in the press – logging

Council calls for stop to native logging in Yarra Ranges

Leader Newspapers

by Emily Webb

28 Jun 10

out and about on the peninsula

Today Greens candidates gathered in the peninsula for a public Meet the Candidates forum in the Dromana Community Hall. I was joined by Richard Di Natale – Victorian Senate candidate, Anton Vigenser – State candidate for Nepean and Robert Brown – Federal candidate for Flinders.

Pictured left to right: Robert Brown - federal candidate for Flinders, Samantha Dunn - state candidate for Eastern Victoria, Anton Vigenser - state candidate for Nepean and Richard di Natale - federal senate candidate for Victoria.

It was a terrific turn out with community members from around the district keen to hear about Greens policies and talk about the things that mattered most to them.

It was a good opportunity to introduce candidates to the local community and shed some light on our background and why we're members of the Greens. Candidates used the question and answer time to highlight Greens policies which set forward a positive plan for Victoria and Australia.

It's a passionate community concerned about the future of their region and generations to come, it was great to be able to have some good in depth conversations with them.

If you'd like to know more about the campaign trail visit

Samantha Dunn for Eastern Victoria (state)

and

Richard di Natale for Victoria (federal) .

parked greens vote wont last

Gillard "parked Greens vote won't last"
Senator Bob Brown

"The Green vote "parked" with Australia's first female Prime Minister Julia Gillard, won't stay there long," Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.

Commenting on the polls, Senator Brown said that the Gillard prime ministry will shed progressive voters as the natural mood of celebration passes and the reality of Labor's right-wing ascendency manifests itself in:

* A backdown to the mining billionaires over the $12 billion allocated from the mining boom tax in the budget forward estimates.

"That will be a multibillion dollar loss other Australians will suffer",Senator Brown said.

* A continued harsh line on asylum seekers, as flagged in MsGillard's first speech as Prime Minister.
* Environmental failure: on whaling, biodiversity and marine reserves.
* A tough time for Greens negotiators wanting better funding for mental and dental healthcare.
* More uranium mining and a Northern Territory nuclear waste dump.

"And I don't expect this Prime Minister to back the Greens' policy for a national integrity commissioner to fight political corruption, or forour proposed commissioner for truth in political advertising.

"I do look forward to talking to Prime Minister Gillard about a carbon price and real action to tackle climate change but I doubt that she will shake off the powerful coal mining lobby to achieve that goal," Senator Brown said.

time for permanent fix for forests crisis

Public, industry, politics agree:

Time for permanent fix for forests crisis

Senator Bob Brown

With the collapse of overseas woodchip markets and the growth of plantation forests, results of a new national poll show unprecedented support for ending logging in Australian native forests.

Launching a new television advertisement calling for an end to native forest logging, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown said there had never been a more opportune time for the Commonwealth Government to step in and end conflict over forests forever.

The results of a national Galaxy research poll of 1,100 people show:

* 90% of Australians are in favour of protecting remaining high conservation value forests in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales in national parks.

* 77% agree that the Rudd Government should stop the logging of native forests, which contain large amounts of carbon that would be protected by ending forest clearance

* 72% are in favour of the Federal Government assisting logging contractors to take redundancies, retrain or move permanently to a plantation based industry

"The logging industry is now asking for help to assist workers and companies to shift from unsustainable native forest logging to plantation based forestry," said Senator Brown.

"The Commonwealth Government should step in.

"Having turned its back on putting a price on greenhouse pollution this is the easiest, simplest way for the Rudd Government to be able to say it has reduced Australia's greenhouse emissions.

"There is overwhelming public support for the creation of new national parks to protect our precious remaining forests.

"There is no future in native forest logging. Plantation timber is the preference of the global market, and now dinosaur companies like Gunns are in trouble, it is time to end Australian native forest logging forever."

A meeting of representatives from Australian environment groups convened by Senator Brown last week endorsed the idea that native forest logging should end and that Australia should utilise its existing plantation base for forest products.

western port ecosystem more important than plans to expand port of hastings

The Greens have rejected the government's proposal to abolish the Port of Hastings Corporation and incorporate it into the Port of Melbourne Corporation, under the Ports Integration bill in state parliament this week.

Sue Pennicuik, Greens spokesperson for Ports said. "The Greens have grave concerns about the impact of a larger Port of Hastings on the local environment and on Western Port Bay, which is a Ramsar-listed wetland."

"This is the Year of Biodiversity and our wetlands are havens for biodiversity - we should be protecting and enhancing them. We have already lost too much," she said. "Western Port Bay is a haven for the thousands of water birds that visit it from all around the world every year and a unique tidal mud flat ecosystem that is very precious to Victorians."

"While the Coalition also rejected the Ports Integration Bill, they and the government want to see the Port of Hastings develop full steam ahead into a significant container port," she said. "This is the wrong way to go, we should be looking first at preserving and enhancing the integrity of Western Port for future generations."

"The health and long-term integrity of Western Port is paramount. Any development at Hastings needs to fit in with the long term needs of the ecosystem, not the usual approach of dreaming up a massive development proposal and then trying to 'manage' the environmental damage," she said.

"Western Port has already suffered much damage, in terms of pollution and loss of sea grass and mangroves, due to Port and other activities on its shores," she said. "This level of damage cannot continue into the future and that is the threshold issue that needs to be addressed before any Port expansion plans are entertained."

"The inconvenient truth is most likely that the Port of Hastings should be down scaled, not expanded, in order to preserve the Western Port ecosystem for future generations."

public meeting healesville to discuss logging

When: Thursday 24 June, 7:00pm

Where: Memorial Hall, Healesville

Cost: free

labor and libs line up to support forest furnaces

Senator Christine Milne

The government and opposition today voted against a move by the Greens to exclude unsustainable and highly polluting native forest furnaces from the definition of renewable energy.

Nevertheless, Australians working and investing in renewable energy will breathing a sigh of relief today as legislation is set to pass the Senate fixing the Renewable Energy Target thanks to months of campaigning by Australian Greens Deputy Leader, SenatorChristine Milne.

"I believe Australians would be shocked to learn that the government and opposition are using a popular and positive bill to support renewable energy as cover to drive the destruction of our native forests," said Senator Milne.

"Burning native forests for energy is neither renewable nor zero emissions. It drives the destruction of habitat and sends our huge carbon stores up in smoke. It does not belong in the renewable energy target.

"Forestry Tasmania is already boasting that its proposed25MW forest furnace at Southwood would generate 160,000 certificates under the renewable energy target."

WWF last night released a statement clarifying that it does not support burning native forests as renewable energy after Forestry Tasmania posted a WWF report on its website, claiming that the conservation organisation supported its actions.

"Forestry Tasmania has once again been caught out misrepresenting others and bending the truth to serve its own purposes.

"WWF's report made it clear that the only circumstances under which they support bio energy from native forests are when it is sourced from Forest Stewardship Council certified forests and there has been a full life cycle analysis of the carbon emissions from the forestry operations.

"Forestry Tasmania's operations clearly do not qualify.

"Despite this tragic outcome for the forests, the Greens are pleased that our long campaign to fix the flaw in the renewable energy target is finally bearing fruit, with jobs like those at Musselroe Bay wind farm now safe."

yarragon planting future seeds

Today I joined Richard Di Natale and other Greens candidates in Yarragon to talk about the value of preventative health programs.

Richard, the Greens lead Senate candidate for Victoria, has been touring regional Victoria to highlight the Greens Health Plan.

Both Andrew and Bryce, Grade Sixers at Yarragon Primary School are enjoying a chance to get out of the classroom and into the vegie patch. Here they are pictured with Greens candidates from left to right: Samantha Dunn – Eastern Victoria, Dr Richard Di Natale – Victoria and Dr Malcolm McKelvie – McMillan.

It was terrific to talk about an initiative of the Yarragon Primary School which sees Grade 5 and 6's work outside of the school on various garden projects.

The Community Garden Project, plays a central role in providing the vegie patch and the food for the school program and stems from an initiative by Dr Malcolm McKelvie, Green's Federal Candidate for McMillan.

The program aims to equip students with skills, not only in the garden, but in the kitchen too and matches community mentors with young people to help foster and build connections in the broader community.

Born out of the community and struggling to continue to run unfunded, it is a great example of the sort of preventative program the Greens support as part of a package of initiatives that address long term healthy living.

As part of the Greens Plan the primary care system would become needs-based, so that all Victorians could get better access to health care professionals like GPs, psychologists, even dieticians, before they're sent to hospital and junk food advertising aimed at kids would be banned, and foods would be better labelled to allow shoppers to make informed, health based decisions.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and that's what is happening on the ground in Yarragon.

greens commit to referendum for local government

The Australian Greens will move for an amendment to section 96 of the Constitution - the section which sets out that the Commonwealth may grant financial assistance to the states on such terms and conditions as it thinks fit - to add the words 'and local government'.

Addressing the Australian Local Government Association National General Assembly today Senator Brown said that recognising local government in the Constitution is ALP policy and was a promise made by Mr. Rudd in the 2007 election campaign.

"But there's been no action," said Senator Brown.

"At the start of the next period of Government, the Greens will present a bill to the Senate for this referendum.

"Previous attempts, in 1974 and 1988, to have the status of local government recognised through a referendum failed because of the confusing nature of the questions put to the Australian voters."

environmental destruction on freeway construction

Peninsula Link Pushes Through
Leader Newspaper
31 May 2010

.

Where is government accountability in all this? It is scandalous that work has commenced on Peninsula Link without a finalised Environmental Management Plan.

This latest action by the Brumby Government has shown that we cannot have faith in processes supposed to protect our unique flora and fauna.

Sadly it is what we can expect for Melbourne's precious Pines Flora & Fauna Reserve. It is tragic to think that Melbourne's last intact remnant bush at the Pines will be decimated this way.

Under Brumby's leadership can we expect The Pines habitat will be trashed too with no regard to protection zones or relocation? The extent of the impact doesn't end here, in the Mornington Peninsula the freeway will have severe impacts on green wedge land and the future of agriculture in this region. Not to mention the amenity impacts and effect on peninsula biodiversity.

It is a travesty that this project has commenced when other solutions are available for Melbourne's South East. Roads are not a solution to congestion, they only create congestion and cost us and our environment dearly.

note: the images in this story were taken by a local after construction of Peninsula Link commenced.

time for some state action on streetlighting

Back in February 2010 I moved a motion for Yarra Ranges Council to support a statewide advocacy campaign to compel the state and federal government to take strong action to enable the upgrade to energy efficient streetlights (see my council blog). The motion was supported unanimously.

Changing the street lighting to more energy efficient lighting would save over 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in Victoria alone.

Street lights contribute significantly to emissions of local government but many councils do not have the capacity to change to the more energy efficient lighting. A financial contribution from state government would ease the burden on local government and allow considerable inroads into reducing the state's carbon emissions, there is no doubt this contribution is well overdue.

Part of the campaign includes an online petition. I urge you to support the petition. With the help of many people supporting the campaign we'll bring much more pressure on state and federal government to take some action.

You can support the Greenlight our Streets campaign by clicking
here.

phillip island talks sustainability

It was great to talk to Phillip Island community members along with Neil Rankine, Greens Lower House candidate for Bass, at the Sustainability Festival in Cowes.
















Samantha Dunn and Neil Rankine talk sustainability down at Phillip Island.

Community members were keen to speak to Neil and myself about the lack of infrastructure at a local level, but at a broader level about the lack of action on Climate Change.

The desalination plant in Wonthaggi dominated conversation, it would be the issue that people were keenly concerned about, recognising that there were far more sensible water solutions for Melbourne.

I heard more than once, people say "I've voted Labor all my life, but this time I'm not going to". The Greens got a terrific welcome from locals who are looking for accountability and innovation from government.

More and more people are seeing that Greens values are mainstream values and that we offer a positive plan for Victoria.

refugees are welcome

in the press - cost shifting to local government

Hills residents face a rate rise of 7.65%

Leader Newspapers

by Kimberley Seedy

02 Jun 10

meet samantha dunn and neil rankine at phillip island this weekend

Come down to the Sustainable Living Festival and meet local Greens candidates running in the upcoming state election.


Neil Rankine for Bass and Samantha Dunn for Eastern Victoria will both be there to chat all things Green.

I look forward to seeing you there, come over and say hello.

Details are:
What: Sustainable Living Festival
When: Sat 5 June 2010 9:30am - 3:00pm
Where: Cowes Cultural Centre, 91-96 Thompson Avenue, Cowes, Phillip Island
Cost: gold coin donation