It boggles the mind that we are being asked to trust the parties whose economic world view is responsible for the mess we’re in. But let’s focus on the local economy, where we can make the most difference.
The old parties have by and large treated small, micro and mini business as second class citizens, favouring grand projects and subsidies that work for big multinationals and leave smaller businesses in the cold.
A consequence of the combination of traffic problems and poor planning is that many residents of Moggill do their shopping elsewhere at the big shopping malls in places like Indooroopilly.
Greens initiatives like light rail and building our local communities will encourage residents to do more closer to home, expanding local business opportunities.
What’s more, shopping near home reduces carbon emissions. The state government is running expensive TV ads telling us to turn our appliances off at the wall. This is tokenism at best. Driving your car for a few seconds will burn away gains of doing this for a day. Let’s build our local community so it’s pleasant place to be, a place people work, shop, go to the doctor and know their neighbours.
Looking at the bigger picture, relying on the markets to deal with climate change without positive measures to gear business for the future is very risky. Governments need to work on the right mix of disincentives and incentives to move to the new economy. Approaches like a carbon trading scheme that adds a deep layer of bureaucracy to everything while giving the money back to the worst polluters will not do it. At state level, it is bizarre that the old parties are falling over each other trying to sound greener, yet the state government has a $32-billion plan to double coal exports by 2015. Not only is this environmentally indefensible, it’s economically batty. We will have this capacity in place just in time for worldwide carbon emissions programs to scale back demand for coal.
If elected, I promise local business three things:
- shop local – as part of my community-building agenda I will strongly encourage patronage of local businesses, not only to build our community but to reduce our carbon footprint
- economic responsibility – I will go through the state budget line by line, and make it clear exactly how much of the budget is being spent irresponsibly on big-ticket items that amount to welfare for big multinationals
- take you seriously – the Greens do not solicit or accept big financial donations, so we feel no pressure to satisfy the big end of town. I know who my people are, and I will always listen to you first.
Finally, if you want to see why more and more smaller businesses and tradies are turning to the Greens, here’s an ABC report that shows just how out of touch the main parties are with creating greens jobs for the small guy.
