the effects of climate change more strongly than others. “Regional communities are putting in a lot of the hard yards supporting the infrastructure for renewable energy that’s going to save this state. We don’t want to see those hard yards … blown away on more coal projects.”
Michael Regan Independent MP Wakehurst
Michael hit the nail on the head in his speech in favour of the Net Zero Bill on 29th November 2023 – “I thank the Government for its collaborative approach with the crossbench and Opposition in working to incorporate some significant and extremely important amendments. The bill before us today is considerably stronger than it was when it was introduced originally”.
Kobi Shetty Green MP Balmain
Kobi is a new member to parliament and an Inner West Council member. She advocates for public transport and active transport (she rides a bike), land and housing in her inner city electorate; and net zero in NSW by 2035. She supports school climate protests and the democratic right to protest. Kobi brings fraud prevention experience to the NSW parliament and is against developer corruption.
Forest Action outside NSW Parliament
Sydney Nannas joined the midday Bob Brown Foundation vigil for native forests in Martin Place on Wednesday 5 June, World Environment Day.
At the rally Nanna Bron read a statement on behalf of Coffs Harbour Nanna Chris on the continuing and accelerated logging of native forests within the boundaries of the Great Koala National Park.
Chris calls on all of us who can’t be on the front line with forest activists to write to Premier Chris Minns and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe calling on them to stop the logging. At the current rate of forest destruction our children and grandchildren will not see koalas and other threatened species in the wild.
Highway to Hell
What will the climate crisis mean for Australia? What is the price of our inertia? Nannas attended the launch of Joelle Gergis’ Quarterly Essay, Highway to Hell – Climate Change and Australia’s Future at Gleebooks on Tuesday. Joelle was interviewed by journalist Marina Wilkinson. Some hope remains that the worst impacts of climate change can be avoided because the technologies are available now. The problem is that governments, including ours, do not have the political will to do all that’s needed to reduce emission in this decade. Quarterly Essay
Are the climate wars really over, or has a new era of greenwashing just begun? Joëlle Gergis The Guardian. Watch on You Tube Joelle in conversation with Polly Hemmings 17 mins
Nannas are Reading
New Zealand is under siege by the Atlas Network
The Atlas Network-connected Advance intervened in the Voice referendum in Australia. In recent weeks, similar organisations spawned from the American model are distorting New Zealand’s politics. Australian Independent Media
More information and links on the Atlas Network posted on our website in January 2024
Nannas are watching
Climate Changers
Tim Flannery searches for leadership on climate change, looking for the leaders who will drive change and how they will succeed, posing questions to global leaders in the corridors of power and on the frontlines of climate change. SBS ONDEMAND
Fossil fuel firms are ‘godfathers of climate chaos’, says UN chief
The secretary general of the UN said fossil fuel companies should be banned from advertising in every country, akin to the restrictions on big tobacco. António Guterres delivered fresh scientific warnings of global heating in a major speech in New York. He called on news and tech media to stop enabling ‘planetary destruction’ by taking fossil fuel firms’ advertising money, while warning that the world faces ‘climate crunch time’ in its faltering attempts to stem the crisis The Guardian
Forthcoming Events