Senate debates

Tuesday, 12 May 2020

Adjournment

Foskey, Dr Deborah 'Deb' Jane

10:00 pm

Photo of Janet RiceJanet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | | Hansard source

I rise to remember and to pay tribute to my friend, colleague and quintessential Green Dr Deb Foskey. Deb passed away on 1 May, aged 70. She leaves two daughters, Samara and Eleni, and a mountain of achievements and inspiration. In the words of her friend Shelly Nundra, Deb was 'a writer, poet, philosopher, politician, mother, agitator for change and thinker'. Her life was 'lived to the full, selflessly, generously, inspirationally'.

Deb grew up in Bacchus Marsh and attended the University of Melbourne studying English and philosophy and doing a DipEd. In 1972 though Deb headed bush. She was 22 when she, husband Bob and baby daughter Samara settled in Cabanandra in the mountain forests of far East Gippsland and built an A-frame cottage on the Jingalala River. Son Brandon was born the next year.

Deb said:

We wanted a house that was built out of materials from the earth, we didn't want electricity in those days.

She also said:

We were forerunners of the alternative lifestyle people, trying to build self-sufficiency and community in a cold, challenging place, far from services in a place where the greenies we became were often made to feel uncomfortable…

We came here because we could afford the land…and the property at Cabanandra had a river, a small area of cleared land and bush. I really don't think we thought through the impacts of the isolation: distance from shops, post-primary education and jobs. Partly to counter the social isolation, I was very keen on building a self-sufficient community at Cabanandra, and we set up the Warm Corners Cooperative which still thrives today.

Deb Foskey was one of the pioneers of the campaign to protect the magnificent forests of East Gippsland that continues today, almost fifty years on. She was a founder of the Concerned Residents of East Gippsland, which also continues on today as Environment East Gippsland, the longest-running forest conservation organisation in the country.

I first met Deb in the early eighties after she'd been living at Cabanandra for a decade She was part of the small group of amazingly brave locals that we Melbourne based forest campaigners worked alongside in our quest for protection of some of the best forests in the country and, indeed, the world. In the mid-eighties, when it came time for Sam and Brandon to attend high school, Deb made the decision to shift to Canberra.

Tragically, in 1986, Brandon drowned at Casuarina Sands, a popular swimming spot on the Murrumbidgee River. How do you cope with the loss of a child like this? Deb lived with an aching hole for the rest of her life, but she journeyed on with her grief and with extraordinary strength.

In Canberra, Deb taught and undertook study, undertaking a masters in human ecology and then a PhD that looked at the role of community movements in the framing of the Programme of Action for the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development. And she brought up her young daughter Eleni, who was born in 1989.

Deb also worked with the International Women's Development Agency during this time. Sue Finucane, a former IWDA program manager, recalls Deb representing IWDA in their Canberra chapter:

It really was a thrilling time to be involved in global women's activism and Deb really lived the values of think globally and act locally. Ahead of her time in many respects making and living the links between gender, women's rights (or lack thereof) and climate care.

Deb was active in the formation of the Greens in the ACT, and she stood for the Senate in 1998 and for the ACT legislative assembly in 2001. She was elected to the assembly in 2004 as the only Green in the assembly at that time. Her four years in the ACT assembly featured a huge amount of work on sustainability, climate and social issues, and one of her lasting legacies was to ensure that the residents of the Narrabundah Long Stay Caravan Park were not evicted when the private owner sold the land. That caravan park still provides affordable homes to more than a hundred people today.

In 2008 I travelled with Deb and her daughter Eleni to the Global Greens Congress in Brazil and to undertake a study tour looking at participatory budgeting, where local communities are actively involved in setting priorities about where they want their taxes to be spent. This trip, combining the global and the local, was quintessentially Deb, covering the breadth of her interests and perspectives.

Deb moved back to Cabanandra after she finished up in the assembly in 2008, and after having been a high-flyer as an elected representative she threw herself back into her local community and her local but globally significant environment. She recalled a few years ago that she was more self-sufficient than she had ever been in the seventies and eighties. She worked with the Centre for Rural Communities. She was the coordinator of the Tubbut Neighbourhood House and was highly respected within the statewide neighbourhood houses community. She worked with the local community to help develop an ecotourism strategy for East Gippsland and was chairperson of the Orbost Exhibition Centre, and she continued her tireless campaigning for forest protection. Her house and she survived the huge fires of 2014, which burned to within metres of the house.

In recent years Deb connected community activism and electoral politics together as only someone with Deb's life experience can do. Deb Foskey was the living personification of the four pillars of the Greens—ecological sustainability, social justice, peace and nonviolence, and grassroots democracy. Deb stood for council in 2016. She stood at the state election in 2018 and then threw her hat in the ring for the federal seat of Gippsland last year, campaigning powerfully on our interconnected crises—climate, nature, inequality and democracy—and on the local solutions to these national and global problems. Deb was determined to use the election as a platform to amplify our Greens messages and to build the Greens in rural and regional communities. I am so grateful personally: she knew that her work in Gippsland would help re-elect me to the Senate. I have such treasured memories of campaigning with Deb just over a year ago. We ran a Greens stall at the Yarram show, caught up with forest campaigners in Mirboo North and recorded video clips about the climate emergency and the importance of investment in renewable energy to rural and regional communities.

Sadly, that election campaigning was the last time I saw Deb. Shortly after the election she became unwell, was admitted to hospital and was diagnosed with lung cancer. She moved to Orbost to live with Eleni and to be closer to treatment. Then more tragedy struck. Her beloved house at Cabanandra burnt to the ground in July last year, destroying almost everything she owned. But Deb survived this blow, too. She talked of rebuilding. She remained passionate about living at Cabanandra, even after last summer's bushfire inferno in East Gippsland's forests. She survived the fires in Orbost too, by the way, with blanketing smoke and flames coming close to the town over multiple days.

In the months before she died Deb had been quite well. She'd had a holiday in Tasmania and had even found herself a small cottage to retreat to at Cabanandra. To the end Deb continued her activism, reflecting and sharing her thoughts on the COVID-19 pandemic, about social inequality, about the need for art and about support for science. Her Facebook posts kept us all up to date. She was open and honest, confronting her mortality head on. She knew she had limited time left. She asked the day before she died: what is a life? I'll leave you with Eleni's words on Facebook the day she died:

This morning our wonderful powerhouse mother Deb Foskey abruptly left her body and us behind for another place. Samara … and I are left reeling but are comforted to know she had a nurse with her, and she was conscious, aware and very ready.

After being helped back into bed she calmly told the nurse 'I’m just about ready now' before taking her final breathe.

…   …   …

We are so proud and grateful to have been your lucky daughters and know that you had to say goodbye to us to be with your beloved son Bran who you have been separated from these 34 years. We know the two of you are having a beautiful reunion and that he will look after you.

…   …   …

We love and remember you always and forever.

Thanks, Deb, for your contribution to this world; for your powerful and feisty presence. You leave a legacy of love, care and respect, and deep relationships with people and the earth. The world is a better place because of you. What does a life mean? You couldn't ask for any more than that.