It is an extraordinary privilege to be a Greens Senator for NSW, to help shape our people-powered movement. Thank you for trusting me in this role since 2022, and I am now asking for your support to continue our work together for peace, fairness and the planet.
For decades politicians have privatized public services, dismantled corporate controls, cut progressive taxes and destroyed faith in collective action. This has seen obscene wealth concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires while the rest of us are struggling for scraps in the shadow of a looming climate crisis.
This moment, and the next federal election, is about what comes next. It is a fight over who can best direct people’s legitimate anger with the system towards political change.
People are furious, and they’re right to be. The ultra-wealthy want that anger pointed at migrants, not themselves, and so feed One Nation and the far right. Your workmate from India didn’t privatise the Commonwealth Bank. Your nurse from the Philippines didn’t vote to divert money from public schools to weapons.
Labor and the Coalition did that, and together they built One Nation.
To win, we need to do four things.
First, own the anti-establishment ground. We will tax the super rich, open parliament’s doors to the community and slam them shut on grifters and billionaires, without apology.
Second, weave our movements together. The Free Palestine movement has built a community across class, age, race and religion. Alongside peace, anti-nuclear, First Nations, climate and workers’ campaigns, this is the progressive movement the Greens can and must help bring together.
Third, resist the surveillance state and its corporate mates being built to shield wealth from the 99 percent. Facial recognition, data harvesting, coercive questioning powers and vampire data centres guzzling resources are about control, not safety.
Fourth, turn powerlessness into agency and hope. The anger is justified and the pain is real, but the powerlessness is mistaken. That means organising street by street, bringing people into our movement from all walks of life. We meet people where they are and rebuild hope.
I’m so fortunate to have worked with you all to fight AUKUS, protect forests, deliver climate justice, First Nations rights and press for answers and transparency from people with privilege and power. But I’m most proud of the connections we have made and the communities who trust my team to fight for them, as a proudly Greens Senator.
We can beat greed with collective compassion and smash hate with hope. I’m asking for your support in this preselection because I know that together we can win this fight, and I know to my core that we need to.
In solidarity,
David
David Shoebridge
