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our first meet the candidate experience |
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Written by ASP Staff
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Thursday, 19 November 2009 14:56 |
Last night I attended my first Meet the Candidate event for the Higgins by election. It was held at the Glen Iris Uniting Church and organised by the Higgins Vote Climate Campaign, Families Facing Climate Change and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition.
Seven of the 10 candidates attended. Missing was the DLP, the LDP and the Liberal candidate Kelly O’Dwyer. This is despite the organisers approaching her a few weeks ago about the event and even offering to set the date to one that suited her. Apparently in her late apology she said she had another “environmental” event to attend. Sounded like hair washing to me.
About 70 people attended and the majority were card-carrying Greens.
We were all asked a series of questions and given a minute or two to respond. I have to say in future I will prepare but all I could do was be quite honest. Where and what do you know about Climate science? "Mmm... errr... I missed that class... I don't have a science degree and I admit to not having read the Garnaut report but I do own some land in the country that backs onto a National park and I love it. It is now classed as a wildlife sanctuary and is protected in perpetuity. On that land my little slab hut is run entirely on solar panels with a little gas and I have a satellite dish on the roof and with two car batteries I can get broadband".
My uneducated and non scientific opinion was that the time for debate, debate, conference and more debate was over. I am afraid that all the major parties are doing is negotiating on how little they can get away with doing in this political cycle. They set targets for 2050 when it appears that will be far too late.
After hearing a few of the speakers a little voice inside me was singing "happy thoughts, happy thoughts". But from what I understand if we make some hard decisions now it will be a little easier and cheaper than if we wait another ten years.
From my point there was a lot of waffle from some of the candidates and the gentle time keeper had to tap his triangle quite hard, he even stood up on occasions.
Steve Raskovy from One Nation had some interesting theories. One in particular was that he was pretty certain that the planes were breaking up the clouds and that was why it wasn't raining.
A question from the audience was, 'what taxes will you introduce to pay for the cost of carbon reduction'? There was a lot of chatter on this. The anarchist candidate surprisingly suggested greater taxes but also the withdrawal of govt. funding for all private schools which did not go down well in the well-heeled electorate of Higgins. We were in a church hall but I still bravely suggested we tax church businesses that were not charities.
I finished by wondering if we had more women in parliament would we still be deciding whether to do something or not?
It was an interesting night and there was a lot of passionate people there. Stephen Murphy from the Climate Sceptics (soon to be) party won my bravery award. Most people were polite and respectful but a few were rude bores and that included a few of the candidates. Stephen was even kind enough to give me a lift home.
After the debate the audience was keen to stick around and I gave away all of my sex party pamphlets and bumper stickers. Many wanted to discuss the internet filter, R rated computer games and sex in general. I found quite a few people confessing their interest in porn. It was very interesting and I even met a Rabi who looked nothing like the Rabiis I had seen on the Simpsons. His partner was fabulous and feisty. She took Clive Hamilton to task for comparing climate skeptics with holocaust deniers.
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