Latest Updates
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Keeping Canberra Ad Free – New Poll Massively Backs Campaign
The campaign to keep Canberra Ad Free, in response to Chief Minister Andrew Barr’s proposal to open up the city to more billboard advertising, got a huge boost today with Green Institute commissioned polling showing that 90% of Canberrans want either the same amount or even less advertising. Remarkably, 48% of Canberrans say there is…
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What Is The “Future Of Work”? – Senate Inquiry Submission
The Australian Senate has established a Select Committee to inquire into the enormous topic of “The Future of Work and Workers”. Doubtless they will receive an extraordinary array of widely differing views about both what is happening and what to do about it. The Green Institute was pleased to be invited to make a submission,…
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Farewell, Ursula Le Guin
Bertolt Brecht, the brilliant, impatient playwright and political activist, once reputedly said “art is not a mirror to reflect reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Ursula Le Guin, the extraordinary writer who has died aged 88, showed through her beautiful work that the greatest art can, of course, be both mirror and…
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Looking Back On ‘Everything is Connected’ Conference
Everything really is connected, isn’t it? Including how putting on a huge conference is connected to exhaustion and getting behind on other work, with a direct consequence of not uploading content from the conference for almost six weeks. Clear connection there! After such an amazing two days discussion big green political ideas, with so many…
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Sun Setting On Coal, Rising On Democracy
This article first appeared in The Guardian, Nov 17, 2017 Events on opposite sides of the globe in recent days should give us real hope that coal’s deadly stranglehold on our health, our planetary home, and on our democracy, is finally slipping. At the UN climate meeting in Bonn, 19 nations led by the UK…
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Our Constitution Is Past Its ‘Best By’ Date
This article was first published in the Canberra Times, Nov 17, 2017 All of a sudden, it seems terribly obvious that Australia’s 120 year old Constitution is past its ‘best by’ date. From the exclusion of First Nations people to 19th century dual citizenship rules to the mess of federation, our Constitution needs reconstituting. Isn’t…
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Parliament: No Entry To Foreigners And Public Servants?
The disqualification of Hollie Hughes from serving in the Senate raises some very troubling questions that we, as a country, have to grapple with urgently. Coming on top of the dual citizenship kerfuffle, Ms Hughes has been disqualified because she took a paid position for the government after the election. And now newly sworn…
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Everything Is Connected: Systemic Approaches To Inequality
This brilliant panel deeply engaged with questions of inequality, the future of work, Universal Basic Income and more. Panel members were: Eva Cox (by video link) Eva Cox is a public commentator, community change agent, well known feminist, on a postage stamp, Boyer Lecturer 1995, and active social and political researcher. She has taught policy, advocacy…
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Everything Is Connected: The “Truth” And Politics
This excellent and thought-provoking panel ranged from questions of “post-truth” politics and deliberate obscuring of the truth through to how to positively use values to shift opinions when facts do not. Panel members were: Dr Rod Lamberts Dr Rod Lamberts is deputy director of the Australian National Centre for Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) at…
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Everything Is Connected: Uncle Les Coe On The Tent Embassy Perspective
Uncle Les Coe’s knowledge, experience, wisdom and provocation brought one of the most important and powerful perspectives to the conference. You can listen to it here: Uncle Les’s extraordinarily warm welcome to country, at the Tent Embassy, was also one of the highlights of the conference. We thank him, and Nioka and others at the…
