2015-04-27
Senator Larissa Waters
It's amazing that one in five Australians donate to environment organisations. That incredible generosity should be celebrated and encouraged by government. In Australia, we do that, in part, by making donations to a wide range of non-profit organisations tax deductible.
But the Abbott Government has a problem with the generosity of Australians who care about the environment. The power of Australians' goodwill in donating to environment groups gets in the way of the Abbott Government's donors, the big mining companies. And so the Abbott Government is threatening environmental philanthropy in Australia.
Coalition MPs are publicly calling for the tax deductibility of donations to environment groups to be scrapped and have set up a parliamentary inquiry to pursue their campaign against environmental giving.
They're particularly offended by donations for environmental advocacy. That's despite the High Court ruling in 2010 that groups with tax-deductible status have the right to advocate and engage in political debate and that this is "indispensable" for "representative and responsible government".
Time and time again, everyday Australians have banded together to save our world-renowned environmental assets from short-sighted, government-endorsed destruction. Through protest, the community and the environment movement have worked together to end whaling in Australia, stop sand mining on Fraser Island, save the Great Barrier Reef from oil rigs and stop the Franklin River from being dammed.
In retrospect, those ideas seem crazy and we can all agree that those precious places are too important to lose. But without ordinary Australians dedicating their time, effort and money to saving them, they would be gone. Today, the environment movement is standing with farmers and regional communities to protest against big coal and gas sacrificing our future food security. They are in for the long haul, and they will win.
By pretending that the only worthy environmentalism is planting trees or cleaning up litter, the Abbott Government allows big business and mining magnates to continue their destruction unchallenged. Local, on-the-ground efforts are vital, but we cannot simply ignore systemic issues. The environment movement's job is not just to clean up after destruction — it's to help the community raise its voice to stop it in the first place. Not content with just ignoring and ridiculing those voices, the Abbott Government now wants them silenced.
This is far from the first time the Abbott Government has tried to silence independent voices standing up for the environment. The government abolished the independent Climate Commission, totally axed federal support for Environmental Defenders Offices around Australia, and cut grants which have provided core funding to organisations such as conservation councils since 1973.
Apart from being alarmingly undemocratic, the government's plan would set a blatant double standard. There's no talk from the Coalition of removing tax deductibility for donations to Tony Abbott's favourite think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs. Instead, the government has ruthlessly pursued the IPA's wish list of scrapping our effective price on carbon, scrapping federal environmental protections by handing them to the states, repealing the mining tax, cutting university funding and attacking Medicare.
In every field of debate we see vested interests like mining magnates, tobacco companies and poker machine operators spending up big on lobbyists while the community suffers. Environmental and other advocacy organisations try to level the playing field between cashed-up corporations and everyday Australians.
But the Abbott Government is out to tilt the balance even further in favour of big business. If Tony Abbott is so confident that "coal is good for humanity" and Australia has "too much locked-up forest" then there's no reason to be afraid of a fair contest of ideas.
But the reality is that his government is simply doing the bidding of their masters in big business and they are trying to shut down dissenting voices before anyone notices.
Larissa Waters is Queensland senator and Australian Greens environment spokesperson.