You may have seen our video just now about the campaign to save the Kalang forest from logging. It’s a special place.
I travelled up there a couple of months ago and spent the night at the blockade camp.
We saw first hand the incredible old growth, but also the evidence of koala habitat that the Forestry Corporation somehow missed.
And we saw the damage their trucks and machines have already done.
I met Uncle Michaelo, the local aboriginal elder you saw in the video. We talked a while and made that video and I learned a lot of things.
As he went to leave, Michaelo pulled me aside:
“Where are you from?” he asks
“Sydney” I say. I’m a bit perplexed because we’d long since established that.
“Yeah, I know Sydney” he says, “but where are you from?” So I say, “You mean, why am I brown?”
“Yeah”
So I thought I might start by telling you a little bit about why I’m brown.
The Anglo Indians were, at their height, about 2% of the population of India. Called Anglo because of the British Raj but really it is a catch all term for anyone with European ancestry.
I can trace my family back to the east end of London in the 17th century. But also toFrance, Portugal and the Netherlands. A group of Gambians set sail from Ireland to the United States in the 19th century.
Mum and Dad often told me that they never felt like they belonged in India. In the years after independence, when they were growing up, the Raj was out and Indian nationalism was in.
So moving to Australia in 1974 was a life dream of my mother’s to get out of India finally realised.
But if a sense of belonging is what she was looking for, Sydney in the mid 1970s was notthe place a young woman with brown skin was likely to find it.
She moved into southern Sydney where her brother had already settled, and Dad soon followed.
That’s how the migrant story goes: strangers in a new land tend to stick together.
Not too many brown faces in Mortdale in 1975.
They would spend every weekend exploring a new place. A bush walk across Oatley Parkor a drive to the mountains, or a trip to some obscure tourist trap that someone at work had mentioned.
They embraced their new country with open arms and wanted to make the most of the opportunity.
We don’t have stories of terrible racism or discrimination in our family.
But Dad missed out on a job as a motor mechanic because he didn’t have his own tools - he’d arrived in the country the day before, and Mum missed out on a job because she“might wear a sari” to work - which to this day she has never.
I guess there is a baseline of racism and exclusion that migrant families factor into the costof living. You don’t think about it too much after a while.
When I turned up the following year the dream was clear: high school with the Marist Brothers, graduate Sydney University — a law degree would have been sufficient becausemy early inability to handle the sight of blood rendered becoming a Doctor unlikely.
But when I announced that I was joining the Labor Party and setting about on a career as atrade unionist... you can well imagine there as an incident.
I became a trade unionist because I believe in the struggle for justice.
But I love being a trade unionist because of solidarity and the feeling of belonging it brings.
Late one night in April 1998 I got a phone call to turn up to my first picket line the next morning.
A few days earlier, Patricks ports around the country have been seized by security men with balaclavas and German shepherds.
They sacked the unionised workforce and paved the way for busloads of scab labour to take over.
At 4:30am the next morning we huddled at the gates at Port Botany, cold and uncertain and very nervous about what was to unfold.
Even the most seasoned veterans of union picket lines spoke with a slight anxiety thatmorning. No one was sure what the next hours and days might bring. This was a dispute that was about to make history and we knew it.
“We will let buses through but no trucks or trains in or out. Links arms and form rows ofpeaceful lines to block the way. If the police pull you off, don’t resist but go back to the back row. No violence. Absolutely no violence.
And the buses came, but no trucks came that morning. We were back the next day and the day after that.
By the weekend we had a family day, and where we had stood huddled a few morningsearlier there was now a kids jumping castle and a makeshift stage.
There were flags and musicians and always a bbq. 24/7. After Saturday nights out wewould pop into the picket line and have a late night sausage and a chat with a comrade before heading home to bed.
In one of his better cartoons Leuing captured it beautifully :
Once there was a barricade, which grew: A fire, a little shelter and a pot of stew.
A workers paradise, a golden hive — Of what a joy itwas at last to be alive!
Oh how we danced, oh how we sang and cried Until the judge’sverdict came down on our side.
Down on our side, so legally precise
We won the day but then we dismantled paradise.
The owner of Patricks was Chris Corrigan. Chris Corrigan is one of the biggest water licence owners in Australia.
The struggle we are in for nature and the climate is part of an epic and timeless struggle between right and wrong.
And though we might often feel like we are a lone or feeble voice sometimes;
And though this year’s electoral results have been disheartening; And though theroar of denial and greed echoes around the world; I still have hope.
I still have hope because the people of our movement wake up each morning thinking about how we can protect nature.
I have hope because of the tree sitters at Kalang and the protesters at Braemar.
I have hope because of the campaigners who won at Rocky Hill and Bylong.
I have hope because of the smart, dogged campaign to stop the dam raising at Warragamba.
And I have hope in the school kids who turned out 80,000 people onto the streets of Sydney and thousands more across NSW to demand that this generation of adults take responsibility for the greatest threat to survival humanity has ever faced.
I have hope in what we can achieve together, and so should you.
The thing that makes the Nature Conservation Council special is that it is not 1 organisation, it is over 150.
Your organisations, which between you have over 60,000 people engaged, are on the front line in the struggle to protect nature.
And the NCC will be strong when you are strong.
That’s why I hope that my leadership of this organisation will be understood by a single idea: solidarity.
We work best when we work together and it will be my goal to work with you to make you stronger and all of us more effective for nature.
We need to be a united and collaborative movement, and we need to be larger.
We need to connect with more people, including people who have not traditionally seen themselves as environmentalists.
Do you think as lovers of nature we are somehow in the fringe minority of public opinion? Think about your own family and neighbours.
Do you think that valuing conservation or taking action on climate change is a radical or outlandish notion?
Of course not.
But do we always do as much as we can to invite people in? Is there a way a migrant family like mine, or a working class family that is struggling just to keep food on the table, can also be a voice for nature?
We will be strong when a chorus of voices for nature permeates every part of this State.Voices from every walk of life, every cultural background, rich and poor, old and young.
So today I set down this challenge. When we assemble three years from now in 2022, a few months before the next State election, let’s be a movement of not 60,000 but 600,000.
Let’s continue the fight against de-forestation and land clearing. Let’s continue to fight to protect endangered species.
Let’s step up the fight to transition away from polluting energy to clean energy, and for theinfrastructure that transition needs and the jobs and opportunity it offers.
And let’s take on the reckless madness that is trashing our river systems.
Let’s work in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in first nations communities.
And let’s stand with our brothers and sisters in the union movement, the human rightsmovement, and all the other movements that pursue a more decent, more sustainable and just society.
And let’s fight to win.
Good intentions are no longer enough. Our State is literally on fire. We need to fight and fight and fight until we win.
There are powerful vested interests with armies of lawyers and PR firms and mediacommentators at their disposal. They have deep pockets and a lot to lose.
But I want those grubs to wake up each morning and wonder what we are going to do to them next.
The work you do - that we all do - is an act of love.
Love for nature, love for your community, love for your family and the landscape we inhabit.
And because it is an act of love for country it is an act of deep and sincere patriotism.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
I am so grateful for the opportunity I have been given to lead this wonderful organisation. I thank Don and the Board for the trust they have placed in me, and the staff for their hard work and generous welcome to the fold. I hope I can live up to it.
Thank you and have a great conference.