Green Issue: Editorial August 2018

A delayed Green Issue this time but still containing plenty of food for thought, and incentives for action 

2018-09-04

By the Green Issue Editors

We must firstly apologize that the Green Issue due at the end of June did not appear. The Australian Greens changed the AG website and along with it the Greens (WA) component. In the process, Green Issue disappeared, only to be resurrected in August, but with a changed protocol for uploading. Consequently, your GI team has been sidelined with a severe case of the ‘GI Blues’:

              I've got those hup, two, three, four

             editorial GI Blues

             From my GI hair to the heels of my GI shoes

             ♪ And if I can’t upload soon

             I'm gonna blow my fuse

[With apologies to Elvis for a minor plagiarization of his 1960 lyrics]

In the June Green Issue we originally intended to target the then upcoming Perth and Fremantle by-elections and ‘Plastic Free July’, but these events have now passed us by. We will have commentary on the outcome of those by-elections, and the now upcoming federal election, in October Green Issue. Nevertheless, in this GI we continue to include the more generic articles addressing those themes, such as a fleshing out of reasons to vote Green, rather than Labor, and a critique of the recent thin-plastic bag ban in WA. Something ubiquitous in election and other activist campaigns is the bold and colourful banners summarizing what its all about. We go behind the scenes to unveil the never-ending efforts of inveterate banner-maker Judy Blyth. During June there were some rather pertinent presentations in Perth by prominent figures in the Australian political landscape, and we report on these. Richard Denniss launched his new book ‘Dead Right’, providing an incisive critique of neoliberalism and how ‘trickle down’ inevitably leads to increasing social inequality. Senator Nick McKim spoke of his visits to Manus Island to view first-hand the cruelty of Australia’s offshore refugee incarceration policy. And more of man’s inhumanity to man in a Greens Global Issues Group presentation on the history and ongoing travails of Sudan. Getting closer to home, Alison Xamon elaborates on her bill to repeal a WA state law that still permits religious schools to discriminate against LGBTIQ+ persons, despite marriage equality now being recognized under civil law.

Due to the absence of June GI, our ‘From our MPs’ reports now cover the period May-August, for Senators Rachel Siewert and Jordon Steele-John and our Members of the WA Legislative Council Robin Chapple (Mining and Pastoral), Alison Xamon (North Metropolitan), Tim Clifford (East Metropolitan) and Diane Evers (South West).

Header photo: A Judy Blyth banner.