Igniting an independent backburn: Margo Kingston finds hope in the grassroots for #AusVotes

AS I CONSIDER how to contribute at the next federal election, I thought I’d republish, with permission, a chapter I wrote for the Fremantle Press anthology Women of a Certain Rage, in January 2020 after the failed 2019 ‘Climate Election’, amid the worst bushfires Australia had ever seen, before COVID changed everything.  #AustraliaBurns: Rage, A Climate […]

Steggall says ‘no alternative’: indies must stand up for sensible centre

Women are at the forefront of the ‘Voices for’ movement in safe Liberal seats because the Liberal Party’s pre-selection process is “absolutely patriarchal in nature” according to the independent MP for Warringah, Zali Steggall. A closed-door preselection policy designed to maintain the status quo to keep women out, is how Steggall described the process in […]

Transcript of #TransitZone podcast interview with Zali Steggall on THURSDAY, 2 September 2021 lightly edited for clarity.

PETER CLARKE: As we record another #transitzone podcast our two most populous states, New South Wales and Victoria, are still in lockdown, with rapidly rising locally acquired COVID Delta cases. Victorian new cases today are up sharply, and, in New South Wales, still well over 1000 cases each day. The intensely infectious Delta variant has pitched us, and […]

The Man Who Walked into Parliament with a Lump of Coal: Zali Steggall in conversation with #transitzone

Another podcast in the continuing #transitzone side-bar series on grassroots democracy in Australia and the emerging and evolving “Voices for” independents movements gearing up for the looming federal election. Margo Kingston and Peter Clarke in conversation with Zali Steggall, the federal independent member for Warringah in Sydney, a “safe” Liberal seat until Steggall ousted the […]

Scale and implications of #KoalaKillers crime still unknown: @jansant reports on #SpringSt

Since No Fibs published the first news story on the Portland Koala Massacre, the number of dead, injured, starving and trapped koalas on the Victorian blue gum timber plantation near Cape Bridgewater is no clearer. According to a Rob Hadler, spokesperson for South West Fibre (SWF) – the company who carried out an approved timber […]

Gruesome koala massacre during logging operations in Victoria: @jansant reports #springst

Unknown numbers of koalas – possibly hundreds – have been killed during plantation logging operations south west of Portland in Victoria this week. Friends of the Earth (FOE) reported koalas were left to starve after logging operations in late December 2019. Last week, surviving koalas were bulldozed into slash piles, along with the bodies of […]

Diary of an Orbost climate refugee: @greengipps reports on #AustralianBushfires

There’s nothing special about me this week. I’m one of many hundreds, maybe thousands, worried about their homes burning down. My home in Cabbage Tree Creek, East Gippsland, might be burning as I write. I have a fire bunker which was about to get installed when the fires started and now no heavy machinery available. […]

Let’s get together on climate change and take the government on SERIOUSLY: @margokingston1 crazy idea for @NoFibs #ClimateStrike

Having been immersed in US and British politics for a while, and seen how groups with common core values can’t seem to get together to fight for them due to disagreements on other matters, I noticed a tweet by Greens leader Richard di Natale. YES!  Consider: The centre and centre right, (Steggall, Sharkie, Haines), centre […]