POW Goes to Parliament with Helen Haines – POWcast Episode 7

[ 00:00:00 ] This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Narragi people in Jindabyne, the Bangarang people in Wangaratta and the Ngunnawal people in Canberra. Welcome to the Powcast, a podcast from Protect Our Winters Australia, where we chat to those who love our Aussie Alps and are fighting hard to protect them. I’m James Worsfold, and in this episode, Pow goes to Parliament. Last year, as the snow season met a premature end, a delegation of scientists,advocates and those who live and work in the mountains headed to Canberra to advocate on behalf of the alpine- loving community about the need to protect the places we love in the face of a changing climate. Advocacy is vital in making sure the issues we, the community, care about are on theagendas of politicians.

[ 00:00:46 ] Protect Our Winters exists as a way to make sure our mountains, with their fragile ecosystems, important economies and regional communities, aren’t ignored by decision makers. Coming up, we’ll chat to Helen Haynes, independent member for Indai, a federal seat which contains almost all of Victoria’s alpine resorts and ski towns. She’ll give us the political perspective on helping our communities adapt, and aninsight into how to go about solving these problems in the halls of Power. But first, Pow director Alastair MacLeod meets up with our policy guru, Sam Beaver, on the shores of Lake Jindabyne and asks, how does a community organisation meet withpoliticians and how does advocacy work? my name’s Sam Beaver, I’m the policy lead at Protect Our Winters Australia.

[ 00:01:34 ] Been with Pow Oz for maybe like a year and a half or so, and before that I actually got involved with Pow in Canada, while I was living over there for a couple years, over in the Canadian Rockies, so that was actually my first experience with Pow. Yeah, and outside of Pow I work as a researcher at ANU, at Australian National University, doing some climate and environment work there. So this week Sam, you took a delegation to Parliament on behalf of Pow to go andrepresent our community with several MPs and other politicians. Tell us what it was like to actually get there, like what does it take to bring adelegation to Parliament and meet these people?

[ 00:02:19 ] It takes a lot of work, is the short answer, and I guess getting into Parliament all with our partnership with Australian National University and commissioning them to write the report, Our Changing Snowscapes, which was all about climate impacts on our Australian curb some of those impacts and adapt to some of those impacts in alpine regions as well. And they wrote this incredible report that really opened the door for us to get into Parliament. I’m hoping that a fair few of the listeners will have at least seen that report in the news just before opening weekend this season. That was pretty stark because of what we were seeing on the ground, so as a lot of people probably know there was only one lift running for opening weekend this season and it got us a lot of media attention and I think ultimately that media attention really snowballed into getting us some political attention as well.

[ 00:03:27 ] The first meeting we got in Parliament and the meeting that kind of led into this broader meeting with a bunch of independents as well as some Labour staff members was meeting with Sam Haynes, who’s the independent member for Indi which covers a pretty broad range of the alpine area in Victoria and covers all of the resorts in Victoria except for Mount Baw Baw. So she’s incredibly passionate about our alpine areas and was really enthusiastic to meet us and we had a fantastic meeting and she really facilitated us getting into these more serious meetings in Parliament this week. So Sam, tell us about the meeting that we had in Parliament this week. Who went there, how did it go?

[ 00:04:18 ] So we had a couple meetings in Parliament this week actually and we were really lucky to have a pretty incredible delegation to join us in We took in Ruby Olsen, who was the lead author of the Outchanging Snowscapes report. We also took in Matthew Brookhouse, who’s a senior lecturer at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU as well and he’s got some really interesting expertise in snowgum dieback, which is a really, really serious issue affecting our snowgums up in our alpine areas. Snowgums being the only tree that’s grown above 1600 metres up there, so if anything happens to them it’d be a drastically different landscape up there. As well as that we took a couple of our alpine community members because we realised that in holding these political meetings we really needed to take community members with us to ground truth those findings.

[ 00:05:20 ] And we took Alex Parsons with us, who is a, she’s been backcountry guiding up around Threadbow and on the main range for about seven years or so I think. She does quite a lot of work with Mountain Safety Collective now, both in doing abit of forecasting and observational work of the snowpack up there as well as doing some And we also took Scott Brandon, who’s the owner of Bright Brewery. He’s lived in Bright for over 20 years, he’s owned the brewery for about 20 years and he’s really seen a lot of the changes that have been going on in at least the Victorian alpine and our alpine communities in general and has experienced a lot of them from his perspective as not only a resident but a business owner, which is a really valuable perspective to take into Parliament because business is a really core part of how alpine areas function up here, especially small business and they’re really crucial parts of the community.

[ 00:06:26 ] And so it was great to get his view in the In terms of how the meeting went, so I’ll probably break it into the two meetings that we had. So we had a meeting with two of Christy McBain’s staffers or staff members, so her kindof policy advisors. And unfortunately Christy wasn’t available to meet with us on the day. We had already had a meeting with Helen Haynes a few months earlier and she was incredibly engaged during that meeting and asked lots of questions about the report as well as who we are as a community organisation. This meeting was slightly different and a different context because the politician wasn’t in the room. So essentially the staff members were just gathering information from us to pass on to Christy.

[ 00:07:20 ] So a few less questions, but basically what the meeting looked like was we go in there, we tell them a bit about the report and Ruby did a fantastic job doing that. Alex, Matt and Scott then came in and kind of talked about their personal experience of how climate change has impacted them both just as people but also in their professional spaces as well. Whether that be as a guide or a business owner or as a scientist as Matt is. I suppose in general, with some of the communication that we’ve had with the more major parties it’s a little bit difficult to know where you stand sometimes and it’s a little bit harder to know if your message is cutting through and if they are going to take action on behalf of what you’ve said.

[ 00:08:18 ] By being in those meetings they tend to give a little less away, which as an organisation makes that job a little bit more difficult for us because they give us a few less hints of whether they’re going to use what we’re putting down. But I think the really important point is that Christy is a cog in the machine of the Labor Party, which is an interesting perspective for her and she obviously has to tow the party line in a But within that machine she is also in a really unique position to advocate for our community’s interests and we believe that our community’s interests align with kind of first andforemost further and faster action on climate change and we think that she can have a big role in doing that within the Labor Party to push them into further action.

[ 00:09:16 ] So the second meeting that we had on Tuesday this week was with some of the independent members of federal parliament in Canberra. met with David Pocock who’s a senator from the ACT. We met with Monique Ryan who’s an independent member over in We met with Zali Stegall who is an independent member in Sydney in the Manly area and Helen Haynes was there as well to facilitate the meeting and she really did get us into that meeting so she did a great job facilitating as well. And I suppose our experience from that meeting was that it was quite a bit longer than our meeting with Christy and from our perspective it was a fair bit more engaging. So we had a lot of engagement and a lot of questions from basically all the members of parliament that were in that room.

[ 00:10:28 ] They are already doing an incredible amount of work in this space to push thegovernment further and faster on climate action both in terms of reducing our emissions and adapting to impacts and so I suppose we went into that meeting and it essentially had the same structure as the first meeting which was that we say our piece for about 10 or 15 minutes. Ruby gives them a rundown of the report and then Matt, Scott and Alex give them arundown of their experience quickly and then I talk about the policy that we’re pushing for them to do and yeah I think the main thing that we wanted out of that meeting because the independents

[ 00:11:14 ] aren’t in government but they can help shape government policies by pushing certain amendments through on bits of legislation and stuff like that or just advocating through their like comms and all that kind of stuff, we really wanted them to take away from the meeting that this case study of climate change impacts on the Australian Alps can be used by them to communicate the urgency of climate change to the major parties and I think we got some really good traction and they agreed that they’re really wanting to work both with us and independently as well on understanding exactly how we can tell this story to present to the nation that there is an issue here happening in our alpine areas that we really need to fix and so in terms of further engagement with them,

[ 00:12:15 ] we’ve got a really good relationship with Helen now and we’re looking forward to meeting with her again pretty soon to discuss actions going forward and exactly how we can kind of shape that case study and what it might look like to bring national attention to this issue in the same way that Great Barrier Reef is a national issue and a national kind of messaging point on climate change. We want the alpine areas to be on that same framing and we’re also looking forward to some future meetings with Zali and Dave as well to discuss how we can further everything. So I suppose this meeting for us was like let’s brief you on the topic, let’s get you involved so that you’re at this level of knowledge where you understand how important this issue is and what’s happening in alpine areas and then in our next meetings we really want to betalking about what action can we take moving forward.

[ 00:13:14 ] This most recent meeting was really about getting in front of people that have positions of power and advocating on behalf of our community. It’s very hard for a politician to care or do something if they they don’t know there’s a and actually push this real political change to help protect our winters and protect these alpine regions. The work that I do at Protect Our Winters is by trying to affect political change both in federal parliament as well as in state parliament that we’re hoping to to push further into pretty soon both in New South Wales and in Vic. I think it’s a kind of misunderstood thing in in general how advocacy works around parliament and how advocacy works around political change.

[ 00:14:08 ] A lot of the time when people say the word advocacy I think it gets connected a little bit to like activism and like lots of left- leaning issues but I think it’s super important to know that there is an incredible amount of advocacy happening on both sides of this issue. In the exact same week that that we took this delegation to parliament which is that it was basically minerals week in in Canberra and and that’s a lobbying conference at parliament house that goes for the entire week that is put on and run by minerals and resources industry so essentially the mining industry in where they convince politicians to take their side on certain issues and kind of further their interests.

[ 00:15:00 ] So while they were in parliament both with us talking to politicians about climate impacts on really fragile areas and communities there was also the minerals and mining industry advocating for kind of extending this problem and holding their interests up higher than the interests of the community and from our perspective and I think it’s really important for people to know that because the other side of the lobbying coin so to speak has a lot more resources than we do in terms of money and how hard they can lobby. If they’re putting forward their perspective we want to be able to put forward the perspective of our community as well. We’re not the only ones doing this there’s an incredible amount of environmental organizations and movements all all across the country that do some really powerful lobbying in Canberra and and we’re just one part of that puzzle about trying to

[ 00:16:13 ] trying to get in the ear of politicians enough so they could they can actually understand how many people this issue affects and is going to affect so that it will get them to actually change some policy to to work harder and push further on meaningful action. As Sam said a gateway to meeting with parliamentarians was the report Owl Changing Snowscapes that PAL produced with the Australian National University. If you haven’t checked it out head to protectourwinters. org. au. Now a whole delegation of experts and mountain people had their voices heard in these meetings one of which was back country guide Alex Parsons who gave Owl her perspective on advocating to parliament.

[ 00:17:02 ] Okay. Alex Parsons sitting here at Lake Jindabyne on a beautiful day. Uh, Alex, tell us a little bit about yourself, please. Yeah. So I’ve been a backcountry guide out in Kosciuszko National Park for the past seven years and have trained many guides out in these mountains. Um, and I work with Mountain Safety Collective. So we put out daily backcountry conditions reports, and I also do events, um, with MSC and Arcteryx and generally try and progress the mad skills of the backcountry community here in New South Wales. Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the And I think the interesting thing for us guides is that we spend a large amount of our time up in the true Alpine above 1900 meters. And we’re really at the forefront of climate change up there.

[ 00:17:47 ] So we see these changes more than ever. Um, so for me, even back in 2020, we had at that time, the earliest melt on record. Um, and we were moving across grassy patches and watching the snow melt before our eyes. And unfortunately that trend has largely continued. And so this year, I mean, I should be out touring right now, um, and getting the most of those spring turns, but the snow’s just not really there and it’s mid- September, uh, and last year was also really devastating. Um, and we had to finish up the season early as well. So I was at the time backcountry coordinator for Thribo Resort. And, uh, that’s really challenging for all of us and makes us pretty upset when, uh, yeah, we have to wrap up our work early, but we’re also just seeing those changes in the environment.

[ 00:18:28 ] We’re not seeing the large snow patches stay around year round as they’remeant to, um, we’re seeing a lot of melt. We’re seeing really high temperatures and we see precipitation falling as rain instead of snow. And it’s really just a couple of degrees difference that makes that, um, change so that we’re not getting the beautiful snow that we all love. And, uh, as we all know, standing in the rain and doing backcountry tours and being damp is not a So Alex, you were part of Powell’s delegation to go to parliament earlier this week. And I know before you went in, you put out some posts on social media, asking for members of the community to contribute some stories for you to share with the politicians.

[ 00:19:07 ] You know, I got a huge response, um, literally just the day before heading out to Um, and as you might expect, a lot of the stories were pretty sad. Um, and it really told me how much people’s mental health is being impacted by the changes that we’re seeing in the environment. So, you know, I’ve got a buddy who owns, um, a snowboard business, you know, uh, he runs that out of Australia and he’s thinking of closing up shop and he’s drastically reducing the sort of amount of boards and gear that he’sselling Cause he just doesn’t see it as a viable future here in I had another mate of mine who works, um, in races and events and, uh, in like fist world events.

[ 00:19:48 ] Um, and they were setting up an event here that gives you like a guaranteed spot for a race overseas. And he said it was really devastating because he put so much time and love and passion into this event, um, in the first week of And then they had to make the call not to run that race because conditions were too dangerous. There wasn’t enough snow. And he told me, he said, honestly, I was depressed for a little while afterwards because not just for him, but also other people’s opportunities to go overseas. Um, they were just dashed. Um, yeah, I had people reach out to me, use words like grief, like depression. Um, saying that, yeah, they just feel upset and that they’re not being heard by people.

[ 00:20:29 ] Uh, and then it’s also about people’s work. You know, people’s seasons are being cut short. I had a lot of guides reach out to me and say that they’re not sure if there’s a future of guiding here inAustralia Cause we just had a two month season. Like you just can’t have your entire guiding life being based off two months in the Um, and then I also had people reach out and talk to me about how they just think about the future of their kids and how those kids might not have the same experiences that we’ve all had growing up and falling in love with the snow and going on back country tours, or even just, you know, tobogganing on the snow and snowballs and how they think about future generations or their current kids won’t really get to do those things.

[ 00:21:09 ] And it’s really quite heartbreaking. I found it really emotional reading all those things and it was quite heavy, but I guess what came out of that, it was nice that people are really authentic andhonest with me about their feelings. Um, and it meant that I could bring that to parliament and hopefully try and express that it just affects all of us. It’s not just about money. It’s about our emotional connection to the back country, to the snow, to this lifestyle that we are all in love with. So how did the politicians respond to stories like this? You know, I was pretty impressed that it seemed to resonate with them. And some of the best conversations I had were actually just walking in the hallways, um, with these politicians and being like, Oh, you know, I’m a steer too, or like, I’m a back country user as well.

[ 00:21:52 ] And thanks so much for what you do with MSC. Or like, it’s really sad. I’m not going to get out there, um, this spring anymore. So there were those sort of anecdotal conversations that I was really impressed with and in the meetings themselves, people actually seemed really on board. I think they get it. And I think sometimes we think of politicians in this ivory tower, not really connected to like the smaller communities. And I think we can feel that way, but I felt quite positive after those meetings that they got it. They understand where we’re coming from. And a lot of them have connections here and grew up as steers. Like most of these people are from Canberra. Um, and if not, there’s people from Sydney that also have connections to the ski fields.

[ 00:22:29 ] Um, so I was actually really happy and I could see that they were emotionally affected and that’s kind of what we want, you know, we want them to feel what we’re feeling and to make us feel like we’re not alone in this fight and that they care and that they can make changes to help us. You know, we have a lot of emotions about this topic, which is so valid and emotions can turn into action. I think that we are an extremely passionate community and if anyone can really rally and come together and make change, it is people that are passionate, like our snow community here. So, you know, that’s why I got involved with pow because I was like, I want to see something change at the government level.

[ 00:23:10 ] And I think pow has inroads into government, but, you know, let’s continue the conversations. Let’s band together. Let’s unite. Um, whether it’s with pow or other organizations and, you know, if anyone can make change, it’s us. Well, we’ve heard from Alex and Sam who voiced the pressing need to protect our Now it’s time to hear from the other side of the Sam Beaver sat down with independent member of Indi, Helen Haynes, about tackling climate challenges in her electorate and her experience of navigating these issues in our political system. Great. Well, I’m Helen Haynes and I’m the independent federal member for I’ve had the privilege of being a member of parliament for five years, and I’ve lived in Northeast Victoria for 35 years. Wangaratta is my home and Wangaratta is a gateway city to the Alpine regions.

[ 00:24:11 ] And, um, in the electorate of Indi, we have five of Victoria’s six Alpine resorts. So we have Mount Hotham, Falls Creek, Mount Buller, Mount Stirling and Lake Mountain. Uh, and from my home, it’s an hour or so’s drive, uh, up into themountains And, uh, I’ve just been so lucky to live in this region where I really enjoy going hiking, cross country skiing, biking, and getting into the So I love the Alpine areas. I truly do. It’s what attracted me to come and live here. And I’m, um, I’m stoked to represent this Having lived in your electorate myself, it’s a pretty beautiful part of the world. So, um, and, and being an Alpine electorate, um, and, and region, there’s some pretty unique challenges that, that you face up there.

[ 00:25:03 ] Um, can you describe a little bit about how your electorate is impacted by climate change? Yeah. So I, I think what we know from this particular geography is that, uh, we are highly sensitive to changes in climate. Uh, if you think about, uh, the valleys that run between our, our mountain ranges, uh, we are a very prominent wine growing district and, uh, some of our, our winemakers have been highly alert to climate change for a long time. And in fact, have changed the varieties of grapes that they’re of them have purchased, um, vineyards down in Tasmania in response to thefact that our Alpine climate is getting warmer. So the traditional, um, yeah, the traditional varietals that they were growing, um, uh, no longer suitable.

[ 00:26:04 ] So they’ve been really, uh, like a canary in the coal mine to use that old expression and have been warning about climate change for some time. think of course, the other element that is profound in this electorate is our susceptibility to very, very significant weather events, most predominantly bushfire. And this region is one of the most, um, uh,susceptible areas to bushfire in the world. It sits alongside California. And of course, uh, the most recent bushfires over the black summer period, 2019, 2020, the Alpine areas of Indi were very, very severely impacted, uh, with a large footprint of burn area and a significant, uh, area of, um, of smoke, uh, affected areas. Um, it’s had a profound and enduring impact on our local economy and on the mental and physical health of the people who live here.

[ 00:27:08 ] addition to that, um, these Alpine areas, uh, uh, so significant, um, for the catchment of the Murray- Darling Basin, uh, 50% of the water thatflows into the Murray- Darling Basin comes from the electorate of Indi, uh, from the rainfall in the mountain areas. And, uh, that’s something we’re highly aware of and deeply protective of that, um, of that watershed that, uh, we’re custodians of. So I think this is an electorate that understands, uh, what climate change means to the environment that we love so dearly. When I talk to people across Indi, uh, and ask them what they love about living in Northeast Victoria, almost without exception, people go straight to the natural environment. They talk about the pristine, beautiful Alpine areas. They talk about their love of bushwalking.

[ 00:28:06 ] Uh, they talk about the Alpine meadows. They talk about memories of going out Mount Buffalo as akid learning to ski up there. Uh, they lament the fact that that’s almost impossible to do now, that that snowfall at Mount Buffalo is virtually gone. Uh, people are very aware of the impact that climate change is happening in this region. Yeah, that’s really interesting. I mean, there’s certainly a lot to unpack in there. I remember talking to an Alpine business owner, um, over in Bright, who was, uh, discussing fire risk and how it impacts tourism as well. And I think that’s a really interesting point because, I mean, even in our name in Protect Our Winters, where we’re talking about how climate change affects our Alpine areas and in our name, there’s a focus on winter, but it really is a round thing in the way it impacts these really sensitive areas.

[ 00:29:05 ] And I think quite a lot of people think that a lot of that focus is on winter and there is a big impact there, but there also is this real summer impact that can really be felt quite harshly. So, I think Sam, one way of even thinking about that is the impact of the bushfires and the loss of vegetation and the subsequent problems with erosion. Just recently meant that in October last year, when we had very, very heavy rains, we had one of the most significant landslips on a Victorian road that’s ever been recorded and it actually blocked the road to go up to Falls Creek, which meant that people couldn’t travel there and, you know, the pressure was on to get that road rebuilt, reinforced in time for the winter ski season and the economic impact over the summer trade, the mountain bike tourism and summer tourism more broadly was devastated and it was really touch and go in having that road reopened in time for the winter sports.

[ 00:30:14 ] So, year- round impacts of climate change, you’re so right, it’s more than protecting our winters, it’s really protecting the seasonality of the Alpine area. Just touching on the winter season just gone that you kind of alluded to in that response, it was a pretty difficult season for a lot of folks in the Alpine with pretty limited snow and quite an early end, which cascades down into the towns that kind of depend on those resorts and the activity that happens around them. I’m just wondering what you think we have to do to kind of get moving on adapting to the climate impacts we’re feeling now in our Alpine areas and how we can best involve the community in that.

[ 00:31:04 ] So, yeah, we have just had a terrible winter season and my understanding actually is that the Australian snowpack is at a 2, 000- year low. Wow. That’s incredible. So, we are seeing ski seasons close early, but of course, in addition to thesubsequent economic impact of that because in the Alpine areas, the ski seasons are critical for our tourism offer. There’s so many small businesses that rely on that trade. a massive employer. It’s part of our identity. It’s part of how we see ourselves. So, there’s an economic impact. There’s an existential character impact on who we are and how we experience winter here. And there’s, of course, the extraordinary ecological impact on the animals that rely on those cold seasons to survive, the Alpine animals, We have to think about adaptation.

[ 00:32:17 ] We absolutely do. And there’s been some really good adaptation already occurring and we’re seeing businesses, if we look at it from an economic perspective, businesses transform their offer. They’re adapting so that they’ve got a summer offering in addition to a winter offering. Tourism, Northeast Victoria, for example, more and more working with businesses to get a seasonality, a four seasons offering. And, yeah, we know that that takes significant investment, both from individual businesses and also from government to assist our communities to make that transition. So, things like infrastructure investment into mountain bike riding paths is one. We need to make sure that things like roads and telecommunications are fit for purpose in a different climate. We also know that part of that adaptation is a fundamental understanding of the root cause of climate change.

[ 00:33:21 ] And that means we need policies and investment in a way that reduces our carbon footprint globally and nationally and locally. So, investment into renewable energy, for example, investment into smart energy appliances in our homes and businesses so that we can fully electrify and utilize solar. Hydro, of course, in the Alpine areas, we’ve traditionally been generating power through hydroelectricity on the Kiwa system, for So, yeah, there’s a lot of work and a lot of thinking and a lot of adaptation already happening. But, of course, we need to do more. We can only adapt as well as we can reduce our emissions. And the less we reduce our emissions, the harder adapting will be. And I’m just wondering if you have any examples of kind of maybe some different ways that’s happened in your electorate, like local solutions that are happening towards emissions reduction?

[ 00:34:31 ] Yeah, there is, Sam. I think there’s, well, there’s a real tension, of course, across Australia and particularly across rural and regional Australia around a transition away from fossil fuel generated electricity into renewable resourcing of electricity. I’ll start with community energy. And in the electorate of Indi, we have more community energy groups than any other electorate in the nation. And community energy groups are groups of volunteers of local everyday people who work with each other and with the people in the towns and areas that they live to encourage and enable people to get solar on their roofs, batteries on their walls, to work on projects behind the meter, for example, so microgrids sharing energy in a little distributed network in their own town.

[ 00:35:24 ] There’s a town called Yakindanda in our electorate close to the mountains that has been a leader, a national leader on this. And they’ve done a huge amount of work in helping everyday people get some energy literacy, because it’s pretty complicated, actually. Most of us don’t think about how the electrons make it from their source all the way to our light switch. These community energy groups are doing lots and lots of work with people to help them navigate this really complicated space, to understand how to electrify their home in a way that reduces their power prices. And I’ve been doing a lot of work in this space, too, trying to encourage government to make home batteries much more affordable, for example.

[ 00:36:11 ] We know that the feed- in tariffs now from folks who are early adapters onto rooftop solar, that they’re getting not much by way of a feed- in tariff anymore. And that’s, of course, because we’ve got lots of solar coming into the grid, too much coming in during the day. So that power is not worth what it used to be. And it gets wasted. So we need to find ways to store it When I think about energy storage, I mean, that creates tensions, And we’re seeing grid- scale solar battery storage and transmission being built now across rural and regional Australia. And one of the issues that people come to me about is they haven’t felt like they’ve been consulted about that. And these projects are happening without the kind of forward engagement with communities that put people at the decision- making table.

[ 00:37:03 ] So I’ve been doing a lot of work on that,too And I partnered with Senator David Pocock. We went to the Energy Minister, Minister Bowen, and said, look, there’s some pretty shabby community consultation going on with some of the big energy proponents. We want to see good evidence- based action on climate change. But we’ve got to do it right. And we have to bring people with us. And there are some cowboys out there. So we were then able to work with the government to get an investigation into this. Professor Andrew Dyer, who was the Energy Infrastructure Commissioner at the time, worked with us, did an inquiry right around Australia. I brought him down to Indi, gave local people the opportunity to meet with him, put forward their concerns, their ideas.

[ 00:37:55 ] And a report was subsequently published last year with nine recommendations around improving community engagement and consultation. And I think that’s really important work. We need to do this right. We need to do it well. And when we know that people live in beautiful areas such as ours, because of thegorgeous amenity that that brings, and that they have concerns around climate change, but they want to see the transition to renewables done in a way that’s sensitive to theenvironment where it’s being built. So I think there’s a lot of work still to do in this space, a lot more planning and a lot more careful consideration of how we do this rollout. I mean, there’s always a risk that if we do it wrong, it puts communities that are around these kinds of projects offside for a period of time that, especially in the climate change fight, that we don’t necessarily have.

[ 00:38:49 ] So, yeah, bang on in terms of that we need to do it right the first time around. I think potentially sometimes rural communities don’t always feel like politics listens to them very deeply and like that they don’t necessarily have a voice in some of the decisions that govern their lives, including in the climate space, both in terms of reducing emissions through mitigation and sometimes in adaptation decisions as well. I’m just wondering how you think we can effectively give communities, especially ruralcommunities communities, a greater voice in politics today that can help us create meaningful change and make them feel like they’re more engaged in and heard in the process? Sam, it’s a really important question. And I think that piece of work, as I just touched on with the Dyer review, was one step towards that.

[ 00:39:48 ] I really believe there’s an opportunity here for government to sit down and engage carefully with rural communities and with the, you know, the bigger grid scale energy project developers and proponents to broker, actually, a proposition for rural and regional Australia that,number one, puts us right at the decision- making table but builds in community benefit. So, we touched on earlier in this chat about adaptation in our alpine areas. Well, adaptation costs money. We need to make sure that in anything we do in generating a whole new energy system that we build in long- term regional benefit. Regional development, that’s the kind of development we want to see. For years, rural and regional Australia has struggled with inferior access to healthcare, with poor roads networks and pretty ordinary telecommunications, for example.

[ 00:40:50 ] I think there’s an opportunity here to work with government and developers to say, rural and regional Australia are at the forefront of the transition to renewable energy. How do we make sure that they come out the other side of this? We come out the other side of this far better than how we entered into it. So, to that end, I have been pushing really hard as an independent member of parliament to say, put communities at the front of this conversation because they can tell you what it is that we need and each community is different. So, I want to see governments, energy, project developers, to think about, not talk about social license, but to talk about social legacy and to think about regional development in a way that makes sense to us who live here.

[ 00:41:47 ] I think communities are eager for this and I think that it’s no surprise that we know what’s best in our own community. So, we need to put communities right at the table. How do we do that? Well, I’ve been trying pretty hard in the federal parliament by endeavouring to amend major pieces of federal legislation that would give rise to this being built in, that community consultation and legacy building is built in, that people who live out in the renewable energy zones are considered and have avoice at the table in where and how large- scale renewables are So that’s what I’m doing at my end. I meet regularly with everyday Australians, certainly with my own constituents. I’m out on the road every week talking to people. They raise this with me all the time.

[ 00:42:40 ] We’ve got some good examples across Australia where regional communities are on the front foot. I want to see that become the norm, not the exception. So I think there’s a lot of work to be done in this space, but you’re right, we have to act pretty quickly. Obviously in winters, and more and more in summers now, as you mentioned, industry is kind of transitioning a little bit more to year- round tourism in our alpine areas. Obviously our alpine resorts are a really important part of the economy of analpine area and you’re a kind of role do you think they need to play in both reducing their own emissions as an operation and the emissions of their users? Look, I think we don’t have to come up with all the answers ourselves, right?

[ 00:43:30 ] There are good examples from all over the world around how communities have got on the front foot. we think about alpine resorts, for example, I know that places like Whistler in produces enough renewable energy for all its needs. I’ve had the good fortune to ski there a long, long time ago, probably 40 years ago when no one was even thinking about this, but they’re adapting in places like Saarland in Sweden has cut its emissions by 90% and really looking hard about how they transition, utilising energy that they’re producing themselves. I think this is where my head’s been at for a long time, is that we need to give control back to the people. of course, we have to have a broad distributed energy network to run cities and manufacturing and so on.

[ 00:44:33 ] But when you think about rural and regional communities and you think about alpine communities, there is enormous propensity for us to be in control of our own energy security. Again, I want to see greater capacity and engagement and investment from government to enable us to get on and do that work. I think there’s other things that are an opportunity for that intersect between government and community. There’s been some good work done by the federal government in energy efficiency grants for Again, helping businesses to navigate what is a complex pathway in changing over from gas, for example, into electricity, utilising better appliances and so on in order to run their businesses. I’ve had lots of businesses in my electorate who take up that opportunity when I push out the word to say there’s energy efficiency grants open, come on, folks, let me help you.

[ 00:45:35 ] Let’s get those submissions in. I think there’s things that we absolutely can do. I think that, yeah, again, a lot of this is around working with people, understanding where the barriers are and really exposing where the opportunities are. You’ve been around Parliament for a little while now, since about 2019, I think. I think it’s obviously a really interesting perspective with you being inside that building and the perspective that sometimes a few of our listeners wouldn’t necessarily hear. So, yeah, what do you think are some of the constraints of our political system in kind of tackling this climate challenge? Yeah, so you’re right, I’ve been there since 2019. I’ve worked with both a coalition government and now a Labor government. So I’ve seen kind of the major party approach from both sides.

[ 00:46:36 ] think the greatest challenge and the greatest frustration to me is in order. I mean, in any time in our democratic system, when we’ve got major existential problems to solve, we need to solve them by coming together, by collaboration. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t have attention and a tussle over ways to solve a for too long in Australia, we’ve invested our time into the attention and the tussle as to whether there’s a problem to be that’s exasperating if you believe in science and if you understand the scientific data that has made it abundantly clear that we have a problem to solve with a changing climate and a heating global environment. So a lot of time wasted in agreeing that there was a problem to Now that we.

[ 00:47:40 ] Well, I think we have agreement that there’s a problem to solve, although I’m beginning to feel a little bit nervous because the results of the US election may be pushing us back into the tension on the problem identification. I’ve just heard some commentary from some parts of the political spectrum that there is no problem to So those of us who believe that there is, and that’s mostly everyone, then it comes down to how do we solve that issue. And that’s where there is a lot of tension, a lot of debate, and different ideas put forward. And I think it is really frustrating as someone who is an independent member ofparliament and who really listens and goes out into the community and comes forward with solutions rather than just talking about the problem.

[ 00:48:38 ] It is frustrating when you don’t see that level of engagement across the board because this is an urgent issue. Climate change is an urgent issue. And I think we need to get on and get to an agreement about our pathway to lowering emissions and ultimately playing our part globally in keeping warming to less than 1. 5 degrees. I mean, that’s already probably too late. I remain optimistic though, Sam. I think we have to remain optimistic that we can achieve this. But I think that one of the things that’s given me hope and optimism and energy is to see the growth in independence in the federal parliament. And I think one of the reasons why we have got the greatest number of independents since federation is because of the community’s frustration, the broader community’s frustration about this perpetual argument without a combined collaborative effort to solve the problem.

[ 00:49:45 ] Obviously, there’s been a huge rise in independence in the last couple of Indy was a bit of an early mover in that space with Cathy McGowan, I believe, and then yourself. now there’s a significant amount more in the federal parliament. How do you think the rise of this kind of independence movement and independent members moving into different stages of government can help in reducing some of the constraints on our political system in terms of tackling climate change? Yeah, lots of ways. And I think we’ve got tons of evidence just from the last two and a half years of this parliament, of the 47thparliament You can go and look at the amount of work that the independents have done in working with government around amending legislation to make it stronger.

[ 00:50:42 ] In my own case, I have been very active in ensuring that any legislation that the government is putting forward has regard to rural and regional communities, that this issue that I spoke at length about just now on engagement, on an understanding that rural andregional Australia is the place where large- scale renewable projects will be built and are being built and that we need to give regard to rural communities has been a key part of my work. When we think about the government’s signature climate policy, the safeguard mechanism, I there’s a case in point there, that the government were about reducing emissions of our top national polluters by setting targets and then allowing companies to reach these targets by trading credits. That legislation passed in the parliament, but it got a lot of scrutiny and improvement by the crossbench.

[ 00:51:42 ] And the crossbench raised, I think, really important concerns about the integrity of the credits that could be claimed by our large emitters and really put a focus on making sure that they were genuinely working with this with integrity of these credits and not just offsetting emissions with something dodgy. And the crossbench raised a lot of concern about making sure that large emitters can’t just offset their emissions by 100% You know, get on with just pouring out high carbon. So I think the crossbench have been really critical in keeping the government honest on climate change policies and pushing hard to make sure that whatever we’re doing is credible and effective and backed by strong scientific evidence. Obviously, having discussions around climate change, especially in our alpine areas, especially after difficult winter seasons and periods of bushfire prior to that and all sorts of difficult times can be, it can be exhausting, it can be difficult.

[ 00:53:00 ] I’m just wondering on the counter to that, what are some good news stories of your time in office in relating to curbing climate change and maybe some examples from alpine areas of things you see that give you a lot of hope in the space? Yeah, well, there is a lot of hope in the space because there’s a lot of good people working really hard in our local communities. And I think if you’re looking for solutions, go from the ground up in lots of cases,Sam And in working with our communities, I’ve been able to secure more than 7 million from federal funding for local renewable energy projects. We were able to secure 1. 9 million for a microgrid in Wodonga to lower power bills for businesses there.

[ 00:53:54 ] 6 million for community batteries in the upper Murray to store power for emergencies. And I think that’s a really classic one where after the Black Summer bushfires or during the Black Summer bushfires, that community which was devastated lost power for And now we’re building an energy security system up there that will keep the lights on in the hospital and the fire station, police station, community halls that will give energy security in times of emergency. So that’s awesome. 540, 000 into the little alpine communities of Beechworth, Bright and Mount Beauty for community batteries. Again, that’s great. Another community battery up in Koryong, 615, 000 up there. And I was really pleased that just recently we’ve had some large arena grants, which are really big grants.

[ 00:54:51 ] And the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change just a couple of weeks ago were in Wodonga for breaking the ground actually at Mars Pet Care Manufacturing with an investment of 17 million of arena funding. And this is going to put this manufacturing organisation, which is based in our town of to generating 100% renewable steam, which is a bit of a holy grail actually in manufacturing. So I’m really proud of all of this work and really, really pleased that we’ve got sometouchable touchable, tangible examples in Indi that people can look to and say, okay, I get it. I can see how we can make this transition. And this is the kind of infrastructure that we need to do it. And I really believe that seeing is believing when it comes to a theory of change.

[ 00:55:48 ] It’s a lot to unpack for people. The urgency is clear and sometimes the urgency can be paralysing. But when you’ve got local people doing really impressive work and clear examples that you can go along and see, I think it helps us as a community to support action that will ultimately put us on a pathway to net With a federal election looming, it’s important that climate impacts on our Alpine areas are reflected in, not forgotten by, policies of politicians. As Helen said, our mountains are a canary in the coal mine, the frontline of a changing climate that will affect this whole country. We’re lucky that the Alpine- loving community is speaking up to fight for what we love. Right, that’s all from this episode of the Powercast. Make sure to subscribe and if you care about our mountains and want to have an impact, head to protectourwinters. org. au and find out how you can get involved. Or share this podcast or our socials with your mates and spread the good word. Good on you. Stay stoked.