2020 has been a wild ride, with a global pandemic redefining the way we do pretty much everything.
By Jordan Hull
2020 has been a wild ride with a global pandemic redefining the way we do pretty much everything. The Australian Greens have not been immune to this (pardon the pun), having to cancel our face-to-face conference in Melbourne and moving National Council meetings solely online. While I’m devastated to not be able to meet all of the wonderful humans doing awesome work around the country, I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked alongside and learnt from some of the hardest working folks in our Party.
National Council
National Council meetings were a bit different this year as we only got the chance to meet in person once before restrictions came in. All other meetings have been online and we’ve been able to get a tremendous amount of work done despite not being able to discuss things face-to-face. We ended up needing three special National Councils during the year to get through it all, particularly with the member plebiscite on electing our parliamentary leader requiring so much of National Council’s time.
May National Conference
Many hours of work from Brett Constable and the Conference Organising Committee went into planning the May National Conference so it was sad to not see this conference come to life in person and disappointing to have to postpone some amazing workshops. Hosting the conference online was new territory for us but I’m proud of how well everyone was able to adapt to the online format.
It was a privilege to be able to witness the First Nations Network achieve rightful recognition, a voice and voting rights on National Council. I am looking forward to seeing this recognition continue at National Conference and in all aspects of our Party going forward.
The conference certainly wasn’t easy and the office bearer group took a lot of learnings from this meeting. With future conferences likely to be online, we are putting a lot of effort in to get these online meetings right.
Secretary meetings
We’ve held two meetings with state and territory secretaries which were both very well attended. It has been wonderful to get to know our colleagues working at the state level and share support, updates and resources. We’re looking forward to continuing to create opportunities to collaborate with and support one another.
Office bearers
Since May, our team of office bearers has been made up entirely of women. This is a great achievement and I’m proud to be a part of this wonderfully supportive team getting all the crucial behind the scenes work done.
The biggest thank you goes to the National Manager Brett Constable for supporting me every step of the way as well as the office bearer team for their extraordinarily hard work and their ongoing support and advice. Without all of you I could not have managed to do this role, as well as keep my sanity intact.