Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens movement is founded on the belief that, when people come together, change is possible, and we live that belief in everything we do. From our time on the streets in the community, campaigning to end the needless cruelty that is live animal exports or the inhumane horror that is the treatment of refugees or indeed the flagrant neglect and betrayal of the next generation that is inaction on climate change, we are in active communities—organising, bringing people together. When there are opportunities to bring those issues to the front, to talk about them in a campaign and to give people the option to vote for them at the ballot box, we participate joyfully in election campaigns.

It just so happens that in my state of WA the people of the federal electorates of Perth and Fremantle will, on 28 July, be given such an opportunity to make their voices heard and to make a fundamental and critical choice. They will have the opportunity to vote for and to put their support behind candidates who represent a future for all of us, a politics that proudly defends and fights for those things that are necessary to create a good life for all of us. I'm so excited to be seeing what is happening on the ground in those two seats right now. Greens across those two electorates are campaigning in the community. Thousands of conversations are being had with local people about the issues that matter to them, proving that you do not have to take corporate money to run community campaigns.

We are honoured, as a movement, to be represented in both of these electorates by two incredible women, who I also am proud to call my personal friends, these being Caroline Perks and Dorinda Cox. Caroline is a climate change expert who has spent her entire career fighting for evidence based action to safeguard our future from dangerous climate change, working within the Public Service, in the federal department of climate change under the Rudd government, seeing firsthand at the coalface the promise of that period wasted as the Rudd government buckled to the pressure of the fossil fuel industries. And Dorinda is one of the most incredible people I have ever had the opportunity to work with—a passionate domestic violence campaigner, a small-business owner, a former police officer, and a proud Noongar woman who is ready, able and excited to bring the voices of her people to this place. Both of them represent an incredible opportunity to bring some urgently needed diversity to this chamber, to this political system. They represent an opportunity for the people of Perth and Fremantle to vote for representatives who will not simply talk about community values, will not simply agree that Perth and Fremantle want a more caring, compassionate society, but will vote for it here in Canberra.

In a few days' time—in fact, on Saturday afternoon—I'll be out doorknocking in Hilton with some our campaign team in Fremantle, talking to people about the things that matter to them, and I cannot wait. I cannot wait to be back in WA, on the ground, campaigning for a better society for all of us; proving what can be done when conviction and compassion drive your political belief.