Yarra Climate Action Now!

While we still don't know who will be our Prime Minister, one thing is clear - the Greens have been the big winners in this election.


Here in the seat of Melbourne, Adam Bandt won his party's first ever lower house seat (in a general election) with a massive 13% increase in the Green primary vote (to a total of 36%) and a 10% swing from Labor to Greens two-party-preferred. Nationally the Greens gained about 11.5% of the primary vote, an increase of almost 4% from last election, by far the biggest gain for any party.

It also seems like the Greens will win 5 or 6 senate spots, meaning they may win one in every state. In Victoria Richard Di Natale has been elected to the Senate with a full quota of votes. The Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate.

Both Labor and the Greens said that climate change was the biggest issue in the seat of Melbourne.

In The Age, losing Labor candidate Cath Bowtell said, "...clearly they [voters of Melbourne] want us to work faster on reducing carbon emissions and moving to a cleaner-energy economy.''

This result doesn't bode well for inner-city State MPs, who are facing an election in three months. The Brumby Government will have to vastly improved its climate policies if it doesn't want to lose seats to the Greens.

We hope this result encourages some soul-searching in the Labor Party. With both big parties offering no leadership to tackle the climate crisis, more and more people will keep turning to the Greens. We hope all parties heed the signs at this election and greatly improve their climate policies.

Yarra Climate Action Now is proud to have been a part of the Vote Climate campaign in the seat of Melbourne. Our work helped make a difference in this seat and helped the party with the best climate policies win! Well done to everyone involved.

Many of us are doing what we can in our homes to cut carbon pollution and save water, and now the government must do its part.

Bush fires, floods, sea-level rises and drought — climate change is already harming us all and will get rapidly worse, unless we take urgent action.

Denial and delay are dangerous and inexcusable.

On Saturday August 21, we urge you to send a message that you want immediate and strong action on climate change.

To make your vote count for a safe climate get informed on the different policies of the parties, and pass this information on to family and friends. Below is a scorecard put together by a coalition of independent community groups, the full analysis is here (click on the scorecard to see it more clearly).

You can also check out a more comprehensive analysis looking at more issues and parties here, or the Australian Youth Climate Coalition scorecard here.

Last weekend volunteers from Yarra Climate Action Now doorknocked over 1000 homes in Collingwood and Fitzroy for the Replace Hazelwood campaign. We gathered hundreds of signatures for our petition and spoke to people about the urgent need to replace Australia's dirtiest coal-fired power station with clean renewable energy. We got a great response from the community.

While many first-time doorknockers were nervous at the beginning, with one hour of training and practice, over 20 people hit the streets and had a good time doing it!

First time doorknocker Phil said:

"Thanks for the chance to participate. It was a great learning experience.

"Oddly, I was pretty nervous right at the start. I was worried about how to do the opening pitch when the door was first opened. I went with my partner and watched her as she did a few houses and that helped a lot.

"Following that, and after doing about 3 pitches myself I got over my nerves and started to really get into the flow. I then found it really enjoyable, in fact it really fired me up!"


Our next doorknocking session is Sunday 4 July in Richmond, 1-4pm (one hour training, two hours doorknocking), meeting at Melbourne Girls College, Yarra blvd, Richmond.

We need your help! Sign up now here.

The Australian Greens continue their attempts to inject some common sense into the climate change debate. Yesterday they launched a proposal for a two-year carbon tax to start in July 2010 to begin the shift towards a zero carbon economy while a longer-term policy is sorted out.

The tax will be $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide at 2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation. The Greens estimate that this will raise $20 billion over the two years, half of which will be distributed to low-income households, $4 billion would go to trade exposed emissions intensive industries, $2.5 billion to tackling climate change in developing countries and around $1 billion to an Australian climate change action fund. Unlike Labor Party policy and in line with the Garnaut Review, there is no money for coal-fired generators.

While this proposal certainly does not go far enough with regards to how fast and how deeply we must cut emissions if Australia is to play its part globally in avoiding catastrophic climate change, it is at least a step in the right direction. So far the proposals from the Rudd Government only served to lock in business as usual and corporate welfare at the taxpayers' expense.

For more detail on the proposal click here.