2020-05-05
By the Green Issue Editorial Team
Over the last two months our lives have been turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic, but to different degrees across society. Naturally, this is the focus of this Green Issue. Most of us have been ‘confined to quarters’ and obliged to brush up on our IT skills, as illustrated by Robin Chapple above. We present a view from a medical professional on the front line of confrontation with the virus.
The response of Federal and State governments in dealing with this emergency has been exemplary, compared to much of the rest of the world, however, it raises the question as to the relative lack of response to the ever-growing climate emergency. This highlights our general disconnect with nature, and the ever more urgent need to move from dominating it to nurturing it. The COVID-19 crisis has certainly disrupted our ramping up of climate activism – a hiatus in which to contemplate how best to resume this activism, perhaps learning some lessons from how to deal with emergencies in general.
While government relief measures have been relatively swift and substantial many people have nevertheless fallen through the cracks. We include an article illustrating the complications relating to tenancy in housing, and the need for a moratorium on evictions for both social welfare and public health reasons.
In this issue we include MP updates from Senators Rachel Siewert and Jordon Steele-John, and Members of the WA Legislative Council, Alison Xamon (North Metropolitan), Robin Chapple (Mining and Pastoral), Diane Evers (South West) and Tim Clifford (East Metropolitan). Although parliamentary sessions have been minimized during March-April our representatives have nevertheless been inundated with work. Hastily formulated relief measures have had to be scrutinized and governments held to account when injustices cropped up. Also, necessarily, more time has had to be spent in responding to the COVID-19 related needs of their constituents.