2018-02-23
The Australian Greens Victoria hosted National Council for its February face-to-face meeting, which was jam-packed with interesting agenda items, and frank debate and discussion.
By Alex Schlotzer and Rebecca Galdies, National Co-Convenors
The Australian Greens Victoria hosted National Council for its February face-to-face meeting the first face-to-face meeting of 2018—which was extremely energetic and productive.
Now, there are those of you who may have attended National Council meetings in the past and be a little sceptical, but it was a really awesome couple of days jam-packed with interesting agenda items with frank debate and discussion.
Balance of power
Top of most people's list was the session dedicated to balance of power presentations, which included a Skype session with our colleagues 'across the ditch': the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand, who spoke about how they managed to keep the process as collaborative and connected to the party as possible through utilising technology and investing a lot of time and energy in pre-planning.
That session also involved an enlightening presentation from our ACT colleagues, MLC Shane Rattenbury and Indra Esguerra, who have been involved in minority government arrangements with the ACT government for the last three terms. The whole session was engaging and highlighted a need for further discussion at the national level on this issue.
Financial governance
It could be hard to top the presentation of the finance reports, as our National Treasurer, Nick Cooper, applies his unique flair to keeping the Council informed of our budget bottom line. Others thought it more interesting to contribute to our election campaign strategy for the next federal election.
Learning from Queensland's win
Our colleagues from Queensland, State Party Director Kitty Carra and Campaigns Officer Max Chandler-Mather, also made the trip down to Victoria to give us a wrap up of the recent Queensland state election – and it is pretty clear that Queensland are still feeling the joy of getting their first state MP elected. Congratulations on getting the highest vote for the Greens in Queensland ever and on the amazing win in Maiwar!
A great team!
As is always the case at our National Council, there was robust discussion, decisions were made, agreements were formed and disagreements were aired. There's no shying away from the tough issues. For us though, the amount of laughter and goodwill in the air was really inspiring, as was the number of incredible women at the table (19 women and 6 men attended this National Council meeting).
We also said a couple of sad farewells this weekend: to our Deputy Treasurer, David Tomlins, and our long-term Australian Greens Policy Coordinator, Rod Swift. National Council appointed Rosanne Bersten to be the interim Policy Coordinator and a fresh election will take place for both of these positions at the May National Conference.
Our next face-to-face National Council meeting will take place in Adelaide on the weekend of 21st and 22nd of April, so if you haven't yet been to one we encourage you to register and attend. While they can be long meetings, we're pretty good at keeping the humour alive and, if you're lucky, you may witness (and potentially even participate in) some fairly spectacular pun-offs!