2021-04-26
earlier this month, Tasmania was thrown into a snap state election campaign a full year before schedule. Adam Bandt visited the apple isle to see how the team has pulled together to push back against the major parties and their big business donors.
By Adam Bandt
Last week, I travelled to lutruwita/Tasmania to talk about our plan to make the billionaires pay their fair share of tax – to help get dental into Medicare and create decent jobs for everyone who wants one. There, I saw up close the brilliant state election campaign they have underway.
Across the week, I saw firsthand from the air the impact of logging; spoke to amazing candidates and campaigners; and launched the Tasmanian component of our 'Fight for the Future' plan with Greens candidate for Bass, Jack Davenport, and Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O'Connor.
It’s a great campaign by brilliant people, put together very quickly following Gutwein’s snap decision to call an election.
The best campaigns are powered by people, not corporate donations. And the Tasmanian Greens are doing just that, with hundreds of people coming together to push back against the major parties and their donors in big business. Every election, the Liberal and Labor party make big promises to fix the problems in health and housing, but they just keep getting worse.
The problem is they’re listening to their donors, not people. Nowhere is that more clear than in forestry policy.
lutruwita’s wilderness is truly special – so large that you could spend months lost in it. You truly appreciate the scale when you take to the air.
Existing for millennia, the thick forests in Tasmania are truly ancient – and it’s not hard to see why the state is the spiritual home of the Greens. Tasmania is not just home to some of the most incredible biodiversity in the world, but every one of the state’s ancient trees is doing its part to stop the climate crisis, cleaning up the carbon dioxide caused by burning coal and gas.
They tell a story of ancient Gondwana, have been shaped over millennia by the palawa, and are now scarred by decades of rapacious greed.
It’s incredible. You won’t find it anywhere else – but it’s all at risk from the forestry policies of the Liberal and Labor parties. I saw the damage from an unchecked fire on the edge of the Styx. 200 hectares of Australia’s oldest forests, lost.
Native forest logging, supported by the Liberal and Labor parties is killing this incredible ecosystem, one giant at a time.
The Tasmanian Greens launched their forestry policy, an antidote to the rapacious greed that has scarred so much of ancient Gondwana.
The Greens’ plan for Tasmania’s forests will put an end to this, so Tasmania can take its place in the world as a global climate and landscape restoration leader.
I then travelled to Launceston to launch the Tasmanian component of the Greens’ Fight for the Future plan – which would create 13,500 jobs for Tassie locals, paid for by making the billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.
This landmark policy would help solve the underemployment crisis that’s left Tasmania with the highest rate of underemployment in the country. All in all, one in seven Tasmanians are without a job or enough work – and as a former social worker, candidate for Bass Jack Davenport has seen the impacts. Housing costs much more than before the pandemic, but wages are flatlining and people don’t have enough work.
Meanwhile, the mining billionaires doubled their wealth during the pandemic and 1 in 3 of our biggest corporations pays no tax.
We don’t think that’s fair. So this election, the Tasmanian Greens are promising to make the big corporations pay their fair share, putting in funds to boost public services that Tasmanians need.
Right now, Greens volunteers are dropping off hundreds of letters sharing that plan, urging voters to send a message to the Liberal and Labor parties: stop looking after big business. Start looking after everyday Tasmanians.
Want to help ensure that happens? Donate to the Tasmanian election campaign now: