REGIME CHANGE BEGINS AT HOME - FEDERAL ELECTION
"The Greens are humanitarian, environmental and optimistic - our motivation is to make the world safer and happier for current and future generations. Soon our chance will come to remove an unjust federal government with its irresponsible environmental policies, its dangerous foreign policies and its callous social policies. Is Labor much better? Our compulsory preferential voting system means our vote will end up with one or other of the major parties. Powerlessness, ignorance and apathy result in poor government. Let's keep growing the Greens stronger. Let's keep increasing the Green vote in Page and Cowper. Let's try and get more Greens into the Senate and the House of Representatives so we can make more of a difference.
The Greens are the voice of reason in Parliament. Senator Bob Brown introduced the Kyoto Ratification Bill in 2002. He stood up for East Timor, opposing the Customs Tariff Amendment (Greater Sunrise) Bill. He has defended public education. He has opposed the invasion of Iraq. He has pressed for Australian detainees in the US to be returned to Australia. He has defended the rights of refugees. His website at www.bobbrown.org.au contains transcripts of all his parliamentary speeches. (Ian Causley also has a web page. It includes his name and a map of the Page electorate, and links to the National Party site. There are no speech transcripts.) In the House of Representatives, Greens MP Michael Organ and the three independent members were the only votes against the US Free Trade Agreement Implementation Bill after the ALP voted with the government. Michael Organ stood alone in the House in opposition to Government changes, supported by the ALP, to the Marriage Act which prohibit same sex couples from marrying.
Would you like to help? YOUR GREENS CANDIDATE FOR COWPER
John Carty has a Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Law from Monash University in Victoria . He ran his own law firm in Bellingen before leaving to work for the Aboriginal Legal Service in Alice Springs, Wagga Wagga and Armidale. He's been practising as a barrister in northern NSW since 2002. A former ALP voter, John feels the ALP lacks integrity and does not provide an alternative to the Howard government, particularly in terms of its policy towards refugees and asylum seekers. Throughout his legal career he has fought for a wide range of groups such as "illegal" immigrants, aboriginal people and grass roots environmental groups. In particular he acted for a large number of protestors who'd been charged over a successful forest protection action at Wild Cattle Creek in the early 1990s.
YOUR GREEN CANDIDATE FOR PAGE
Mark Jackson was Australia's foremost lobbyist and activist for Landcare programs and activities in the 1970s and 80s, and the architect of the environmental work programs for unemployed people introduced by Labor in the 90s. He has been a logger, timber-worker and reforestation contractor, and was Regional Manager with Greening Australia for the NSW North Coast for six years until 1996. More recently he worked at Senior Officer level in the Australian Greenhouse Office and was Project Manager for the development of the Greenhouse Challenge Vegetation Sinks Workbook. He was an Expert Reviewer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Landuse, Landuse Change and Forestry. He is currently Director of The Carbon Store Pty Ltd, a specialist consultancy in the area of greenhouse response, and The Carbon Pool Pty Ltd, a model business based on the storage of atmospheric carbon through sustainable reforestation.
-Senator Bob Brown
· Encourage young people to vote. 40% of 18 year olds are not on the electoral roll.
· Join the Greens. We meet at the CEC at 12.30 on the fourth Friday of the month.
· Hand out Greens election material on polling day. Contact the CEC.