Candidate for McEwen

About

Steve developed a profound passion for environmental protection, community service and democratic process while living in Kenya for 17 years before coming to Australia.

 

A trained teacher and administrator, he is chairman of Healesville Environment Watch Inc., treasurer of the Climate Emergency Network and a committee member of Friends of Leadbeater’s Possum. His 2007 proposal to the Shire of Yarra Ranges became the council’s Climate Protection Commitment. He had the rare Round-leaf Pomaderris protected under the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act.

Although it has now been built Steve remains opposed to the North-south (Sugarloaf) Pipeline.

During and after the devastating bushfires of February 2009, Toolangi, where Steve lives, was surrounded and isolated without power or telephones. Steve organised the first community meeting, which became a daily event and led to the establishment of a Relief Centre. He has maintained his commitment to community recovery ever since, serving on the Toolangi/Castella CRC.

 He has recently been prominent in protecting native forests around bushfire affected towns in the Central Highlands from clearfell logging for woodchips. 

You can contact Steve on 03 5962 9008 or mob: 0447 330 863

Policies

Commitment on climate

Sadly the change in government hasn’t brought the action on climate that we needed. After making a good start by finally ratifying Kyoto, Kevin Rudd let us all down by producing a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that was so compromised that treasury modelling showed that it would not reduce Australia’s carbon pollution for at least 20 years and it rewarded the worst polluters. The design of the CPRS locked in failure to reduce emissions and the Greens could not support its passage through the Senate.

Eventually the Rudd government consummated its betrayal of those who voted for action on climate in 2007 by shelving the CPRS until at least 2013. Australians were furious, Rudd’s popularity plummeted and he was deposed. But Julia Gillard’s policies are certainly no better than Rudd’s, and are arguably worse. Her announcement on Friday of a citizen’s assembly is clearly a thinly disguised delaying tactic; a policy you concoct when you have no real policy.

Julia Gillard herself said, “delay is denial”. She doesn’t need any more advice than is already available from Ross Garnaut, Chief Scientist Penny Sackett, the CSIRO and the IPCC. She already has community consensus, polls have repeatedly shown that the majority of Australians want action on climate change. It is now clear that only through electing Greens to Parliament will we see the will of the people translated into real action.

Turn off the North-south Pipeline

But the people of McEwen are well aware that climate change is not the only issue that has kept me busy in the past three years. I have campaigned vigorously against the North-south Pipeline, making two separate submissions and verbal presentations to the Advisory Committee, participating in “Plug the Pipe” meetings and actions and organising additional walk-on protests with environment groups. The pipeline has now been built but the environmental damage, taking water from the already stressed Goulburn River and using massive amounts of power to pump tonnes of water up and over the Great Divide, has only just begun. The campaign to stop the pipe being built is over but the campaign to prevent further damage to our environment and agriculture by turning it off is still being waged.

Protecting our native forests

Earlier this year VicForests advertised their intent to amend the Timber Release Plans to log our native forests, including 148 new coupes in the Central Highlands. Logging has already been intense around townships like Toolangi, Marysville, Healesville and Warburton. Some of these communities are relying on nature-based tourism for an economic recovery from the devastating effects of last year’s tragic bushfires and VicForests’ plans are simply not compatible with our communities’ hopes for the future. This issue is a huge concern for many McEwen residents and I have recently acted as M.C. for a packed community meeting in Healesville that called for VicForests to be shut down and another community meeting held in Warburton. I also attended a community meeting in Woodend, called in response to news that the government is inviting VicForests to extend its operations into western Victoria, which includes the Wombat State Forest.

Bushfire response and recovery

Of course it’s not possible to talk about events in McEwen since the 2007 election without mentioning the bushfires of February 2009. On Black Saturday, and for several days afterwards, my community of Toolangi was completely isolated. The Kilmore East fire that destroyed Kinglake was approaching us from the west, then spotted into the Yarra Valley and passed us to the south; and the Murrindindi Mill fires approached from the north on the way to Marysville. Homes, sheds and properties in Castella were burned and two lives were lost. All roads in and out were closed, there were no power and no telephones. As soon as it was possible to move around within the community I organised our first community meeting, which became a daily event and led to establishment of the Toolangi and Castella Relief Centre. Within a few days we were able to offer a range of support, goods and services that helped us through a terrible experience and to emerge stronger than before with an enhanced sense of “community”.

 Since that time I have kept up active engagement with the community recovery effort as deputy chair of the Toolangi and Castella Community Recovery Committee.