2014-10-20
Ben Moroney and Eliza June
Greetings from your new co-convenors, Ben and Eliza. First, we want to thank you for electing us. You are placing a tremendous amount of trust and responsibility in us with this decision, and we promise to work our hardest to deserve that trust and do right by you.
To put it simply, we're excited for the coming year. It might not seem like a reasonable reaction at the moment; given the sort of legislative attacks being levelled against practically every sector of society that aren't miners, multinational corporations or the wealthy. Sometimes it can feel bleak for the progressive left in Australia, with a Government hell-bent on destroying everything we hold dear about this country and this society, and a complacent, cowardly Opposition rolling over for everything they put out. There is hope, though, and nothing exemplifies that hope better than this month's Young Greens National Conference in Sydney.
Young Liberal and Young Labor conferences are horrible affairs, concerned only with meaningless motions and policy debates forming a thin veneer over internal factional power struggles and desperate recruiting for the next generation of electoralist apparatchiks. The Greens do politics differently, and nowhere was that more apparent than AYGCon.
Everyone came to conference in the proper spirit: in the interests of cooperation and consensus, eager to teach and learn in equal measure and most importantly with the common goal of nothing less than changing the world. We spent three days surrounded by nearly 80 of the most intelligent, vibrant, dedicated and passionate activists in the country, talking, planning and skill-sharing, spreading around an amazing wealth of knowledge and experience on an astonishingly broad range of topics from deep ecology to unionism to sexuality and gender identity, as well as a set of autonomous groups to discuss women's issues and disability in a comfortable and welcoming environment.
Together we can achieve great things, for ourselves, for young people and for the country, and we're thrilled for the opportunity to work our hardest to make that happen. The current Government has left the Greens with a lot of territory to take, both within Parliament and outside it. The opportunity exists for garnering massive amounts of support by running dynamic campaigns around health, education, welfare, the environment and civil liberties, and the AYG should exist to facilitate and support building that capacity.
Our major focus will be building up the state YG groups to a level where they can act autonomously, as well as negotiating behind the scenes to ensure every state group is well resourced. The NSW and Victorian Young Greens have been successful in winning small budgets from their respective state parties, and it's been tremendous in terms of securing resources. AYGCon wouldn't have been possible to the level it was without that money being available, and it will pay itself back tenfold in engagement and activism. We want to work on ensuring each YG group secures a budget, and maybe even working on an AYG-level budget for Federal campaigns.
With proper resources, an infinite number of opportunities open up. Our dream would be to see the sort of success shown by the UK Young Greens, whose membership has more than doubled since April. The time is ripe for reaching out to young people, especially outside our traditional strongholds. The Young Greens are excellent at organising on university campuses, but we could be doing so much more; organising at TAFE, meeting with young apprentices, reaching out to young families and offering support to young jobseekers.
Now is the time, more than ever, when we as young Greens need to be active. We need to be campaigning hard, winning hearts and minds in the face of the most brutal neoliberal attack our way of life has ever seen. We need to be seen, not just at the upcoming state elections, but outside of them as well, fighting the good fight and standing up for what's right. We have every faith the group of amazing people who came together in Sydney this month are up for the task, and we will be doing our best to offer every support we possibly can.
Yours in solidarity,
Ben Moroney and Eliza June