Point out the mammoth in the room this election

By tom

It’s the most crucial election for our environment in decades and yet no one’s talking about the mammoth in the room.

Sure, Tony Abbott’s called himself ‘a fair dinkum environmentalist’ and Kevin Rudd’s called climate change ‘the greatest moral challenge of our time,’ but that was long ago. And beyond such sound bites there’s a serious lack of substantial discussion about how as a society we should tackle the mounting threats to our environment.

While neither the ALP nor the Coalition have released formal environment policies, there’s actually a pretty big difference in what they’ve indicated they’ll do if elected on 7 September. The outcome of this election will determine:

• who pays to reduce pollution – big business or taxpayers

• whether or not there’s a $10 billion fund for renewable energy projects

• whether our environment laws are strengthened or weakened

• whether or not we have new dams on our rivers

• whether we have billions of dollars invested in public transport or new freeways.

There are serious questions to be answered, but very few, particularly in the media seem to be asking. It doesn’t help that some parts of the media are running a shameless campaign to change the government, and are therefore not asking the hard policy questions.

With so much at stake we need to get the environment back in the spotlight so that our leaders are subjected to much greater scrutiny over their environmental promises. And it’s up to you!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to help us get the environment firmly on the agenda by writing a letter to a paper, helping distribute flyers or calling a talkback radio show in the coming weeks to let them know that the environment matters to you.